Please Lose Before The End Of March Madness

It’s true. With “parity” becoming more than just a word during this edition of March Madness, and with the 68 teams in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament down to the Sweet Sixteen, anybody can win.

Well, nearly anybody.

Let’s have anybody but Duke, please.

Yes, Duke is among the primary reasons wallethub.com said the NCAA spent 2021 watching its pre-pandemic revenue courtesy of men’s college basketball rise from $1.12 billion to $1.16 billion. Forbes determined in the spring of 2020 that the Blue Devils had the best three-year average revenue ($35.4 million) of any college basketball program in the country not named Kentucky ($56 million), Louisville ($53.6 million) or Indiana ($37.5 million).

Yes, Duke has a hoops messiah so famous that he answers without hesitation to Mike Krzyzewski and to Coach K. His resume features five national championship for the Blue Devils after 12 trips to the Final Four. He also took Team USA to three gold medals along his way to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and to the College Basketball Hall of Fame.

And, yes, Krzyzewski or Coach K or the guy with more regular season NCAA men’s basketball victories than anybody at 1,196 announced before the 2021-2022 campaign that this would be his 42nd and last season at Duke.

Even so, not many folks outside of Durham, North Carolina wish to give Krzyzewski a sixth national championship with a group hug on his way out the door.

Duke just isn’t likeable.

A quarter of a century after Christian Laettner stomped on the chest of a Kentucky player during a 1992 NCAA tournament game, Grayson Allen kept tripping opponents for more than a season while Coach K mostly shrugged.

Krzyzewski hasn’t a problem with hypocrisy.

Two days after a couple of Duke players were stopped in November by North Carolina cops for DWI-related problems, the same coach who has been applauded for his virtue as well as for his victories started one of those players for what became a home blowout for the Blue Devils over Gardner-Webb.

The starting player was Paolo Banchero, a 19-year-old rising star as a freshman, and the other was Michael Savarino, who happened to be Krzyzewski’s grandson.

Banchero and Savarino were allowed to suit up for that Gardner-Webb game despite their court cases still weeks away.

Go Iowa State. Go Arkansas.

Go Providence.

Go anybody this week besides Duke.

Saint Peter’s would rock as the 2022 national champion, with that weird nickname of Peacocks, and with a DraftKings executive giving them odds of 5,000 to 1 before the tournament of winning it all, and with nobody outside of Jersey City, New Jersey having a clue where they’re from.

North Carolina also has some appeal. You’ve got former Tar Heels star Hubert Davis going from sitting nearly a decade behind Roy Williams as a North Carolina assistant coach to the top job before this season to just four victories from the Tar Heels’ seventh NCAA title in men’s hoops.

Elsewhere, the planet wouldn’t stop spinning if Gonzaga survived down the stretch of the tournament after so many years as an almost team.

Imagine if Purdue finally became more than just a tease, or if Jim Larranaga surpassed his 2006 magic (when he led 11th seed George Mason to the Final Four) by taking 10th seed Miami all the way.

Maybe Michigan can go from surviving everything — underachieving, head coach Juwan Howard losing his mind by throwing a punch during the Big Ten tournament at a Wisconsin coach, the Wolverines barely squeezing into the Big Dance without a lot of jitterbugging — to grabbing the national championship Howard missed as a member of the Fab Five.

Houston could finish the job its Phil Slama Jama teams left undone during the early 1980s with the likes of future Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famers Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler.

Finally, no remaining team thrills more than Arizona, with Mr. Inside (Christian Koloko) and Mr. Outside (Bennedict Mathurin) threatening to have the Wildcats dancing the most beneath confetti at the end in New Orleans.

Go UCLA. Go Villanova. Go Kansas.

Go Texas Tech.

Duke?

Just go away.