Friday, February 18, 2005
ARIZONA AND DUKE
David posted CBS Sportsline's Gregg Doyel's piece on Arizona head coach Lute Olson's criticism of the East Coast bias on Thursday. I would have gotten to this earlier, but I didn't. So here's my take on that piece. Specifically, the one paragraph that David loved. I did too, but there's more to it.
For example, we're guessing he'd disagree with the opinion that he has underachieved in the past decade.
That's my take, but luckily for Lute, I'm located east of the Mississippi and therefore don't know enough about Arizona to realize he has won just three Pac-10 titles since 1995, despite having Damon Stoudamire (a senior in 1995), Ray Owes, Reggie Geary, Ben Davis, Michael Dickerson, Mike Bibby, Miles Simon, Jason Terry, A.J. Bramlett, Michael Wright, Richard Jefferson, Loren Woods, Luke Walton, Gilbert Arenas, Jason Gardner, Rick Anderson, Andre Iguodala, Hassan Adams, Channing Frye, Salim Stoudamire, Mustafa Shakur ...
See, they do play basketball at Arizona! Not as well as they recruit, but ...
How many national championships have Arizona and Duke each won in the past 10 years?
How about one? (Arizona 1997 and Duke 2001)
As a matter of fact, let me list the players that Duke has had in their program in the last 10 years. Their talent was just as good as Arizona's talent, if not better.
---Trajan Langdon
---William Avery
---Elton Brand
---Shane Battier
---Corey Maggette
---Mike Dunleavy, Jr.
---Jason Williams
---Roshown McLeod
---Chris Carrawell
---Steve Wojciechowski
---Ricky Price
---Nate James
---Carlos Boozer
---Casey Sanders
---Chris Duhon
---J.J. Redick
---Daniel Ewing
---Shavlik Randolph
---Luol Deng
---Shelden Williams
---Sean Dockery
---Dahntay Jones
Look at all that talent Mike Krzyzewski has amassed in Durham, but yet, there's only one national championship out of that group of players over the past 10 seasons. So, when a national writer calls out Lute Olson, then it is only fair to call out Coach K.
The 1999 Duke team was supposed to be "the best team ever". But what did they do? They lost in the national championship game to an underdog Connecticut team. To this day, I haven't seen a bigger chokejob in a national championship game than the one by Duke in 1999. Of course, the East Coast Media will never bother to bring that up.
I am in SEC country. And I've made it a point to tell some of these people that the SEC is down this year. Way down. There's only one team out of the SEC that I can see going to the Sweet 16 and that is Alabama. I don't believe in Kentucky at all. They're lucky to play in a SEC East filled with underachieving teams such as Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Oh, and that South Carolina team just upset the Cats earlier this week.
But the main point of this post is to remind people that while Arizona hasn't won enough with their talent, Duke hasn't either. The facts don't lie.
For example, we're guessing he'd disagree with the opinion that he has underachieved in the past decade.
That's my take, but luckily for Lute, I'm located east of the Mississippi and therefore don't know enough about Arizona to realize he has won just three Pac-10 titles since 1995, despite having Damon Stoudamire (a senior in 1995), Ray Owes, Reggie Geary, Ben Davis, Michael Dickerson, Mike Bibby, Miles Simon, Jason Terry, A.J. Bramlett, Michael Wright, Richard Jefferson, Loren Woods, Luke Walton, Gilbert Arenas, Jason Gardner, Rick Anderson, Andre Iguodala, Hassan Adams, Channing Frye, Salim Stoudamire, Mustafa Shakur ...
See, they do play basketball at Arizona! Not as well as they recruit, but ...
How many national championships have Arizona and Duke each won in the past 10 years?
How about one? (Arizona 1997 and Duke 2001)
As a matter of fact, let me list the players that Duke has had in their program in the last 10 years. Their talent was just as good as Arizona's talent, if not better.
---Trajan Langdon
---William Avery
---Elton Brand
---Shane Battier
---Corey Maggette
---Mike Dunleavy, Jr.
---Jason Williams
---Roshown McLeod
---Chris Carrawell
---Steve Wojciechowski
---Ricky Price
---Nate James
---Carlos Boozer
---Casey Sanders
---Chris Duhon
---J.J. Redick
---Daniel Ewing
---Shavlik Randolph
---Luol Deng
---Shelden Williams
---Sean Dockery
---Dahntay Jones
Look at all that talent Mike Krzyzewski has amassed in Durham, but yet, there's only one national championship out of that group of players over the past 10 seasons. So, when a national writer calls out Lute Olson, then it is only fair to call out Coach K.
The 1999 Duke team was supposed to be "the best team ever". But what did they do? They lost in the national championship game to an underdog Connecticut team. To this day, I haven't seen a bigger chokejob in a national championship game than the one by Duke in 1999. Of course, the East Coast Media will never bother to bring that up.
I am in SEC country. And I've made it a point to tell some of these people that the SEC is down this year. Way down. There's only one team out of the SEC that I can see going to the Sweet 16 and that is Alabama. I don't believe in Kentucky at all. They're lucky to play in a SEC East filled with underachieving teams such as Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina. Oh, and that South Carolina team just upset the Cats earlier this week.
But the main point of this post is to remind people that while Arizona hasn't won enough with their talent, Duke hasn't either. The facts don't lie.
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