#104. Sweet Sixteen (Friday, March 29, 2013)

#104. Sweet Sixteen (Friday, March 29, 2013)

What was your best day…of being part of a group success?

Canadian college sports are a side curiosity that maybe occupy students’ minds on only a handful of days in their university career1. It can’t even be spoken in the same sentence as U.S. college sports—which is a multi-billion dollar industry that drives the competitive balance in the pro sports leagues and the waves of alumni donations those schools are so reliant on.

So when I got to Duke for my Master’s in the fall of 2012, I was in for a very different experience. These students took their school pride seriously—especially when it came to the basketball team. Some classmates even did the whole campout thing at the start of the year—i.e., line up for three nights to get into the draw for season tickets2.

This was a pretty special Duke season, as it was the last one before Krzyzewski fully sold out to a roster of one-and-dones. The team centered on the senior Mason Plumlee, with a supporting cast of Seth Curry, Ryan Kelly, and Rashid Sulaimon (who was later kicked off). They had been ranked first overall for a good part of the early season, but later tailed off and entered March Madness as a 2-seed in the Midwest Region.

During the first week of the tournament, I watched with a completely new level of excitement as they dispatched 15-seed Albany and 7-seed Creighton. (I felt especially nervous in the lead-up to the Creighton game, like I had this strange emotional connection to the team.) And on this Friday they were going against 3-seed Michigan State for a spot in the Elite Eight.

So the MA Econ House crew—Jason Simonsen (my best friend during my Master’s), Colin Garcia, Jack Salvador, and Isinachi Ebute—organized a party that Friday night at their place to watch the game. And on that night, it was packed.

First, we watched the absolutely insane ending of the Kansas-Michigan game3. The one where Kansas had an 11-point lead with a minute and a half left—before Michigan made a furious comeback (aided by Kansas missing free throws) to tie it, and then won it in overtime.

Then came the main event. And every play was heart-stopping in that environment. Every point, every good play, we all just exploded inside that house. Just fifty-plus Duke students, stuffed into one space, joined in one mind by the action on the screen in front of us. It was a wild night of pure sports fandom and school unity.

And the result—Duke 71, MSU 61—was pretty good too.4

  1. In the case of Waterloo football, it was the day half the team got busted for steroids.
  2. Typically, the only reason to go through all this trouble is to get a ticket to the Duke-UNC game (and maybe the Duke-NC State game, they were supposed to be good that year). Every other game, it’s typically easy enough to get through the secondary market.
  3. Kansas fans, you may want to skip to the next paragraph.
  4. Unfortunately, Duke then lost to Louisville in the Elite Eight two days later, in the game where Kevin Ware broke his leg in full view of the Duke bench (those who are squeamish may want to skip this too).