FanHouse Duke Blue Devils

Between his brother Stephen Curry's emergence on the national stage last year, and his own proficient demonstration in the Big South this past year, it is hard to fault Seth Curry for seeking a bigger stage in college basketball than Liberty University. After only a few days and one visit, the Curry clan has decided on a destination: Duke.

With the Blue Devils bounced from the Sweet 16 earlier this week, Curry and his father Dell Curry took a trip to Durham to meet with coach Mike Krzyzewski Sunday. Apparently, the meeting went very well.

Well, you don't have to look too hard to get the point of this night in NCAA Tournament history. The Big East won three of the four Sweet 16 games played tonight -- two of them easily. At this very moment, it's pretty hard to like Oklahoma's or Arizona's chances on Friday night, or Missouri's on Saturday. The Big East is flexing muscles, baring fangs, dropping its collective shoulder and knocking down all of college basketball on its way to history's hoop. The conference is guaranteed one Final Four entrant (either Villanova or Pitt will make it) and still has a chance to grab all four spots. Only one conference has ever had as many as three in the Final Four and that was...yeah. The Big East. In 1985.

Pitt has been ranked No. 4 or better in all but one week this year. Despite that, the story all season has been that Pitt has never won more than two games in the NCAA Tournament.

Duke has been hanging around the top 10 all season. The Blue Devils had a slide in the middle of conference play, but tweaking the lineup seems to have worked (except when facing North Carolina) in sparking them to yet another ACC Tournament Championship.

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This time, the gloves came off. So too, did the jacket.

There's not much novel about the Blue Devils being No. 1.

In fact, they've done it more times than Tiger Woods has won golf tournaments, than Detroit Lion fans have brown-bagged it to Ford Field and almost as many times as Mike Krzyzewski advised you on your choice of credit card, insurance or any of the other products endorsed with a smile by college basketball's top coach.

But whether the three-time national championship coach and his team admits it, there is something different this time around. This No. 1 comes with a question mark. At least, until Wednesday night's road game against Wake Forest.

I was at a museum bar this past week, playing some pool with a buddy when golf came up in the conversation between us and our playing competitors.

One of the guys, slightly inebriated, lambasted me with this theory – Tiger Woods is killing the PGA Tour.

No, there were no bigotry in his voice, he didn't care if Woods was black, white or the color of Paula Creamer's golf ball, he just believed that the onslaught of Tiger fans has brought down the competitiveness and interest of a regular PGA Tour event.

At first I thought this guy was a complete moron. I hit my pool shots, had a sip of beer and mused over the idea that the best thing to ever hit golf could somehow be bringing it down? Hogwash, I thought.

It didn't hit me until Saturday afternoon, on the golf course for my lemming-like weekend tee time, when I realized this guy might be on to something.

Maybe Tiger is killing the tour. No, he isn't killing golf, he's turned a sport reserved for higher class businesspeople into a global phenomenon. He's changed the pot-bellied golfer into a gym rat. He's merged two types of golfers, the one that bombs it off the tee and the one that chips and putts well around the greens, into one golfing freak. He's brought mock turtlenecks, Nike Golf, the first pump and red on Sundays to our regular conversation.

Tiger has changed golf, which is obviously clear.

With that said, has he killed the PGA?

Down the stretch of this one, it seemed less like a basketball game between Duke and VCU than it did a male anatomy measuring contest between point guards Eric Maynor and Greg Paulus.

Paulus was big. Maynor broke the scale.

Three straight times down the stretch, VCU sent Maynor to the rack, one-on-one against Paulus, and all three times, he converted. The first two with some penetration, and then a 3 or 4-foot floating jumper ... and on the deciding shot, a pull up from just beyond the free-throw line, giving VCU the win. VCU's swarming team defense and guts kept them in the game against Duke. The contents of Maynor's shorts put them over the top.

I do give Paulus a lot of credit, though. Part of VCU's game plan was to push Duke around, and they were physical, bordering on violent, all night long. VCU made this very personal from the beginning. They played like they believed that Coach K physically assaulted their mothers. And I love that strategy.

And Paulus responded. He did not shrink from the physicality. He hit a lot of big shots of his own, and the loss certainly couldn't be pinned on him. He was Duke's heartbeat. Numbers are rather irrelevant in a game like this, but if you're curious, Paulus had 25 and Maynor had 22.

God bless the VCU Rams. They singlehandedly saved this day.

And here's video evidence of Maynor's hugeness:

I mentioned earlier that Greg Paulus displayed some decently-sized onions in the game against VCU, and I'll stand by saying that he hit some big shots and didn't back down. However, when you're doing this... I don't know that he deserved any props for large onions. I have to take that back.



There's a word for that. It starts with 'b' and rhymes with 'itch.'

Fine, I don't know if they actually had any targets in the New York/New Jersey area for this game, but if you don't think that's a major reason why Duke likes to have a series going with St. John's you're kidding yourself.

Duke had little problem with a St. John's, winning 67-50. It wasn't even that close as Duke got out to a 12-0 start, with St. John's not scoring until 5 minutes into the game. At halftime it was 34-10. St. John's shot a pathetic 3-22 in the half.

I mean, Greg Paulus was able to have his way against the Red Storm with 19 points on 6-10 shooting . That should tell you all you need to know about how bad the Red Storm were.

I'm not sure but I think Coach K left the bench for a while during the second half and sat down in the seats with a couple area recruits to chat. That or he was working on a different monologue for his AmEx commercials. If he didn't, he should have. It's not like St. John's even showed up or had talent to even make this a competitive game.