1. You already know about Wright State’s Brad Brownell going to Clemson; here are some other comings and goings from yesterday.  Thirty-three year old associate head coach Billy Donlon will be promoted to the top spot at Wright State, making him one of the youngest head coaches in America.  In other coaching news, Dan Hurley has hired his brother, Bobby, to act as an assistant on his bench at Wagner.  On the player side, Baylor’s Ekpe Udoh announced that he will test the waters but he will not sign with an agent, therefore leaving open the (small) possibility of returning to what could be another nasty team in Waco next year.  Udoh is (14/10/4 blks) is projected as a lottery pick.  Duquesne’s Melquan Bolding is leaving the Duke program, whereabouts unknown, while New Mexico State’s Jahmar Young, recently accused of involvement in an attack on an officer in Las Cruces, will sign with an agent and not return to NMSU next season.  In some good news for college basketball, Tennessee’s Scotty Hopson will return to Knoxville next season rather than joining the hordes leaving for the NBA Draft.
2. Today is a huge day for recruiting, as the first day of the spring signing period begins.  Of particular note are the announcements of the top remaining player in the Class of 2010, Brandon Knight, and the top player in the Class of 2011, Michael Gilchrist, both planning to announce their college choices at 4pm on ESPNU.  Kentucky is rumored to be the leader for both.  Door, revolveth.
3. The NCAA Legislative Council relaxed a recruiting rule that will now allow coaches to have “recruiting discussions” while players are attending summer camps and clinics on their campuses.  This rule was nearly impossible to enforce in its previous iteration, so this is a natural consequence of what amounted to a worthless measure.  There are still limitations to what coaches can do, but this just validates the conversations that were already happening.
4. John Wall is joining the Lebron James-backed LRMR Marketing Firm to help build his brand at the next level of basketball.  Considering that James himself is on the fast track to Ali/MJ/Tiger-dom, this is probably a good idea for Wall’s future marketability.  It says here that he’s got the chops (and game) to make himself into quite a conglomerate himself.
5. This is sick, but totally justifies why police cameras are installed to watch the cops as much as the citizenry.  Dating back to Maryland’s win over Duke in late February, video was released yesterday that supports a student’s claim that he was attacked and beaten by several Prince George’s County police officers for simply skipping down the street in celebration.  This evidence directly contradicts the involved officers’ formal statements about the incident.  No sympathy here.  Strip these animals of their badges, lock them up and throw away the key.  There’s no place for this behavior from those who are supposed to be protecting us.

We’ve been anxiously awaiting the next thirty days for the last eleven months.  You have too.  In fact, if this isn’t your favorite time of year by a healthy margin then you should probably click away from this site for a while.   Because we plan on waterboarding you with March Madness coverage.  Seriously, you’re going to feel like Dick Cheney himself is holding a Spalding-logoed towel over your face.  Your intake will be so voluminous that you’ll be drooling Gus Johnson and bracket residue in your sleep.  Or Seth Davis, if that’s more your style.  The point is that we’re all locked in and ready to go.  Are you?  To help us all get into the mood, we like to click around a fancy little website called YouTube for a daily dose of notable events, happenings, finishes, ups and downs relating to the next month.  We’re going to try to make this video compilation a little smarter, a little edgier, a little historical-er.  Or whatever.  Sure, you’ll see some old favorites that never lose their luster, but you’ll also see some that maybe you’ve forgotten or never knew to begin with.  That’s the hope, at least.  We’ll be matching the videos by the appropriate week, so all of this week we re-visited some of the timeless moments from the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament.  Enjoy.

NCAA First and Second Rounds

Dateline: 1993 NCAA Tournament Second Round – Duke vs. California

Context: Seventeen years ago this weekend, one of the greatest dynasties of the modern era of college basketball came to an end.  In March 1993, the Duke Blue Devils had been to five consecutive Final Fours, winning the previous two with the core group of Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley, Thomas Hill, Grant Hill, Brian Davis and Antonio Lang.  When #3 seed Duke met #6 seed California in the second round in Chicago, the Devils were riding a 13-game NCAA winning streak and although they had not had the season that their forebears had enjoyed, the sentiment at the time was that Duke would find a way to scratch back into the Final Four behind the senior Hurley’s talents for winning big games.  Hurley had 32/9 assts in the game, but Cal’s Jason Kidd had 11/14 in a display that presciently displayed the talents that he would later bring to the NBA and the Olympics.  It was a startling win, the kind of which made fans think that they were seeing a changing of the guard of sorts.  And while California was never the same after Kidd’s run to the Sweet Sixteen that year (Todd Bozeman soon after melted down the program), Duke rode a healthy Grant Hill back to the NCAA Championship game the following season.  Still, Duke didn’t win another title until 2001, and they’ve only attended one Final Four since.  Will today’s game derail another shot at glory for Duke and Coach K just like it did nearly two decades ago, or will this be a mere blip on their road to Indy?

1. Matt Doherty appears ready to forgive and forget (mostly) his exit from North Carolina five years ago, but one quote in this probing article is revealing.  Speaking as to whether he was forced out because Roy Williams was ready to return to Chapel Hill, he said, “I don’t think that was the case.  But I also do know – I don’t think schools make changes like that without having feelers out there.”  Sounds like Doherty doesn’t believe himself.
2. Doctors are shutting it down for South Carolina forward Dominique Archie yesterday, after realizing that his rehab would not allow him to return to full strength this season.  He injured the knee in a game against Miami (FL) four weeks ago and had not played since.  This will quite obviously hurt SC’s chances of getting through the rugged SEC East, especially considering the Gamecocks’ troubles on the glass (Archie was leading the team with 6.0 RPG).
3. UCLA’s Nikola Dragovic pleaded not guilty yesterday to a charge of felony assault deriving from an incident outside a Hollywood (always up to no good) concert on October 28.  He is alleging self-defense for tackling a guy into a plate glass window which severed the man’s Achilles tendon.  Dragovic is averaging 8/6 for the struggling Bruins, but he has already served a two-game suspension as a result of this ongoing distraction.
4. Remember this anecdote about Rob Senderoff, the assistant coach caught up in the Kelvin Sampson phone-call fiasco at Indiana, when Memphis gets its final ruling from the NCAA in a few weeks, or whenever.   Does anyone else feel that with Myles Brand not steering the ship that the NCAA is listing frightfully to starboard?
5. First Laettner, now Bobby Hurley.  If we were Coach K or Grant Hill’s investment manager, we’d probably make sure that their financial tentacles never touch the Bluegrass State.  Those Kentucky people will get it back someway, somehow.  It, of course, meaning $946,961.58.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our first Boom Goes The Dynamite of the new season.  And now, we can say those words — “new season.”  For tonight is the final hurdle in that long lull of the off-season that we have to cross.  Maybe it’s inappropriately named, but who cares?  Tonight is Midnight Madness across the country.  Schools all over the place have got the festivities going, the first official games are less than a month away, and we can finally say that the new season is here.

ESPN-U’s broadcast is minutes away from starting.  I’m John Stevens, one of the editors here at Rush The Court, and I’ll be live-blogging the whole way with RTMSF, our founder and guru, behind the scenes watching message boards, Twitter accounts, and getting texts and video from all over, and we’ll put up everything we get.  So settle in, enjoy the coverage, and let us know your opinions as always.  Keep hitting that refresh button, and we hope you enjoy it.  Most of all — welcome.  It’s finally here.

9:01pm:  Here are some tweets RTMSF has already procured from various sources:

Mike Davis, Illinois

IlliniBalla24… @BuckWildBill33:  Three point contest tonight, i’m looking to go 15 for 15 <—- I like ur confidence but I like @dkeller23 for a bill lls

Abdul Gaddy, Washington

gaddy0uw…Midnight madness tonight! Everybody come support

Jim Boylen, Utah

JimBoylen…Talking to the media for a few minutes before practice starts. We’re going to hit the ground running!

