Never mind.
Enjoy the grouper, Connecticut. Stroll the beach, Ohio State. Tour a cigar factory, Michigan State. Pack some sunblock, all of you. Take a book. I hear the new Elmore Leonard novel is a hoot.
You can find some things to do in St. Petersburg while waiting for Duke to demand its national basketball championship. For everyone who isn’t Duke–and clearly no one else is–this is spring break.
“Whoever plans to beat them, better believe in the Lord,” Temple coach John Chaney said. “I don’t know, maybe they ought to get Frank and Jesse James.” Some earlier victim, Tulsa, I think, gave the Indiana Pacers a chance to beat Duke. Maybe. On home court.
This is about to be a coronation, not a tournament, the Final One plus Three. This is the logical and inevitable finish to a season with Duke way up here and everyone else swirling and scuffling below. Beating Temple by 21 Sunday to win the East Regional was merely more of the same, more excellence, more energy, more accuracy (60 percent shooting), more, more, more.
“(Duke) is equipped to play at the highest level of basketball,” Chaney said. “They’ve got the will and the skill and the wisdom. They’ve got mother wisdom.”
More than that, they have Trajan Langdon, a quick-shooting guard; Elton Brand, half-ballerina, half-mule in the middle; and freshman Corey Maggette, who soars when given half a chance, a player so rousing that strangers cheer when he comes off the bench.
Duke opponents insist that the two best teams in the nation are Duke’s first team and Duke’s second team. Though Duke plays only eight players, opponents complain that Duke comes at them in waves.
“We’re more deep than wavy,” said coach Mike Krzyzewski.
Not since UNLV in 1991 has a team gone to the Final Four so overwhelmingly endorsed. And, incidentally, Duke defeated that UNLV team.
“We’re Duke, we’re not UNLV,” said Krzyzewski. “The common thing is that people say we are supposed to win, but they say that about somebody every year. Overall, we’ve learned to live with that well.”
In other words, Duke has no problem feeding its own monster, and more than that, it uses a napkin.
“Here’s what you won’t see about this Duke team,” said Chaney. “You won’t see people slapping hands and bumping butts. There is a class about this team. Every other team I see moving onward keeps making these little pit stops to congratulate itself.”
That’s the only burden Duke has, taking compliments, unless it is convincing itself that it is not as exceptional as everyone agrees it is. Someone blurted out to Krzyzewski, “How in the world did you lose a game this year?” Krzyzewski gave the standard coach’s response about not playing well for two halves against a team as good as Cincinnati, when what he should have done was grinned, shrugged and apologized.
Duke played this thing with a straight face, pronouncing itself “ecstatic” to be where it was assumed it would be ever since, oh, Groundhog Day, at least. Had Duke lost, if Duke loses, it will be one of the great failures in college sports.
Krzyzewski saw nervousness in his team in the opening minutes against Temple. Duke is still mostly young, uncrowned champions or not.
“And then Trajan went on that spree (with four straight three-pointers) and what he did was bigger than the points,” Krzyzewski said. “He settled everybody down and he knew he had to do that.”
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As a freshman, Langdon was on a Duke team that went 13-18. As a senior, he has the bonus of perspective.
“Now we’re supposed to be invincible and not able to be beaten,” Langdon said, “but I’ve had that. And I know we have to play basketball.”
This is the eighth time in the Final Four for Duke under Krzyzewski, but the first in five years, since Duke lost to Arkansas in the ’94 final. He sees it more as a relief than a routine.
“Believe me,” Krzyzewski said, “getting back to the Final Four is incredibly fulfilling. In ’94-’95 a part of me was not sure we would do this again. This is not promised to anybody, even though when we went seven of nine years it seemed to be.”
Speaking not just for poor Chaney but for all the coaches and all the teams who have never been to even one Final Four, let me say that Duke can be the best team in college basketball or Duke can have sympathy.
But Duke can’t have both. Duke can’t have everything. It just seems that way.