Coach K and 2010 National Champion Duke: I Love Blue Devil-ed Egg On My Face

My dozens of (former) fans might recall my last Duke Blue Devil-related article, in which I (echoing the chorus of the so called “experts”) predicted the certain demise of my beloved Blue Devils in the 2010 NCAA Tournament.

I bemoaned their road loss in College Park, MD in front of the rabidly hostile Twerps.  I surmised that their lack of a requisite “go-to/crunch-time” guy would ultimately prove their Achilles heel. 

I was bold enough to guarantee that one of a group of six schools would cut down the nets in Conseco Field House on April 5: Kansas, Syracuse, Kentucky, Michigan St., Ohio St. and Villanova (only Michigan St. and Kentucky ever made it past the Sweet 16, with the Spartans as the sole member of the bunch to even make it to Indy).

Now before you castigate me as being guilty of traitorous vitriol, I’d like to submit for your consideration two pieces of evidence in support of my indelible fidelity:

The first is anecdotal, and entails my rationale that my article was a “win-win” proposition. Either my words would prove prophetic (in which case my ego would help console my anguish as a fan) OR I would be proven incorrect and lambasted as a “sell-out” (in which case my elation would provide solace to my shame). 

Secretly I was hoping for the latter.

The second (and perhaps more mitigating) piece of evidence is my actual 2010 NCAA Tournament office pool sheet.  As evidenced by the photograph of my iPhone screenshot, I correctly prognosticated that the Duke Blue Devils would end up as National Champions.  I should highlight that I not only won my office pool, but finished in the 98.6-percentile on ESPN’s Tournament Challenge (No. 66,358 out of more than 4.8 million entries!)!

Ironically, ensconced within my own rhetoric was the logic for reaching the exact opposite conclusion: “Who would dare argue that the 2009-2010 Blue Devils are one of their storied programs most cohesive teams?”

And that is the beauty of the 2010 Duke Blue Devils: emblematic of a common focus; a unified purpose.  The TEAM became the “go to/crunch time” player their team needed: Scheyer and Thomas and Zoubek and Smith and Singler and Dawkins and the Brothers Plumlee each made crucial plays in critical moments.

Ironically, my words did prove prescient in another way: “No worries though.  Provided Singler returns for his senior season, next year’s squad will be scary good!  If they remain healthy, anything less than a 2011 Final Four run to Houston will officially signal the end of Duke as the standard against which all others are judged.”

Didn’t Duke just receive a verbal commitment from the top high school prospect in the 2011 class?

What an effulgent standard indeed.