Tom Crean, Indiana

TomCrean…http://twitpic.com/lr6zu – The first four in line for Hoosier Hysteria

Gary Williams, Maryland

MDCoachWilliams…MARYLAND MADNESS IS HERE!!!! Come out to the Comcast Center and check out all the action.

9:12:  Evidently the University of Kentucky had recording artist Drake at the festivities.  No report on Ashley Judd’s whereabouts.

9:16:  Right now, just lots of talk by Katz, Gallindo, and Branch.  Mostly about North Carolina.  Keep in mind, in the race for all-time wins, UNC is only 4 behind Kentucky, and the two face off on December 5th.  Might be REALLY important.

9:20:  Nice UNC picture:

9:24: And here’s Drake from Kentucky:

9:32: So, Bill Self sort of addresses the stuff that happened a couple of weeks ago, meaning the Tyshawn Taylor dislocated thumb incident and the little fracas with the football team.  The most interesting part was him saying that he was “glad that it happened in the off-season,” and implying that little could come in terms of discipline because TODAY starts the new season.  We’ll stay tuned on that.

9:40: Seth Curry at Duke, retweeting a Jay Williams sentiment:  RT @RealJayWilliams… Inside Cameron Indoor for Mid-night Madness..I have never seen Cameron like this!!!  So exciting!!

9:43: ESPN-U has now burned 43 minutes of coverage with a whole lot of talk and seemingly just as much promotion for things on their website.  No actual scrimmage coverage so far.  And now here’s an ad for their College Basketball Encyclopedia.  Are they actually going to show any scrimmages or any of the goings-on at these schools?

9:47: You gotta admit, that was a nice line by Self, saying about his team, “We now know they’ve got a little fight in them.”

9:58: OK now we’re talking.  A look at Georgetown.  Bill Raftery is here.  Am I having a stroke or do these guys sound like they’re talking into a couple of tin cans.  But…there it is!  Raftery gives us “a little kiss!!” off of a highlight.  Good…my withdrawal is over.

10:03: Some fun at Georgetown via Twitter and Georgetown blogger Kevin Wessel:

10:06: Calipari walking onto the stage set up at the end of Rupp Arena:

10:10: Right.  We are now over an hour into this thing and ESPN-U has really yet to show anything except analysis by the three guys in the studio and the on-site reporters.  At best, we’ve gotten some stuff happening in the background behind the talking heads on-site, but you can tell it was taped earlier and it’s not even the actual team scrimmaging.  And Raftery was a little hampered by bad sound.  To this point, this is more like just a pre-season analysis show, which is fine, just don’t advertise it as Midnight Madness.  In my view the best part of the show has been that Vitamin Water commercial with “Canadian celebrity Steve Nash.”  Much better than his micro-cameo on Entourage a couple weeks ago.

10:16: There’s a volleyball game going on behind Steve Lavin at Washington.  Really, guys?  They say they’re going out to UNC after this commercial.  Maybe we’ll see some actual basketball.

10:19: Via Twitter, not to be outdone by Kentucky, Lloyd with the Husky at Connecticut:

10:24: Some takes from SheedMe on the UNC message board, since ESPN-U says they’re gonna show highlights from the scrimmage momentarily:

My Observations:
1. John Henson: Looked long, looked athletic, was very effective, I just don’t know that he looked like a 3. He airmailed his only jumpshot attempt. Time will tell.
2. Travis Wear: looked big and skilled. I was impressed. He is going t be a good player for us sooner than later. Good stroke out to 18 ft, right place at the right time.
3. Will Graves: Shot the ball really well.  Looks fat. If he guards, stays in shape, and limits turnovers he could really help us this year.
4. Drew II: Showed flashes. Decent quickness, really good passing (drive and dish). Tried to do a little too much at times which can be expected right now. (“Take ‘em trajan” at the end where he dribbled it too far and turned it over)
5. Watts: looked athletic, not too skilled, turnover machine
6. Ed: was Ed. couple blocks, lot of boards, scored in close, had a nice face up 10-12 footer
Strickland/McDonald: kind of quiet, neither shot the ball particularly well
7. Zeller: looked bigger, needs to use his new strength and not try to finesse as much.
8. Marcus: didn’t do a whole lot. Made a 3, looked healthy
9. Free throw shooting: I know it is only a scrimmage but UH OH. Missed our first 5 or 6 (pretty badly)

10:36: And now…basketball!  Some footage from Kentucky’s scrimmage.  Although they seem to think it’s more interesting to show John Calipari talking.  There’s a scrimmage GOING ON, and they’ve got the camera facing the OPPOSITE direction.  Amazing, really.

10:41: Great tweet from a Pitt fan:  Shame on Pitt for not having a Midnight Madness. It is the coolest S*** ever. WAH we need to have a family event. BOOOOOOOOO Love, DPJ.

10:44: HA…another great one from a Syracuse fan, where evidently Jim Boeheim arrived in a police car (enter Devendorf joke here):   BWoodz on Syracuse’s Scoop Jardine: from what i saw at midnight madness, i think i have a better 3 than @ScoopJardine11. if i knew when walk on tryouts were, i woulda went

10:49: From Jeff Goodman via fellow RTC editor NVR:  “Cole Aldrich sporting a nice black eye – courtesy of an elbow in practice from Markieff Morris”

10:53: kohenari tweet: Tom Izzo at Midnight Madness: “We’re a donut in the middle but we’ll get better” (via @sethkjolly).

10:54: A Duke fan, with an opinion on the Duke coverage:

@heymandie they showed duke maybe three minutes. ESPN is riding the kentucky train big time. it makes me sick. calipari is a joke. (from xellehcimx on twitter)

I’d add that, aside from Calipari, they didn’t show Kentucky very much, and haven’t shown ANYONE hardly at all.  I’d say we’ll see some Duke coverage in the next two hours.

10:57: We will have video of it ASAP, but here’s a tweet from Clemson head coach Oliver Purnell:

CoachPurnell tweet – Just repelled 75 ft from the rafters of Littlejohn Coliseum in front of a packed house at Rock the John!

11:00: Malcolm Delaney Virginia Tech - Midnite madness was fun.. Won the 3pt contest and showed my bounce a lil.. This gone b a good year

Note — if you don’t get the U, ESPN2 should have their simulcast going now.

11:07: Ricky Harris at Massachusetts – Our coach came out to practice wit an ARMY suite on…hahaha..Time to go to war

Here’s Michigan State fan Alcibiades from their message board:  What a terrible break down. Got a name wrong, didn’t provide any real analysis, and soon started talking about other “powerhouse” big ten teams such as Northwestern and Indiana. Why am I watching this crap?

There’s nothing I can add to that, to be honest.  We’re more than two hours into this and there’s been a lot of supposed analysis by the talking heads, actually the repeating of a lot of information anyone watching a broadcast of this nature probably already knew.  They’ve had the chance to show scrimmages, but haven’t, just a little bit of Kentucky and NOW we get some Duke coverage.  But this has been more of just a pre-season primer show so far.  Nothing we’ve seen has even come CLOSE to, say, that moment from several years ago when that kid at Cincinnati hit the half-court shot on live TV (see below) and Dick Vitale, who agreed to throw in the price of the kid’s books in addition to the semester’s tuition the kid won, just tackled the guy.  By the way, where is Vitale?  It’s the first chance to legitimately talk about college basketball and he’s nowhere?

