www.mrkamoji.comAnd isn’t it ironic.don’t you think?
Okay, so maybe quoting Alanis Morissette is a new low for me, but how else can I attempt to make people understand the irony and pain of my last Saturday night? About a month ago, my parents surprised me with Duke-UNC tickets for my birthday. One of our family friends gets them every year and was, for some reason I’ll never understand, willing to give them up this time. So as someone who eats, sleeps, and breathes Duke basketball, the Duke-UNC game at Cameron Stadium is quite possibly more important to me than any (non-North Carolina) ACC or NCAA tournament game could ever be.
At any rate, most of my friends – be them Duke-haters, boys who don’t like college basketball (they exist, I swear), or my girlfriends – have been ready to wring my neck this past month because this game has been all I could talk about. Every time something would come up about the weekend of March 4, I would be sure to announce to everyone where I would be instead. And this is where Alanis comes in.
Just like the old man who died after winning the lottery, isn’t it ironic that my Blue Devils lost on the day I thought all my dreams would be realized – my first ever live Duke basketball game, against UNC, in Cameron, and Senior Night for four guys I talk about like they’ve been my best friends all my life (plus two other guys who, although they are my Facebook friends, I do not feel as close to).
Anyway, on with my incredible story. A family friend from home (whose son is a freshman at Duke) arranged for their driver, Ed Spencer, to pick my brother and me up from the airport. This heavy-set, balding man with the thickest Southern accent I think I’ve ever heard not only had a deep love and passion for Duke basketball, but also quite the connection to it. He told us that he does a lot of the driving for the Duke players and recruits and, in fact, takes some of the responsibility for the recruits he’s driven who have ended up signing with the Blue Devils. He has yet to drive one who hasn’t.
When we got there on Saturday, Krzyzewskiville was inevitably our first stop. The assembly of multi-colored tents and sleepless students standing in all kinds of lines made for quite a picture.
Since we had some time to kill before tipoff, we went to the Duke-Maryland men’s lacrosse game in the afternoon. The game was incredible, despite the immense amount of your average ever-obnoxious Terrapin fans and the fact that the second-ranked Blue Devils lost in overtime to fourth-ranked Maryland (8-7). Of course the highlight of the game for me was seeing the most famous and most recognizable of the Cameron Crazies. I’d be surprised if any ACC fans don’t know about the guy who always wears the horns and the Wojciechowski (a.k.a. Wojo) jersey.
Once the game was over, we headed over to Cameron about an hour before tip-off and an hour after the Crazies had all arrived. The crowd was already roaring and cheering like crazy (pun intended), even the 60-plus-year-olds in my section. Before announcing the starting lineups, there was a Senior Night ceremony in which the team and coaching staff lined up around one corner of the court, and as each senior and his stats were announced, the player went around and hugged each person individually. Coach K was embraced for a significantly longer time than anyone else.
As the Tar Heels’ lineup was announced, the Crazies shouted “Hi (insert first name of player here)” loudly and seemingly graciously before softly exclaiming, “You suck!” As the game began, just watching and listening to the Cameron Crazies was nothing short of mesmerizing. The way they all move and cheer together looks, and is in a way, completely rehearsed. The most popular of the cheers that night, aside from the routine “Let’s Go Duke!” had to be “Go to Hell, Carolina, Go to Hell!” I must say, there was less creativity in the cheers than I expected, but the Crazies’ unparalleled volume and spirit certainly made up for it.
As I watched J.J. Redick’s first three-pointer of the game go in, my jaw dropped to the floor. You think that shot is beautiful on TV? You ain’t seen nothin’. It was a sight and feeling I can’t even describe. (This was, of course, at the beginning of the game, when Redick was actually making shots.)
In all honesty, I’m not quite sure what went right for Duke in this game. It’s easy to blame the officiating, and in this game, it seemed to be particularly biased. Maybe we’re all just used to getting the calls every time Redick is fouled, but that boy was getting torn apart on Saturday night and the refs seemed to be completely ignoring it. I’m not saying Duke lost because of poor officiating and we can overlook the fact that half the time Carolina got the ball out of bounds, it was off them.
It seems clear that this was not a game in which we can say Duke deserved the win. They should have won, but not because they played brilliantly and lost on some fluke. I’m talking about the other kind of “should have won” – the kind that means they have no excuse for losing it. My friend once told me I am the most biased person he knows, especially when it comes to sports. As the most biased person he knows, and one who usually defends my Dukies at all costs, I’m out of excuses this time.
It looked to me like UNC just wanted this win more. No one was hustling to get back on defense. That spark, that element of magic that my love for this team is rooted in, was absent. They weren’t having as much fun as usual; they weren’t communicating and playing off each other the way they usually do; their eyes weren’t full of that spirit, that pride, that love of the game we’re used to seeing. And all I have to say is that they better get it back before this weekend and they better not lose again until the Big Dance is over.
But even though my Dukies lost in the most ironic of fashions, in the end it was still one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Anyone who’s as obsessed with any one team like I am with Duke should be so lucky to experience such magic.