"Mystique and Aura? Those are dancers at a nightclub."
-Curt Schilling, 2001
-Curt Schilling, 2001
Schilling obviously talks too much, but the above is one of my favorite quotes from an athlete. The Yankees didn't win games 4 and 5 because they have 26 world championships- they won them because Byung-Hyun Kim made bad pitches to Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius, and they got crushed.
I picked Duke to reach the Final Four not because they're the best team in their region (UCLA is), but because thinking like this was causing very few others to do so. Has anyone actually looked at their resume? You do not go 12-1 against the 12th most difficult non-conference schedule in the country, and then 13-3 in the ACC, if you suck. This is a very good team.
An objective look at the Blue Devils reveals they are very good at things you wouldn't necessarily notice- not turning the ball over, and not allowing their opponents to get looks from 3. It would be difficult to watch a game and come away thinking "Wow, Duke really is great at limiting their opponents' three-point opportunities; I can't think of a team in the country that's better."
I would not be difficult, however, to come away thinking, "The Blue Devils really don't have an 'inside presence', or "Greg Paulus is an [expletive]."
This is why I find articles like this to be so silly.
No. You could go back to any 1 or 2 seed in the history of the NCAA tournament, including all those Duke teams, and after a close first round game, I'm sure at least one player gave a similar quite in every instance. What else would you say? "We had them all along"?"'It's all about winning, whether by one or 100,' Duke's Jon Scheyer said. 'We're relieved. We won our first game, and we're going on.'
There was a time when those words would have been heresy."
"Put simply, the Devils and all their ACC heft and national titles and mystique and aura and NCAA tradition couldn't guard the Bruins...The aura is tinged, the mystique has dissipated."
Do people actually think that in the first round in 2001 Duke beat Monmouth by 43 because they won back-to-back titles in '91 and '92, and that effect carried over?
"This year, with no threatening big man and a team that looks imminently ordinary, what with a bunch of 3-point shooters, Duke was the 2-seed everyone wanted to get."This is what gets me. You can't have it both ways. Was this game close because their mystique played bad defense, or because they don't have Tyler Hansbrough? It's one or the other. And you can't say that their lack of a big man caused them to lose their aura, which caused them to almost lose to Belmont. I don't think I need to explain why that logic is flawed.
"Byrd spread the floor, enticing Duke out to the wing with the danger of 3-pointers, then he sent his players driving to the hoop as though there was no one there. Mostly because there was no one there."Okay. Sure. But did you see the winning basket? Did it look like Henderson had a particularly difficult time getting to the rim? I'm certainly not offering this as a reason, but wouldn't that be as good a time as any to say that Belmont was overwhelmed by Duke's history, and that's the reason nobody stepped in and actually, you know, defended him?
I'm not saying Duke is a great team, or that they'll go all the way. But if/when they lose, it won't be because of mystique and aura- it'll be because they shoot poorly from 3 (as they did on Thursday) and Kevin Love (or whomever) goes off for 28 and 12 against them.
(H/T to TMLJ for the WWL link.)
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7 comments:
great site
what are all the weird orange links?
Excellent post. I myself was a little perturbed when I woke up this morning to see, on the front page of ESPN, an article description that said that because the Duke game was so close, they had lost mystique.
There's no doubt about the fact that Duke had a terrific season. The issue with Duke is its lack of balanced inside scoring. Sure, Gerald Henderson and DeMarcus Nelson sort of fill the void, but Duke relies on its shooting. Teams that rely on shooting are prone to inconsistent nights (based on pure probability) making it more likely they will be upset. On the contrary the '07 Florida, or '07 Ohio State and this year's UNC or UCLA are more balanced and thus more consistent. Duke could get hot, but I think there's a greater likelihood that a team with more balance is likely to make it to the final four. The point is that inside scoring is more of a given than outside shooting (less variability).
Hopefully the orange links were gone now. They were part of this new advertising thing, but I never wanted them there to begin with.
Burf. "imminently ordinary" means "about to be ordinary". I bet she meant "eminently ordinary". Editors FTW.
I’m live blogging today on everything if you feel like throwing your two sense in from time to time.
P.S. American looks horrible and they are winning. I don’t get it
Nice. You took up for Duke more than I did--but that Dana O'Neil article was simply ludicrous.
I am totally grounded and realistic about Duke, in spite of how much I love them...but her article was an obvious and pathetic attempt to get her name on the "front page." It was painfully apparent she had no clue about what she was talking. What I wouldn't give to have a "one and done" with her.
GO DUKE!
PS People need to quit leaving out credit to Jon Scheyer...yes, Henderson was the best player in last night's game, but Jon Scheyer has been a solid player all year--just because he doesn't seem to be as visible on the three does not make his accomplishments any less...then again, I am a wee bit prejudice when it comes to Scheyer.
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