11:24: Since we did get to see a little bit of Duke coverage, and we saw Mason Plumlee hit a little turn-around jumper in the lane, how important is THIS guy for the Blue Devils?  Kyle Singler gets a little banging help down low and Plumlee is yet another threat from the 3-point arc.

Actually, they’re talking with JT3 at Georgetown and you gotta love that he’s wearing the Michael Jackson glove.  I was hoping to see Michael Jackson, their former guard from the Ewing years, wearing the Michael Jackson glove, but I don’t know what cosmic consequences that would have entailed.

11:44: More coverage of Kentucky, whose festivities ended about 90 minutes ago.  The John Wall entrance was amazing, but things started with an 11-minute speech by Calipari that the fans are calling “The State of the Commonwealth.”  I know I say this at great risk, given the Big Blue Nation’s reaction to Calipari’s sending of a UK jersey to President Obama, but Calipari’s entrance and speech elicited a crowd reaction reminiscent of Obama’s victory speech 11 months ago.  Wow.

This from UK fan gmccane1 on the UK message board:  Cal’s speech was epic to say the least. Reminded me of a pentecostal preacher at a tent revival.

11:50: At Washington, we get Steve Lavin breaking down the Pac-10 a little bit.  From inside the empty Washington locker room.  Again, this is not Midnight Madness coverage.  This all could have been done without calling it Midnight Madness.

11:53: Well, check THIS out!  Our first Rush The Court of the year!  After Georgetown’s festivities:

11:57: This is a little more like it.  They’re showing things like the skits-by-class at Kansas (impressive), some dunk contests, etc.  To me, this is what I think most people were waiting on.

11:57:40: And…a well-timed commercial.  Yeesh.

12:14 am: Nice!  Some coverage of Washington’s dunk contest.  And 5’8″ Isaiah Thomas wins it.  I liked Matthew Bryan-Amaning’s preceding through-the-legs-and-over offering, but Thomas was the runaway winner.  A tweet from UW Sports News:  “It’s over. Isaiah Thomas just dunked over MBA. Most ridiculous dunk of the night by far. Romar just crowned him champ.“

12:22: Gotta do it.  That Steve Nash ad is fantastic.  RTMSF says “legendary.”  Here it is:

12:34: Nice photo of Loyola (Chicago)’s Geoff McCammon going over some helpers from the women’s squad:

12:37: Not bad for the last ten minutes.  Decent coverage of the UNC and Kansas scrimmages.  You also gotta love the Roy Williams dance at center court and the line that announcer Rob Stone got in on him — “I think he might need to ice down.”  Then later on, during the scrimmage, Williams threw Tyler Zeller under the bus a little, saying, “I don’t think I can watch Tyler Zeller dance.”  And again, that’s coming from Roy Williams.  Good stuff.

12:42: WHOA.  Well, if you’re a Kentucky fan, you’re probably happy with the fact that UK has led the coverage by a little bit, here, though I don’t have an actual clock on it.  But HERE is the price.  Gallindo threw it to Duke where Jay Williams interviewed Bobby Hurley and Christian Laettner, and Hurley made a small reference to “the Kentucky game.”  Duke fans should be happy they got that little dig in there, even though their team has, to be honest, been marginally covered tonight.

12:48: Couple of good pics of Tom Izzo; one of him rolling up in, since the Final Four is in Indianapolis, an Indy-car; another of him wearing — a prediction, here? — the winner’s garland:

12:54: Both Adrian Branch and Andy Katz both predict the same Final Four:  Kansas, Texas, Michigan State, Kentucky.

12:56: This is one thing I’ve always liked about Jim Calhoun.  He’s usually pretty honest about his team when you ask him, a quality that’s actually pretty rare since most coaches don’t ever want to show you all of their cards.  Calhoun freely admits that his team lost a lot (no shock there) but still has the stones to say that he thinks his team will be “pretty good” early and then even better in January and February.  I like that.  So many coaches will be a little down-in-the-mouth about their squads at this point in the year, by rule.  Calhoun will only say that if he really believes it.

1:03: No coverage of them by the WWL and the WWL-U, but here’s a little dancing at WVU:

1:06: Whoa, again…this link is from Vox Populi, the Georgetown blog…evidently shots were fired near Georgetown’s Midnight Madness, detaining for a while the 5000 students who attended.  Here’s hoping this is nothing major.

1:12: Note from the Pac-10:  UCLA’s presumptive starting point guard Jerime Anderson missed practice today with a strained groin; more on that injury in later posts if necessary.

1:15: Not wanting to end on notes like fired shots or strained groins, I’ll mention here that we’ll be adding other videos and photos to this post over the next day or so if/when we get anything good.  There are a few particular things we’re digging for right now that we think you’ll enjoy.  We got word that UNC did a parody of the Tyler Hansbrough commercial (also starring for two seconds the eeriest Andy Katz look-alike you’ll ever see) where he “Finds the DOG!”  So keep checking this post and the site in general for some more stuff from Midnight Madnesses from across the country.

1:20: Well, it’s over.  Personally, I thought ESPN-U saved their best coverage until after midnight ET, which would have made sense if the schools were actually waiting until midnight to unveil their teams, but since so much of the actual scrimmages or “extras” were taped, then it was probably just coincidence.  I’ve made my thoughts on the coverage above, so no need to rehash them here.  I’d rather focus on the fact that the new season has arrived and we’ve got official games in less than a month.  In the next couple of weeks there’ll be intra-squad scrimmages and the like and the amount of college basketball news is going to be skyrocketing.  The Midnight Madness countdown clock that has mocked us for so long in the upper right corner of our front page is no more.  Our wait is over.  That said, I’ll give the final sentiment of the night to Syracuse’s Wesley Johnson, who tweets:

“Practice at 11. The season officially starts tomorrow. Great turn out at Midnight Madness. We have Great Fans at the Cuse !!! Its Go Time !!”

That it is, Wesley.  That it is.

And the reason we’re prepared for such a thing is because the best team of the Modern Era is one that didn’t even win the championship in its given year (cringe).  Hell, they didn’t even make the final game!  But you need to hear us out, listen to what we’re saying, open your mind to the possibility, and it’ll all make sense soon enough.

For the full 64-team bracket, click here.  The championship game analysis is below the bracket.

Instant Analysis

#2 UNLV 1991 def. #1 Duke 1992.  You’re probably thinking… but RTC, we already saw this game, we know how it ends up.  It was played in the 1991 national semifinals with 90% of the same principal players and themes involved.  LJ, Augmon, Anthony, Hunt, Ackles vs. Hurley, Laettner, Hill, Hill, Davis.  Tark vs. Coach K.  Good vs. Evil.  Glitzy vs. Coldly Efficient.  Foot Stomps vs. Hot Tubs.  Clean vs. Dirty.  And you’d be right.  The 1991 matchup was the de facto national championship game, and it has gone down in NCAA Tournament lore as one of the greatest games of all-time.  Duke, of course, won the game with an 8-1 run to catch and finish off the Runnin’ Rebels, 79-77, after their floor leader Greg Anthony fouled out.

As we enter this championship matchup with most of the basketball world watching, we quickly discern that UNLV 1991 has been royally steamed ever since that loss eighteen years ago, and Duke 1992 is feeling a little overconfident after having dispatched UNLV 1990 in the previous round.  Anderson Hunt in particular comes out firing, nailing three early treys to put considerable pressure on the Duke perimeter defense.  Additionally, Stacey Augmon seems like a man possessed on the defensive end, denying the ball and limiting Grant Hill to only a couple of touches early (curiously, he seems much more active in this game than he did in the 1991 semifinal).  After a quick 12-5 lead for UNLV, the lead dissipates just as quickly as Christian Laettner angrily demands the ball and rains a couple of long-range jumpers over George Ackles.  Duke comes back to take the lead on a Hurley steal and layup, and it became painfully evident to both teams that they were in for another war tonight.  They take turns exchanging the lead throughout the first half,  but UNLV goes into the locker room with a two-point lead at 38-36 thanks to a tip-in at the buzzer by reserve Evric Gray.  Laettner (14 pts) and Hurley (10 pts) are leading the way for Duke, while LJ (12 pts) and Hunt (11 pts) are pacing the Rebels.

