25 Things I Learned from Watching Duke Bow Out to WVU

1. Bob Huggins will never miss coaching a team led by his former top recruit Michael Beasley, seeing as West Virginia is in the Sweet 16 and K-State isn't.
2. Mike Krzyzewski deserves to take a leave of absence from coaching USA Basketball in Beijing. He looks like a mess.
3. You cannot expect to win a contest when you go on an 0-15 drought from behind the arc for the greater part of one half.
   
4. The game was a tale of two halves, of two teams. Duke was not the team they were entering the locker room after the first half (inspired), just as West Virginia was not the team they were prior to listening to Bob Huggins's half-time speech (flat). In fact, the two teams collectively switched bodies, a la Freaky Friday (what it was to see Lindsay Lohan THAT good-looking).
   
5. Gerald Henderson is the Duke MVP.
   
6. Demarcus Nelson spoke a big game when he claimed he'd redeem his teammates over last year's NCAA loss to VCU, then disappeared in two games when he was needed most.
   
7. The Big East Conference is grossly underrated; WVU, Villanova, Louisville, Georgetown, and Pitt can attest to that with huge first and second round performances.
   
8. The Atlantic Coast Conference is highly overrated, as two Big East opponents (Villanova and WVU) have thoroughly picked apart two ACC foes (Clemson and Duke, respectively).
   
   
9. A lot can be said for the Mountaineers athletic program: Steve Slaton will surely be a first round NFL draft pick, the football program will not miss Rich Rodriguez as much as they initially thought, and the basketball squad has its name on the map after manhandling Duke in every statistical category.
   
10. Greg Paulus is not a prime-time player.
    
11. Kyle Singler let foul squabbles dictate his performance.
    
12. Brian Zoubek and Lance Thomas are NOT the answer in the post.
    
13. Please tell me how basketball 'experts' can liken Jon Scheyer's shooting touch to J.J. Redick's.
    
14. The nation wants the Blue Devils to lose just as much as they love to watch the Yankees fail. That Washington crowd was raucously in WVU's favor.
    
15. You live and die by the three point shot. The Devils hadn't been hot from behind the arc since February.
16. 'Size matters not,' was a crock concocted by a foolish Jedi master. With this being the smallest Duke lineup in recent memory, they simply did not stand a chance against Joe Alexander's ability to dominate.
    
17. The Mountaineer mascot is highly obnoxious. I'd take a mascot in a plush suit over a Davy Crockett knock-off any day. It's the equivalent of men who dress up for Civil War re-enactments: embarrassing.
    
18. Maybe this year will be a time when Bob Huggins can finally erase from his memory a flailing Kenyon Martin going down with a broken leg.
    
19. Bob Huggins simply does not like to dress up for the big game.
    
20. Who will Coach K offer a sideline position to next? David McClure? Greg Paulus? The prerequisite of not being able to make it in the pros fits them well.


21. Whenever a studio flashes a 'foreboding graphic' on the screen, "West Virginia is 0-8 this year when trailing at half-time," it tends to not work in the favor of the opposing team.
22. Ruoff's fadeaway three with time expiring on the shot clock in the second half was pure luck (and the obvious turning point in the contest, or, as CBS likes to coin it, "The Pontiac Game Changing Performance" of the night).
    
23. You can NEVER tire of the CBS NCAA jingle.
    
24. As much as I love the commercial, why does the Sidney Crosby Gatorade ad get so much airtime during BASKETBALL programming?
    
25. Wearing a Duke hoodie for three consecutive days will only go so far for the actual team's success.