Another Early Exit Prompts Duke Discussion

The Duke Blue Devils were beaten by the West Virginia Mountaineers in the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament. On paper, it's an upset. Duke was a 2 seed, WVU was a 7. In the real world, the game was probably a toss-up. Duke struggled the last few weeks of the season, and barely survived their first round opponent, Belmont.

Duke has lost the swagger. Well, that probably not true. Duke and it's fans still have the swagger. What they don't have is the aura that they used to have. Teams are not afraid of the jersey, as they may have been in the past.

Belmont's players were upset at the loss. They had watched the Devils on film, and knew exactly what to do to win. They executed their game plan very well, but fell just one point short. In years past, you'd hear players happy to have kept it close. Belmont felt that they had let Duke off the hook.

The Mountaineers of West Virginia didn't let the Devils off the hook. And, they weren't even impressed about their accomplishment.

WVU's Joe Alexander in the NY Times: “We knew that coming in that they were just going to stand around and not rebound, so we were ready to exploit that.”

WVU reserve Cam Thoroughman, from the same article: “Oh my God. Are you kidding?”

This was his response to finding out that Greg Paulus was one of the eight McDonald's All-Americans on Duke's roster. West Virginia has eight fewer than Duke. That's right...zero. This difference was not ignored by the Mounaineers in post-game comments.

“We don’t have any McDonald’s all-Americans and we don’t have any guys who were the No. 1 player in their state,” West Virginia center Jamie Smalligan said. “But I think that Coach K would love to have Joe Alexander on his team right now,” he added, referring to Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski.

It will be very interesting to find out what Duke fans are thinking about their team. Will they be confident that Coach K can turn it around? Why? Are they concerned that Coach K has lost his recruiting touch? There will be questions that Duke fans haven't asked in quite some time, but that are always asked when a traditional power has two consecutive early exits from the NCAA Tournament.