At the half, Coach K, who knew that the most important strategy for Duke to win this game was to avoid the devastating UNLV fast breaks, implores his team to continue taking care of the ball.  The Devils have only committed five turnovers leading to four fast break points.  The strategy was working, as Duke had essentially played even with UNLV, but K was a little concerned with Grant Hill’s play thus far (2 pts, 2 turnovers in 19 minutes).  In the other locker room, Greg Anthony has taken the pulpit and is reminding his team that Duke cannot handle them defensively so long as they continue to push the pace and work for open looks – the rest of the Rebels nod knowingly, while Tark simply nods off in the corner of the room.

UNLV once again comes out quickly, forcing three straight turnovers by trapping Hurley and G. Hill in the backcourt.  A two-point lead balloons to nine once Greg Anthony’s drive-and-dish to LJ and-one occurs.  Duke appears to be reeling when Coach K calls timeout to calm his troops.  In the huddle, K starts to plan the strategy for the next few minutes when Laettner suddenly grabs the dry eraser board and throws it onto the floor, stomping it into fifteen pieces.  A stunned Duke huddle goes quiet as Laettner gets in the face of the two Hills and Davis and tells them to stop playing “like pussies” and that he didn’t carry them through all these games just to lose to a bunch of chumps from Vegas again.  Cherokee Parks is seen hiding under the team bench after this tirade by Laettner, but it works.  Duke’s next six minutes are a clinic in offensive execution, as the Devils score on their next eight possessions to knot things up at 59-59 when the under-8 timeout hits.

As we head into the final stretch of the game, nobody is sitting in the arena.  The quality of basketball on both ends of the court is awe-inspiring, unlike what anyone at this level of basketball has ever seen before.  LJ backs his man down, then reverse spins for a power dunk.  Hurley runs Duke’s motion and finds the ball back in his hands for a perfectly-placed three.  Anthony penetrates the lane to kick out to Augmon, who ball reverses to Hunt for another dagger of his own.  Laettner uses a myriad of low-post moves to repeatedly get back to the foul line, where he confidently hits every one (no rim).  Those nearest the court are rewarded with trashtalk from both the UNLV and Duke players that suggests supreme confidence with the ability to back it up.  With two minutes remaining, UNLV has the ball and a narrow one-point lead at 77-76 when Greg Anthony picks up his fourth foul on a questionable block/charge call.  Could the same thing be happening again?

Anthony doesn’t even look to the bench as he heads back upcourt with #4, and Duke works the next possession superbly.  Moving the ball faster than the UNLV defense can react, they find Thomas Hill underneath for an easy layup and a one-pt lead with 1:27 left.  UNLV races upcourt, trying to find an opening to exploit, but Anderson Hunt passes on a corner three and the Rebels decide to go into their halfcourt offense.  As Anthony tries to feed LJ on the low blocks, Brian Davis gets a hand on the ball leading to a loose ball scrum where the ball clearly goes out of bounds off of UNLV.  Duke ball with 0:55 left.  UNLV elects to not pressure in the backcourt, preferring to depend on their amoeba halfcourt defense to get the stop.  Hurley works clock before starting the offense.  Laettner gets the ball with 0:28 remaining on the left high post, and immediately dribble-drives to the left baseline before spotting a wide-open Grant Hill cutting to the hoop from the weak side.  The pass is right on the money, and as Hill swoops to the goal for an earth-shattering dunk, Stacey Augmon creams him.  Hill will go to the line for two shots with 0:22 remaining. 

Hill is a 73% shooter, but his shot outside the paint has been shaky tonight (4-11).  He steps up and hits the first to give Duke a two-pt lead, but the second one rattles out on him.  UNLV will have a chance to tie or win in their last possession.  This time around, however, Greg Anthony is still on the floor running the offense, so after a Tarkanian timeout, the Rebels look composed as they start their play.  With twelve seconds remaining, Anthony drives to his right and spots a slashing LJ cutting through the lane.  LJ catches and turns to shoot, but Laettner and Thomas Hill have both shadowed him to challenge the shot (in addition to Augmon), so Johnson has to shoot it a little higher than he normally would.  It looks good en route, but it catches iron with 0:07 remaining.  Ackles and Spencer Elmore both crash the boards from the weakside, with Elmore getting his hands on it and immediately spotting an idling Anderson Hunt standing in the left corner behind the three-point line wide open.  Hunt catches the pass and releases a floater that seems to hang in the air forever before the ball splashes through the net with 0:2.1 remaining – UNLV now leads 80-79.  The crowd goes wild, but Duke, ever vigilant, calls an immediate timeout.

Coach K calls everyone over to the bench and points at the clock with a knowing grin on his face.  Every Duke player knows exactly what those numbers mean, and they go about calmly planning their play.  On the other end of the court, Tark seems to recall that he should be remembering something about this situation but he can’t remember what that is, so he tells his guys to play defense and to not foul.  After what seems like an interminable break, Duke lines up to take the ball out on the opposite baseline.  Grant Hill will do the throw-in, with Hurley as the escape valve at quarter-court and Laettner as the target at the opposite foul line.  Moments prior to the inbound, Stacey Augmon notices that Grant Hill hasn’t so much as glanced at Hurley since the huddle, so he immediately realizes what the play will be.  He leaves his position near halfcourt (fading Hurley) and sprints toward the opposite foul line before Hill has even released the ball yet.  By the time the ball gets to where Laettner is standing to receive the pass, Plastic Man has already swooped in to tip the ball from in front of Laettner’s reach.  The tipped ball instead ends up in Thomas Hill’s hands, who has no choice other than to turn and shoot from 30 feet.  The ball glances off the backboard and draws a little bit of the rim, but the horn sounds and the game is over! 

UNLV 1991 has pulled off the upset over Duke 1992.  Thanks to the timely Anderson Hunt three and the astute observations of the NDPOY Stacey Augmon, Duke was unable to get a good look at a shot to win the RTC Modern Bracket.  Anderson Hunt had another great game in this series, going for 27 pts, while LJ had 22 for the champs.  On the Duke side, Laettner finished his collegiate career with 27 pts on 8-11 shooting, and Hurley had 19/8.  Afterwards, Coach K was overheard talking to an NCAA official about reviewing the eligibility of Anderson Hunt and Stacey Augmon, but we didn’t catch the rest of it.  Tark, on the other hand, felt completely vindicated for his loss in 1991 to Duke, and kept repeating that the NCAA wouldn’t find anything on him even though nobody was asking. 

So that’s it.  The RTC Modern Era bracket is finished.  We hope you’ve enjoyed it half as much as we have, and the question going forward will be: where does the 2009 UNC Tar Heels rank and how far would they have advanced in this thing?  Check back next time (5 yrs?) for the answer…

We’d be shocked if this didn’t inspire some debate, simply due to the fact that all four of these teams were damn near unbeatable in their primes.  Still, we had to choose two to advance into the Finals, and while the choices were far from easy, we made them and we’ll live with them.  Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly), we’re left with one national champion and another team that didn’t even make the finals!

For the full 64-team bracket, click here.  The game analyses are below the bracket.

