Sigh.

Missouri beat Memphis tonight.  That was nice.  I don’t have anything personal against Memphis, but they play in the weak Conference USA and the program seems a little shady.

And then there was the Duke and Villanova game.  Amanda went to bed before it because tipoff was after 10:00, but Lars came over and watched it with me.

I don’t have too much to say about it.  Most people thought it was going to be a good, tough matchup.  The Blue Devils scored the first five points but then Nova went on an 11-0 run.  Duke was down by three points at the half, which wasn’t bad considering that they were shooting under 30% and Gerald Henderson hadn’t even scored a field goal yet.  The second half started and Duke forced a turnover and scored a basket, which was promising.  And that was the closest they got for the rest of the game.  It ended up an embarrassing 77-54.  The Wildcats were playing good defense, but Duke couldn’t even get wide open shots to go in.

What sucks the most is not the loss.  I can live with a Sweet 16 loss.  What sucks is that that was the end of the college basketball careers of Greg Paulus, Dave McClure, Marty Pocius and, in all likelihood, Gerald Henderson.  I just hate that they went out on a game like that.  A close, hard-fought game would have been easier to take, but this was just hard to watch.

I will say that the season itself was a pretty good one, even though it didn’t end well.  Thirty wins, the ACC Championship, advancing to the Sweet 16 and the excitement and success of the late season lineup change all made for a satisfying and overall pretty successful season.

Oh well.  The season is over for the Duke Blue Devils and now my favorite team is Gonzaga (since they’re playing Carolina tomorrow night).  It’s ABC2 (Anyone But Carolina/Connecticut, but particularly the first of those) from here on out.

Zach Dotsey