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What does Duke have to do to get some attention?

March 26th, 2010 Posted in NCAA basketball news, NCAA college basketball

All year long you hear it, every year, from every fan base that doesn’t call Cameron Indoor Stadium home.

My response is always simple: Duke is on television so much because A.) Duke is typically very good (if not great), and B.) people watch television when Duke is on television, like it or not. As Pete Gillen once said, Duke is Duke, and there’s a reason the Blue Devils get the attention they get. They deserve it and every measuring device suggests people care about Duke even when they hate Duke.

So I must confess that it’s strange to be here at t led by the man who wil as a complete afterthought.

is talking about Duke.

Saint Mary’s is a story because of Omar Samhan.

Baylor is a story because of how it bounced back from a 2003 scandal.

Purdue is a story because it’s in the Sweet 16 despite the loss of Robbie Hummel.

But Duke?

What’s the story with Duke?

“It’s Duke,” Purdue guard Keaton Grant said. “The name speaks for itself.”

Perhaps.

But who’s speaking the name?

Answer: Almost nobody.

And the school some love and everybody else hates. But it seems the nation has instead opted to hate John Calipari and Kentucky, which eliminates a typical March storyline.

Meanwhile, the Blue Devils don’t have that one player most folks despise like a Christian Laettner or a J.J. Redick, and though they are a one seed they were never ranked No. 1 and are rarely mentioned as a serious national title contender. They’re the ACC favorites who won the ACC, a preseason top 10 team that finished the regular season in the top 10.

So there’s no great story about how the Blue Devils overachieved (like Saint Mary’s), overcame adversity (like Purdue) or did something that hasn’t been done in decades (like Baylor), meanin boring.

In the discussion about the South Regional, it seems as if Mike Krzyzewski and Duke are barely in the picture. (US Presswire) Yeah, boring.

They’re too good to dismiss but not great enough to admire. They didn’t overcome off-the-court incidents because they don’t act like idiots, and there weren’t any real on-the-court problems, either. They don’t have big mouths like Samhan, don’t have flashy dancers like John Wall, and they don’t even take offense to the reality that they’re completely overlooked both nationally and here in Houston.

“We don’t really mind it,” Duke’s Kyle Singler said. “We’re just here to play basketball.”

In total anonymity.

And did you ever think you w on its way to the Final Four for the first time since 2004, and nobody seems to care. Perhaps this will change by the end of the weekend, but I doubt it. The more likely scenario has the Blue Devils, ever so quietly, passing and shooting their way to Indianapolis while Kentucky and Butler and Ev plus Kalin Lu get all of the attention and the majority of the stories.

“Duke is Duke,” Saint Mary’s coach Randy Bennett said. “That’s a pretty big story.”

In most years, yes.

But not this year, for whatever reason.