Instant Analysis

#1 Duke 1992 def. #1 UNLV 1990 - Duke’s back-to-back champions featuring Laettner, Hurley and Hill visit the scene of the crime by playing the last team to beat them in the NCAA Tournament, the 1990 UNLV team featuring LJ, Augmon and Anthony.  Not only did that UNLV team beat them, remember, that team murdered them by a score of  103-73.  Of course, the 1991 Duke team then got its revenge against UNLV by pulling the unlikeliest of upsets against the 34-0 Rebels in the next year’s national semifinals.  Are you ready for Round Three?  The 1990 Duke team was young and played like it in the rout against UNLV – although they were led by senior Danny Ferry,  he never won anything Laettner was a sophomore and Hurley was a freshman.  They were still learning what it took to become a champion, as they had not yet developed the toughness to keep their heads and stare down a physical, athletic and intimidating squad like UNLV.  The 1992 Duke team had done exactly that.  In fact, they may not have lost a game all season had Bobby Hurley not broken his foot midway through the year – Grant Hill filled in admirably at point as Duke stayed afloat (losing only two games), but it was clear that Hill was still learning on the job.  Similarly, 1990 UNLV won the national title, but they weren’t quite the dominant entity that they were to become the following year when they rode a 45-game winning streak into the Final Four.  Under this context, Duke 1992 ran out to a quick early lead against the 1990 UNLV team, who came into the game cocky based on their previous thrashing of the Devils with many of the same faces on board.  Laettner, who by his senior year had developed a deadly three-point shot, repeatedly took George Ackles out to the three-point line, while a new wrinkle  by the name of Grant Hill kept causing matchup problems for Stacey Augmon, unaccustomed to having to guard someone even more athletic than the Plastic Man.  By halftime, Duke was shocking the overconfident Rebels by twelve points on the backs of Laettner and Hill.  Tarkanian lit into his team at the half, and the Rebels came out very aggressive on defense to force Duke into several uncharacteristic turnovers.  After a Larry Johnson dunk where he chin-upped on the rim afterwards, the Rebel fans were raucous and Duke appeared to be on its heels again, holding onto a 2-pt lead.  K called timeout and immediately referred his team back to a similar situation they had faced in the prelims against Kentucky (E8), and he ordered his team to once again focus on getting good shots and playing superb defense.  K’s admonitions worked, as Duke re-settled itself to slowly work its margin back up to eight points by the under-four timeout.  Tark tried to surprise Duke after that timeout by throwing a three-quarter court press on Hurley, but with the ‘point forward’ skills that Hill had developed midway through the season, Duke was able to capably dribble through the traps and throw over the top for several easy dunks  by Thomas Hill and Brian Davis that essentially salted away the game.  Afterwards, Coach K talked about the character of his charges for fighting through all the adversity of having to play a team they’d already played in the previous two tourneys, while Tarkanian went on a tirade about how the NCAA continually gives his Rebels an unfair shake because they’ hate him.

#2 UNLV 1991 def. #1 Kentucky 1996 – The other semifinal matched Tarkanian’s 1991 UNLV team against the other team widely reknowned as the best team of the 90s, the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats.  The odd thing about the 1991 UNLV team compared to their national champion 1990 counterpart is that by every reasonable objective measure, the 1991 version was the superior team.  They were 34-1 after the 79-77 upset against Duke, and they had beaten teams by an absurd 27 ppg during the season, including a statement-making game at #2 Arkansas’ Barnhill Arena that was much worse than the final score indicated (112-105 UNLV).  Had the Rebels run into any other team than Duke, whom they had humiliated by thirty pts in the previous year’s title game, they most likely would have gone back-to-back.  The Kentucky 1996 team was probably the closest thing to that 1991 UNLV team that exists in the Modern Era, with their devastating runs overwhelming teams with athletic, pressure defense from end to end.  In this one, UNLV clearly had something to prove from the tip, having lost in the prelims to Duke (F4), a team that to a man they felt they were much better than.  Kentucky was simply unaccustomed to facing a team with as many offensive and defensive weapons as UNLV had, and it was clear they were a little surprised by the aggressiveness and strength of the Rebel starters on the defensive end (mirroring themselves).  UK fought back behind Tony Delk’s three-point shooting (4 threes in the first half), but UNLV stilltook a 4-pt lead into the half, and Kentucky’s Rick Pitino thought he had the Rebs exactly where he wanted them.  Or not.  UNLV then went on a devastating 27-9 run to start the second half, fueled by repeated uncharacteristic turnovers from Anthony Epps (and the freshman Wayne Turner, once Pitino pulled Epps) leading to fast-break dunks by seemingly everyone on the UNLV roster.  Having faced only one major deficit all year (against UMass early in the season), Kentucky and Pitino were completely shellshocked.  Similar to 1995′s prelim loss to UNC in the Elite Eight, Kentucky began to panic, shooting threes nearly every time downcourt, many of which were altogether out of the structured offense.  With five minutes left in the game, Kentucky finally seemed to awaken from its self-induced slumber and went on a 12-0 run of its own to cut the lead back to six.  That’s when Larry Johnson called for the ball on three straight possessions, stared down Antoine Walker, went right around him all three times and either earned a layup or dunk-and-one in the process.  Ballgame.  UNLV moves on to the final game despite not having done as much in the prelims, and Big Blue Nation burns up the talk radio circuit demanding Pitino’s head for not having his team ready and losing to a team that Duke had already beaten.

Rtmsf and I split up the duties on the last 2 players to be profiled (Derrick Rose and Jerryd Bayless). I picked Rose because I have seen him more than I have seen Bayless (stupid West Coast late starts). While I haven’t seen Rose as much as the Memphis fans (apparently there are no Tiger bloggers), I have probably seen Rose play almost a dozen times this past season so I feel pretty comfortable critiquing his game. Well that and the fact that pretty much everybody has seen him and knows about him at this point.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about Derrick Rose is his freakish athleticism. At the Pre-Draft combine, he was one of the top performers and I think some of those tests underestimated how athletic Rose is. For example, Rose had a good 3/4 court sprint time, but 1/10th of a second off the best. Having watched Rose play against the best PGs in the country, I can guarantee you that there is nobody faster with the ball in the draft (ask Tom Izzo, Rick Barnes, Ben Howland, or Bill Self what they think about Rose’s speed).

The question with Rose isn’t whether he has the athletic tools to become great. Instead the question is whether or not he  will develop the necessary feel for the game to dominate at the next level. The player that I hear Rose compared to the most is Jason Kidd, but I think that is just based on the fact that they are both quick PGs with great strength. However, I think their games are very different.

Along with speed and strength, Jason Kidd brought an extremely high basketball IQ and great feel for the game to the court early in his career (those of you old enough will remember Kidd torching Bobby Hurley and 2-time defending champion Duke in 1993 despite Dale Brown’s bold proclamation that Hurley would dominate Kidd). However, Kidd lacked the ability to score early in his career and never did really develop as a scorer. His inability to hit an outside shot became such a liability that hecklers began referring to him as “Ason” (got no J). On the defensive side of the ball, Kidd was an excellent defender despite the way that Chris Paul undressed him in the playoffs this year.

As for Rose, while he is probably more athletic than Kidd especially when you factor in his 40″ vertical, whenever I watch him I get the sense that I’m watching a great player rather than a great floor general. He just doesn’t seem to possess a great feel for the court and where everyone is. This may be a result of Calipari’s dribble-drive motion offense that Rose only played in for a single season, but his 1.77 assist-to-turnover ratio is pretty mediocre for a PG who will likely be the #1 overall pick. He has the ability to score at will at the college level, but I think some of those lanes are going to close against pro level talent. However, as he develops and matures he should be able to find these holes to get to the rim. The bigger question is whether Rose will be able to run a NBA offense early in his career. I think that eventually he will get it, but it may take a 2-3 years before we see what he can become as a point guard. As for the rest of his game, his jump shot needs a little work but I think it’s good enough that teams can’t leave him open or really drop off him (like they do with Kidd or Rajon Rondo). Defensively, Rose has all the tools he needs to be an elite defender. I never really saw him as a lockdown defender in college but perhaps that is because he’s still young and Memphis was winning most games by such large margins that he really never had to dig in for a stop. With his speed and strength he should be able to cause havoc for most opposing point guards.

