That's right. I said it.
OK, I don't actually mean that (before I get my brains blown out at the West Campus bus stop by a pale 135-pound Pratt student wearing blue face paint and toting a shotgun).
But dammit, I'm a senior, and am growing slightly tired of being upset in the Tourney.
I don't know about y'all, but I was under the impression that part of my birthright as a privileged Duke student was a men's basketball national championship-or at least a Final Four. You really think I came here for the academics?
Well, I'm graduating and the best we could come up with is a disgraceful Sweet 16 exit four years ago (to a team we had already beaten), back when J.J., Shelden, Ewing and Dock still graced our Gothic Wonderland.
Look, we went 28-6. We were not even ranked in the preseason top 10, and yet we spent almost the entire regular season in the top five. And, although this may be a Bush League excuse, this was a young undersized team that had no business beating Marquette, blowing out Wisconsin, taking down UNC on the road and nearly capturing the ACC regular season crown.
All of this was awesome and the team and Coach K deserve a ton of credit for providing me ample ability to trash talk my non-Duke friends during the season.
However, this season will always feel like a failure. Given everything that our young and tiny team accomplished all year and the near invincibility we played with through 23 games, Final Four dreams became too vivid to simply dismiss when shooting percentages dimmed and late-season losses began to pile up. Losing in the second round as a two seed is a disappointment no matter how you slice it.
By midseason, I had some high hopes. However, when the brackets came out this year, I was legitimately worried about our chances of even making it to the Elite Eight to face UCLA.
As a fan, I often find that it is worthwhile to hedge your emotional desires with monetary bets. Meaning, I picked Duke to lose fairly early so that if it did happen, I would still have my bracket to keep me company.
Thank God for that.
Do you know how much crap I have had to endure from my friends every time Duke has bowed out of the Tourney earlier than hoped? My best friends go to USC, UCLA and Georgetown. Needless to say, my phone has been "broken" since Saturday.
This year, my only solace was correctly picking that Davidson would upset Georgetown after my friend guaranteed that a "group of undersized white boys" could never take down his mighty Hoyas. Suck it, Julian.
According to the haven for obsessive Duke fans who make me slightly embarrassed to love Blue Devil basketball, dukebasketballreport.com, we should all lay off Coach K and the gang because apparently the team-from K all the way down the bench-was suffering from a serious bout with the flu.
While this certainly could help explain why DeMarcus regressed to his days as an ineffectual freshman, the entire team's "tired legs" and an overall lethargy, I don't know if I am willing to simply pardon the gang for another disappointing end to a season.
I realize I am acting like a spoiled fan, and all things considered (and by that I mean the fact we played the entire year without a big man), Coach K reinvented himself to lead this team to an awesome season.
So, for this year, Coach, I'll let it slide.
Dan Belzer is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Thursday.
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