I prefer not to point out again the inconsistencies of comments relating to college basketball and the over-glorification of some teams and leagues. But why not? To have Duke go into the Smith Center and take down North Carolina with relative ease, only to struggle at home and lose two days later to a Virginia team that made just two 3-pointers and five free throws while getting out-rebounded and allowing Duke 22 chances at the line, points to the constant overreaction and showering teams with praise and glory for wins or doom and gloom for losses. Should Duke followers and media elites who poured it on after the win at UNC now speak up about Duke’s inconsistent play? Big win, head-scratching loss. Four times! All close losses when they were unable to recognize the game situation and seal the win. There’s no need to panic! Each game is simply a snapshot of that moment, not a near predictor of what’s next. Win streaks and losing several games in a row are really just strings of independent occurrences. Unless it happens to be the last game of the year, there’s no need to freak out. Don’t get me wrong, I believe there is some good in statistics and the growing attention to analytics, but I would not bet everything purely on what happened in the last game or in each loss. Throw in all of the talk about Quad 1 wins and losses and which league is stronger, and we have another piece of crap tool to evaluate teams for post season invitations. A Quad 1 game when it was played could be a Quad 2 next week. Team evaluations and the opinions of media talking heads sway too far in each direction from game to game. Virginia forgot about the Carolina-Duke game before Duke stopped feeling good about their “great” performance on Saturday, allowing the Cavaliers to take the home court as Duke did in Chapel Hill. If only the Blue Devils had been hosting in the Smith Center.
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