Conclusion:While I don’t think the comparisons to Kidd are appropriate, I think the Bulls would be wise to select Rose with the 1st overall pick. Guys with the potential to be game changers don’t come along that often and you shouldn’t pass on them when they come your way (looking at you Billy King). Rose needs to work on his game some more (shooting and decision-making) before he will be able to compete with the best in the game (Steve Nash, Chris Paul, and Deron Williams), but he will be a major upgrade for Chicago or Miami (if Chicago decides to take Michael Beasley) and should be a quality NBA PG right away.

With the exception of the 1992 Duke-Kentucky East Regional Final, a case can be made that Duke’s upset of UNLV in the 1991 National Semifinals was the most significant game of the past 20 years. This was the game that put Duke and Mike Krzyzewski over the top going from lovable losers to the team to beat most years. While the Blue Devils still needed to beat Kansas in the championship game (featuring Grant Hill’s alley-oop dunk from Bobby Hurley), most college fans will remember this as the de facto championship game much like the Miracle on Ice (the US had to beat Finland to win the gold). To put this game in context, you have to remember that UNLV had crushed Duke the year before in the championship game 101-71 (a record 30-pt margin).

Here is the box score from the championship game (not a pretty picture unless you were a Duke hater at the time).

UNLV came into this game undefeated and was widely expected to become the first team since Bobby Knight’s 1976 Indiana Hoosiers (featuring Quinn Buckner, Kent Benson, and Scott May) to go undefeated. Many experts were already speculating about where this UNLV team ranked all-time not unlike what happened with a certain football team from Massachusetts this year (minus the videotaping, but probably with more hookers). Jerry Tarkanian’s Runnin’ Rebels came into the game 34-0 beating their opponents by an average of more than 27.5 points while averaging a ridiculous 98.3 PPG. They were led by Larry Johnson (National POY), Anderson Hunt, Greg Anthony, and Stacy Augmon). Some of our younger readers may not realize how great these guys were in college so we’ll just say you should think about what Memphis did to Michigan State in the 1st half of their Sweet 16 game this year. Now imagine a team doing that every game. That’s what this UNLV team was like for the entire season. UNLV ran through the tournament with the exception of an 8-point victory against a Georgetown team that featured Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo.

On the other side of the ball, Duke came in with a respectable 30-5 record, but was only the #2 seed in its own region. After the championship game the year before nobody expected this game to be close. Duke had added Grant Hill to their roster, but he was only a freshman and nowhere near the player he was by the time he was a senior that carried a YMCA team to the 1994 championship game. In addition, the Blue Devils had lost 2 of their top players (Phil Henderson and Alaa Abdelnaby) from the year before to graduation. This was Duke’s 4th consecutive Final 4 appearance and 5th in 6 years, but they had failed to seal the deal and were becoming the Jim Kelly Buffalo Bills before there were the Jim Kelly Buffalo Bills. In the NCAA tournament, Duke advanced to the Final 4 through a relatively easy bracket thanks to some early-round upsets (beat a 15, 7, 11, and 4 seed to win the Midwest Region).

Thanks to the miracle of YouTube we can bring you footage from that game including a pregame and postgame clip.

[Editor's Note: For some reason the embedding isn't working properly except for the last video. All the videos are still up on YouTube. If you click anywhere in the box except on the "Play" button, it will load in an outside window. Sorry for the inconvenience, we're trying to figure out how to fix this.]

-Pre-game buildup and interviews with Tarkanian and Duke assistant coach (and current Harvard coach) Tommy Amaker

-Player introductions and opening minutes

-From 2:30 left in 2nd half until Laettner goes to the line.

-Laettner at the line with scored tied at 77 to post-game celebration.

-Newscast and reaction.

By the next day, the media knew they had witnessed one of the greatest upsets in college basketball history. As the years passed and we only saw a few teams of the caliber of that UNLV team (’92 Duke and ’96 Kentucky), the upset grew in legend to the point where in 2000 The Sporting News ranked it as the 4th best biggest NCAA tournament upset ever and the ESPN Page 2 readers ranked it as the 4th greatest sports upset ever. I think the Page 2 poll is way off as I consider it a huge upset, but probably not in the same class as the others mentioned in that list. However, I think TSN probably comes pretty close as ridiculous as it sounds for a #2 seed beating a #1 seed to be such a big upset.

We all know what happened afterwards. Duke went on to win the first of their back-to-back titles and grew into one of the most powerful sports programs of the past 20 years while Jerry Tarkanian was fired by UNLV in 1992 and floated around the basketball universe including stops at the San Antonio Spurs and Fresno State. UNLV never reached the same heights again and only has had a measure of success with Lon Kruger getting them to the 2007 Sweet 16.

rtmsf addendum:  This is a great recap of the climate surrounding this game.  The 91 UNLV team was considered an absolute juggernaut.  We for one will never forget the highly anticipated 1-2 regular season matchup between #1 UNLV and #2 Arkansas at the old Barnhill Arena in Fayetteville (a place where the Hawgs were nearly unbeatable at the time).  UNLV absolutely blitzed the Hawgs to open the second half, never looking back in a display of athleticism and prowess virtually unmatched in all of our years watching college basketball.

One other point on this 91 Duke-UNLV game.  Two months after the game, the Las Vegas Review-Journal published a photo of UNLV players Anderson Hunt, Moses Scurry and David Butler sitting in a hot tub drinking beer with convicted felon and noted “sports fixer” Richard Perry (see below).

Perry had been involved in a point shaving scandal at Boston College in the 70s, and there was no shortage of similar conspiracy theories being thrown around at the time based on UNLV’s confounding loss to Duke in the national semifinals.  Where there’s smoke there’s fire goes the saying, and the DOJ even felt there was sufficient cause to open an investigation into the possibility that some UNLV players may have fixed the game.  To date, we’ve never heard anything come out of these allegations, but there are some who remain convinced something fishy went on during that game.

A final point that nvr1983 touched on but sounds completely absurd today is that, at the time of that 91 game, Duke was “America’s Team.”  The hatred and vitriol enabled by the last 15 years of Dookie V. and ESPN had not yet taken hold, and most of the basketball public was happy to see the plucky guys from Durham (who were indeed becoming the Bills of college basketball) finally break through and win a title against the bullies from UNLV.  My, how things have changed.

You may notice that the number of NBA superstars from championship teams has decreased in recent years with the exception of Carmelo Anthony. We feel it is pretty clear that this is becasue a lot of guys who are NBA stars decided to skip college or not stay around long enough to win a title. We’re pretty sure Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, and Dwight Howard (he would be a senior now!) would have affected the NCAA tournament a little.

The list:
2006-07 Florida: Al Horford, Corey Brewer, Joakim Noah, Taurean Green, & Chris Richard.
-All of the UF guys seem like they could end up being solid pros. Even Richard who is spending time in the NBDL could end up being a decent bench guy. Horford has exceeded expectations and is challenging the much more hyped Kevin Durant for Rookie of the Year honors. The real question is whether any of them other than Horford will become stars in the league. Noah and Brewer have a chance, but we aren’t sold on them yet. We think Noah will end up being a solid contributor if he can keep his mouth shut.

