After freshman superstar Zion Williamson went down for the game in the opening seconds, No. 1 Duke fell 88-72 to archrival No. 8 North Carolina at Cameron Indoor Stadium Wednesday night. The Chronicle asked students for their thoughts after the loss.
“Mostly I feel bad for Zion Williamson because I think it’s really special to play against North Carolina in Cameron Indoor, and I think it’s really tragic that he got to play for only 33 seconds and that he’ll never get to have that experience. Ultimately, it’s just a real downer because we definitely would’ve crushed them if we had Zion. It was just such a shocking occurrence that it just blew the wind out of our team's sails.”—Michael Acker, junior.
“It was depressing.”—Daniel Kim, sophomore.
“Just take any negative adjective out of the dictionary and put it next to my name.”—Matt Feng, senior.
“We are really sad. We tented for this, and now we lost.”—Rachel Huang, first-year.
“It was my first-ever game. It was sad to see Zion get injured within the first few seconds, but it was pretty cool to see [former President Barack] Obama in the stands. I was half expecting that, but honestly, we’re gonna have to try again next year.”—Hamza Mohamoud, sophomore.
“I’m proud of our guys for showing perseverance without Zion. I know we lost, but they showed a lot of grit and determination competing out there, and they never gave up on the energy. So we’ll be back, and I’m excited for us to be back.”—Ben Succop, junior.
“The tenting experience is what makes the Cameron Crazies great. We keep our heads high and move onto the next game. We went all out—black tenting—an unforgettable experience. Not the result we wanted, but there’s nothing you can do in these situations.”—Samuel Chernow, first-year.
“It was just bad.”—Jack Ellwood, sophomore.
“I was upset. It was hard, man, but we’re going for the [national championship]. That’s what really matters. In the end, it’s one game. In the end, we still had fun and a good time tenting. We’ll be back here next year—we gotta support our team, win or lose."—Gaurav Uppal, junior.
“It was sad.”—Charlie Berman, junior.
“In one word, we love the boys.”—Abby Sparrow, junior.
“It’s very disappointing and it is my first game as a Duke graduate. I still think that the game doesn’t really count as Zion didn’t play. It’s a disappointing experience but we got the NCAA tournament and before the NCAA tournament, [we have another game] at UNC."—Will Koshut, graduate student in Pratt School of Engineering.
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