In its ACC preview supplement this year, the sports staff of this newspaper predicted that the Duke men's basketball team would win the national championship. It was not a consensus. I didn't even pick'em to go to the Final Four.
Now don't get me wrong. The Blue Devils will be a national powerhouse and should be ranked in the top 10 every week. They'll tear it up in the regular season just as much as they did last year and probably win the ACC. Luol Deng will be awesome and is pretty much a lock for national freshman of the year (and the NBA Draft lottery).
But Luol is about the only positive keyword for Duke this season that has a "U" in it. And so I present the four "U's"--the quartet of reasons that the Blue Devils won't make the Final Four this March:
1) Undersized. Throughout the preseason, the team itself has been talking up the advantages of having a bulked-up, deep frontcourt. But if you read between the lines, that talk is mostly coming from modest backcourt players who don't want to give themselves too many props for being perhaps the country's best collection of guards.
The reality is that even if Nick Horvath looks like he could trade in his writing career for a Bowflex advertising gig right now, and even if Shav Randolph has been pumping enough iron at Card Gym and eating enough free athletes' food to make him need a couple of shiny new DukeCards, the Blue Devils are going to need to play small.
For all the advantages that Daniel Ewing, J.J. Redick and Luol Deng bring, they are going to have to play on the floor at the same time a lot, and that means fewer post players on the court to mash with an oversized ACC.
2) Duhon. He's overrated--again. I mean, come on, dishing out 10 assists against EA Sports is about as easy as it'll be for him to do the same against the NBA's developmental league next season.
And Duhon's been talking himself up again, saying how relieved he is to have a good enough supporting cast this year so that he doesn't have to shoulder the burden of the team himself. Since when would the venerable Mike Krzyzewski put the onus of a high-caliber team on such a "Naismith candidate", especially one who shot 38 percent from the field last season and (gulp) 27 percent from beyond the arc? Coach K certainly didn't against North Carolina, when he benched his captain because, as he said, "He hasn't played well, there's no question about that."
Problem is, Duhon has to play the bulk of minutes at point guard. Sean Dockery can run circles around opponents for a while, but he's not a general. And Daniel Ewing might be the most underrated player in the country, but he's a two-guard through and through.
At least Duhon came off the bench for a double-double against the Tar Heels, but he's not going to be nearly as dependable as Raymond Felton, who knocked down four threes and 25 points as a one-man show in that same game. Which brings us to...
3) UNC. Face it: they're really good. And you're going to hate Roy Williams because of it. But for crying out loud, Duke's been spoiled for enough years that you're just going to have to accept that Williams is just as guaranteed at grabbing the spotlight as a freshman blonde in a fraternity party.
Yeah, they're thin on the bench, and yeah, they've already lost David Noel for the first six weeks of the season with a broken thumb. But Felton, Rashad McCants and Sean May are good enough to take two and even three games--with the ACC Tournament--from Duke in the regular season. That means fewer wins for the Blue Devils and, despite their tip-top out-of-conference schedule, a lower seed in the NCAA Tournament.
4) UConn. Now this is one team that's been hyped for the right reasons. And when Duke does get to that NCAA Tournament, they're not going to want to take their lower seed in against a No. 1 like the Huskies.
Emeka Okafor is a block and rebound party, an Alonzo Mourning clone who could be the national player of the year, the first pick in the draft and certainly Final Four MVP. Tack on heady off-guard Ben Gordon and a legit senior floor general in Taliek Brown, and you could have a wire-to-wire win streak on your hands, Duke fans, and it ain't gonna be down south.
So do me a favor: don't get your hopes too high. Pray Luol stays and wait 'til next year, because Shaun Livingston might look like more of an alien than Sam Cassell, but his game's going to get him more girls than Mike Dunleavy. And speaking of girls, go watch some of the Duke women's games this year. Because they're a no-doubter.
Matt Sullivan is a Trinity sophomore and associate sports editor. His column appears every third Tuesday.
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