2005 North Carolina: Rashad McCants, Raymond Felton, Sean May, & Marvin Williams
- All of the Tar Heels have turned into respectable NBA players, which isn’t surprising to anybody who say this team play. May hasn’t played this year due to injuries, but was putting up respectable numbers when he was healthy. Felton and Williams are definitely the studs of this group although McCants does show flashes of brilliance up in Minnesota not that anybody sees the Timberwolves play.

2004 Connecticut: Emeka Okafor, Ben Gordon, Hilton Armstrong, Josh Boone, & Charlie Villanueva
- While this group has turned out 3 solid NBA players (Okafor, Gordon, and Villanueva), we get the suspicion that none of these guys will turn into the superstars they were expected to be. It seems hard to believe that a lot of people thought Orlando made a mistake drafting Dwight Howard ahead of Okafor in 2004. However, this is a solid group of pros that will probably end up being the equal of the last 2 championship teams (UNC and UF).

2003 Syracuse: Carmelo Anthony & Hakim Warrick
- While Melo has lived up to the hype and is a perennial All-Star, it appears that Warrick is going to stay in the 10 PPG and 5 RPG range, which is probably worth a $8 mill/yr contract or a max contract if Warrick can wait for an offer from Isiah. Having seen this team play at the East Regional in Albany that year, this is one of our favorite championship teams particularly because they were the last team that was a big surprise winning the tournament. We knew that Gerry McNamara’s game wouldn’t work at the NBA level, but we always liked him and often thought that he was closer to Jameer Nelson in college than a lot of analysts were willing to admit.

2002 Maryland: Juan Dixon, Steve Blake, & Chris Wilcox
- The players from this team, which won the ugliest Final 4 in recent memory, have done just about what we expected as pros. Dixon has been a solid player who is often underappreciated by his team and has floated around the league but contributed everywhere he has gone. Steve Blake has provided solid if unspectacular point guard play and won a starting job in Portland for a time over the uber-hyped Sebastian Telfair. Wilcox has been somewhat of a disappointment. He puts up solid numbers, but has never turned into the star that his athletic ability suggests he could be. Of course, he was the same way in college so it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

2001 Duke: Shane Battier, Chris Duhon, Carlos Boozer, & Mike Dunleavy
- It amazing that on this team with several college superstars (including Jason Williams), that Boozer turned out to be the stud of the group. While Casey Sanders’s lack of development forced him to play the center position more than he probably should have, he was a guy who was routinely abused by Brendan Haywood. Somehow, Boozer grew a pair of huevos; so much so that he stabbed a blind man in the back. Just imagine what Boozer could have become if he had stayed in Cleveland to play with Lebron James. Battier, Duhon, and Dunleavy are all solid NBA players even if they haven’t lived up to their draft status (Dunleavy) or hype (Duhon-”What a man!”). To be fair, Battier was selected after Kwame Brown and Eddy Curry, so maybe he wasn’t taken too early. The most disappointing thing about this group is that we never got to see what Jason Williams could have become. Although he struggled adjusting as a rookie with the Bulls, he showed flashes of brilliances including a triple-double against a still-in-his-prime Jason Kidd.

2000 Michigan State: Charlie Bell, Morris Peterson, & Jason Richardson
- Jason Richardson has put up solid numbers even if we have a hard time considering him a star. He’s a phenomenal athlete who has never really made the transition to the superstar (except in fantasy basketball) that many projected for him. Morris Peterson had a solid run as a consistent double-figure guy in Toronto before going to New Orleans this year. As for Bell, we never expected much out of him, but he has had a nice little career and actually averaged 13.5 PPG last year. That championship team’s heart and soul was Mateen Cleaves who had a couple of nice seasons where he was one of the top cheerleaders in the league particularly when he was on the Kings. However, he never stuck and according to Wikipedia he is now playing for the Bakersfield Jam of the NBDL.

1999 Connecticut: Richard Hamilton & Jake Voskuhl
- This team, which we ranked as the best team of the past 10 years, knocked off an unbelievably loaded Duke team that might have been in the top 10 of all-time had they won that night in St. Petersburg. While Hamilton has been an excellent NBA player and one of the few guys in the league who can hit a mid-range jumper, the rest of this team has been a disappointment. We had no idea that Voskuhl was still in the league and barely noticed him when we knew he was in the league. The team’s other star Khalid El-Amin played for a short time in the NBA before finding his way to the CBA and Ukranian Basketball League before end up with Türk Telekom B.K. of the Turkish basketball league. We weren’t able to find much information about Ricky Moore, the star of the title game. We’re assuming that he had a rather undistinguished career after that night in St. Pete.

1998 Kentucky: Nazr Mohammed & Jamaal Magloire
- The Wildcats, who weren’t expected to win the title this year, were fueled by a big comeback against a very young Duke team in the South Regional finals. Looking back at this team’s roster, we couldn’t see anybody else on this team making a big impact in the NBA. Magloire had a run from 2002-2006 where he averaged around 10/10 and made an All-Star team (more the result of the lack of centers than his exceptional play) while Mohammed has had a slightly less distinguished career. His most notable achievement was helping the San Antonio Spurs win the 2005 NBA Championship (with an assist from Isiah Thomas).

1997 Arizona: Mike Bibby & Jason Terry
- Both Bibby and Terry have had excellent careers as was expected for them coming out of college. The more intereresting story is that of the team’s star Miles Simon. Simon was never considered a top NBA prospect, but we at least expected that he would stick around the league because he could make plays. Instead he spent a year in Orlando then traveled across the globe, before ending up in the CBA where as his Wikipedia page states he became “the most decorated player in CBA history”. Not exactly what we expect out of the MOP.

1996 Kentucky: Antoine Walker, Derek Anderson & Nazr Mohammed
- This was likely the last of the all-time great teams. This team was incredibly deep with 6 guys who had significant NBA careers (including Tony Delk, Ron Mercer, and Walter McCarty). This team just crushed the teams they played utilizing Pitino’s press with their superior talent and athleticism. None of the players ever became a superstar, but all of their studs had solid NBA careers including a handful of All-Star appearances and awards. We’ll leave Rick Pitino’s stint in Boston for another post.

1995 UCLA: N/A
- This team didn’t really have as many superstars as other championship teams did, but they played very well together finishing an impressive 32-1. They had 2 first-round picks (Ed O’Bannon and George Zidek) who had short-lived NBA careers. The team’s other stars were Tyus Edney, Toby Bailey, and Charles O’Bannon, but none of them ever did anything notable in the NBA.

1994 Arkansas: N/A
- Nolan Richardson’s “40 Minutes of Hell” team used a late Scotty Thurman rainbow 3 to knock off Grant Hill’s Duke team, which basically consisted of Hill and a bunch of nobodies. Corliss “Big Nasty” Williamson had a nice career first in Sacramento then in Detroit even winning the NBA Sixth Man of the Year in 2002. Thurman ended up leaving school early, going undrafted, and playing in the CBA.

