On January 4, 1978 Bill Foster took a young but prodigiously talented Duke basketball team to College Park, Maryland, where they defeated Maryland 88-78.
It was Duke’s first win at Maryland since 1971.
Jim Spanarkel led Duke with 33 points in a performance so dominant that one D.C. sportswriter said that Maryland had been “Spanarkeled”
Three days later Duke visited NC State. The Wolfpack led 35-30 when Spanarkel was fouled with no time on the first-half clock. Spanarkel shot 86 percent from the line in 1978.
He missed both foul shots. State pulled away in the second half for a 74-50 win. Spanarkel had eight points.
State was not Spanarkeled.
Clearly this was not a Final Four team.
Eleven years later, over the span of eight days, Mike Krzyewski’s Devils lost three straight games, 91-71 to North Carolina (in Cameron), 75-71 to Wake Forest and 88-73 to NC State.
Season over. Right?
You probably see where I’m going with this. But let me throw in a few more examples for emphasis.
January 5, 1991. Duke travels to Virginia and loses 81-64. Krzyzewski was so upset by this loss that he called for a practice as soon as the bus got back to the Cameron parking lot. Things were said. Manhoods were challenged. Grant Hill broke his nose.
Duke won 12 of its next 13 and the ACC regular season title.
And lost to North Carolina 96-74 in the ACC Tournament.
And didn’t lose again that season.
Duke went to the NCAA title game in 1994, Grant Hill’s senior season. Duke lost both games to North Carolina, 89-78 in Chapel Hill and 87-77 in Durham.
Duke’s 2010 title team lost 88-74 to an NC State team that finished 5-11 in the ACC. The 2015 title team lost 90-74 to Miami. At home. Miami finished 10-8 in the ACC that season and lost to Eastern Kentucky by 28 points.
Enough already. Take a deep, cleansing breath. The season isn’t over. Duke hasn’t been exposed as frauds.
Without putting too fine a point on it, some of the best teams in Duke history have suffered much worse loses to much worse teams than 2023-’24 North Carolina, been declared down for the count by portions of the fan base and somehow lived to tell about it.
By the way, that loss Saturday dropped Duke to 11-2 over its last 13 games.
Still doesn’t mean there aren’t some things that don’t need fixing. Or at least cleaned up.
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