1993 UNC: N/A
- This team didn’t really have any guys we considered potential NBA All-Stars back in 1993. Of course, we were 10 at the time and were already learning to hate the Tar Heels. We’ll let you look at the starting lineup and make up your mind: Eric Montross, Brian Reese, George Lynch, Donald Williams, and Derrick Phelps. Not exactly a murderer’s row of talent there. To be fair, Montross, who hails from the same high school as Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr. (Lawrence North in Indianapolis), was selected 9th overall by the Celtics and had a decent rookie season before falling off the map. George Lynch was also considered a solid prospect coming out as 12th overall to the Lakers. He only had a mediocre pro career never averaging over 8.6 PPG and his main NBA achievements on Wikipedia are wearing 3 numbers (#24, #30 and #9) while with the Lakers and being traded to the Grizzlies to clear up cap space (and buffet space) for some guy named Shaq. Phelps played briefly in the NBA. And when we say briefly we mean 3 games and 1 shot, which he missed. Donald Williams, who is best remembered for being the MOP and having a huge game against the Fab 5 in the title game, spent his professional career floating around every league on the planet except for the NBA. The more interesting thing is that the Tar Heels actually had more talent the next year when they added Jerry Stackhouse and a young Rasheed Wallace (who in a sign of things to come got tossed from the McDonald’s All-American game) to this nucleus. However, the 1994 team never really came together and lost to Bill Curley and the Boston College Eagles, which was famously captured on this SI cover.

1991-92 Duke: Grant Hill
- Along with the 1996 UK team, Christian Laettner’s Blue Devils were the last of the teams that we consider truly great. To consider how big/great this team was, you have to remember that before this team, Mike Krzyzewski’s boys were the lovable losers who couldn’t win the big one despite multiple Final 4 trips. After this team, Duke became Duke. This team was really built around their 3 superstars: Laettner, Bobby Hurley, and Grant Hill. Everyone knows their college accomplishments: Laettner (#12 on ESPN’s list; maybe the top college player since 1990); Hurley (NCAA all-time assist leader); and Hill (also led Duke to the title game with a YMCA team around him in 1994). Laettner actually had a decent pro career, which most people would realize if he hadn’t been so great in college or if he wasn’t the most hated college player of all-time (multiply Joakim Noah by 100 and you get Laettner). His career highlights include an All-Star appearance as well as being an original Dream Teamer (ok, I can’t type that with a straight face). Hurley was selected 7th overall by Sacramento, but had his career derailed early with a car accident (signs of things to come for another great Duke point guard). However, we don’t think he would have ever become a great NBA PG as evident by how Jason Kidd destroyed him in the 1993 NCAA tournament. Hill actually had the best NBA career of the bunch and was considered one of the top 5-10 players in the league before multiple foot/ankle injuries eventually turned him into a shell of the player that he once was. Antonio Lang was taken 29th overall by Phoenix, but never did much in the pros. Brian Davis played a season in the NBA before floating around the basketball planet and settling on running a Duke-based group that tried to buy the Memphis Grizzlies with Laettner (the deal fell through). Thomas Hill (best known for being the guy crying after Laettner’s 1992 East Regional shot) was drafted 39th overall by Indiana, but never played in the NBA as he played in the Australian National Basketball League for a few years.

That’s all I have on these guys/teams. If you have any more information or comments, feel free to leave them in the comment section.

Be-Deviled?

The last time Duke had such a blip was in the mid-90s. In 1995, with Coach K’s back hurting and Pete Gaudet at the helm for two-thirds of the season, Duke went 13-18 (2-14) and did not make the NCAA Tournament. There has been considerable harping over the years about whose record (K’s or Gaudet’s) all those losses should fall on, but at the time, it wasn’t a leap to see that even when Duke was 9-3 in early January 1995, a team led by the likes of Cherokee Parks and Jeff Capel (as opposed to Grant Hill, Bobby Hurley or Christian Laettner) was flawed. This was especially true in light of a stacked ACC that season (Each of Duncan, Wallace, Stackhouse, Childress and Joe Smith were all-americans in 1995).

The next season, when K was back on the bench, shows just how far the talent level at Duke had fallen. The 1995-96 team only performed five games better than its predecessor, going 18-13 (8-8) and losing both its first round ACC Tourney game and its first round NCAA game (by 15 pts) to… Eastern Michigan? The following year, 1996-97, Duke only got marginally back on track. The Devils finished with a 24-9 (12-4) record and won the ACC regular season, but they flamed out early again in the postseason, inexplicably losing to #8 seed NC State in the quarters of the ACC Tourney and barely scraping by Murray St. in the first round before losing to #10 seed Providence (by 11 pts) in the second round of the NCAAs. Does this sound familiar at all? It should, as Duke just finished its 2006-07 campaign with a 22-11 (8-8) record, culminating in a first round ACC Tourney loss and a first round NCAA loss to… VCU.

Is there cause for concern among Devil faithful, or is last year’s mediocre regular season and short-lived postseason just an anomaly?

After the 1995-97 disasters (by Duke standards), K got serious about recruiting again, which culminated in the 1997 class – Avery, Battier, Brand, and Burgess – one of the best of the last twenty years. How’d that work out? – try an absolutely sick 133-15 (59-5) record over the next four seasons, including three ACC Tourney championships, four NCAA #1 seeds, two Final Fours, and a national title in 2001. He followed that class up with a smattering of more blue-chippers, from Maggette in 1998 to another blockbuster class in 1999 – J-Will, Dunleavy and Boozer – and Duhon in 2000. What happened next? The 2002 class included JJ Redick and Shelden Williams, who, while excellent college players, never had the gamebreaking abilities that some of the previous Dookies had. In fact, the last player that it could arguably be said that Coach K recruited to Duke that fit that mold is Luol Deng (class of 2003), who was largely responsible for getting Duke to its last Final Four in 2004 during his only season there.

Since Deng’s departure after the 2004 season, we’re wondering what has happened to the pipeline of NBA talent that K was bringing in on a semi-annual basis. Sure, many guys have been highly ranked recruits that simply didn’t pan out as expected – Shavlik Randolph, Josh McRoberts, Greg Paulus – but even if those guys had hit their ceilings of potential, would they be as good as the Kevin Durants and the Tyrus Thomases of the contemporary NCAA landscape? Or the Elton Brands and Luol Dengs of Duke’s Christmas past?

Where are all the Duke studs?

Looking at the class rankings for 2007, Duke is listed near the top, which on its face, may suggest that they’ll be back on track in short order. The supposed jewel of the class is 6’9 forward Kyle Singler, from Medford, Oregon. We recognize that it’s always difficult to evaluate a player’s potential from all-star games and video compilations (disregard the title of the video – Singler is definitely going to Duke), but from what we’ve seen, Singler looks like another slow white boy fundamentally sound but below-the-rim type of player. The absolute best case for Duke would be if he channeled the career of another northwesterner, Adam Morrison (who, incidentally, made zero F4s), but he’s probably not even another Chris Carrawell. Their other two big recruits, Nolan Smith (6’3 G; Oak Hill (VA)) and Taylor King (6’7 F; Santa Ana (CA)) are both rated in the 26-50 range – in other words, they might make for nice four-year players if things break right. But where are their difference-makers like Grant Hill, Avery, J-Will, Brand, Battier, Deng, etc.?

The short answer is that K, for whatever reasons, simply isn’t pursuing or getting many of those guys anymore. Consider Duke’s 2007-08 likely starting lineup of Paulus, Scheyer, Henderson, Nelson, Singler – every one of these players was a McDonald’s All-American and top 50 recruit. Duke will likely win 20-25 games and get a top four seed in the NCAA Tournament with this group. But where is the gamebreaker that can get a somewhat flawed team like this, sporting no inside presence, to another Final Four? Where is the playmaker who can make good things happen down the stretch of close games on neutral courts in March? We simply don’t see it here.

This is the future of Duke?

We commented a few days ago about the impact of the one-and-dones on this season, and generally concluded that it helped teams more than it hurt them (at least in 06-07). The talent level at UNC, UCLA, Kansas, Florida, Ohio St., and others is replenishing – can we accurately say the same anymore at Duke? We think there is valid cause for concern, as Duke built its lofty and deserving reputation on the back of wins in March rather than wins on the recruiting lists; and the players that K is now getting seem mostly primed for Final Fours and championships on paper, not the hardwood.