How’s this for being born under a bad sign.
The team I hate the 2nd most in the world gets beat by Maryland and this leads to…Kentucky (my most hated team) getting the overall #1 seed.
AAAAAAAAH!!!
Is there no end to this pain and agony?
Congrats to Maryland, I guess.
But honestly, why the vitriole for Duke? As near as I can tell, they’re an upstanding program pretty free of scandal. It’s not like we’re dealing with an evil like the Yankees or the Cowboys here.
Frankly, I’d much rather see Duke win the tourney than Kentucky.
I’m a UCLA fan by the way.
Oh, and while we’re on the topic, I’d like to give an extra-large ‘fuck you’ to the beer-swilling primates hooting derisively at the TVs in every goddamned restaurant yesterday afternoon, to the point where I could hear the screaming from the street. I chose a restaurant based on not being able to hear any groaning or rioting from the street, because all I wanted was a burger (hold the tribal rituals) for lunch, but the whole staff were busy keeping the monkeys from flinging poo at the college students on the television. Apparently this game they were playing was to decide which college would be burned down in the celebratory riots, and which would be burned down in the riots of dejected dissapointment. The wait staff were in over their heads.
I was there with friends, and the lunch conversation was fun, but it was a little annoying to have a whole section of the restaurant full of idiots instead of the occasional table. It was a little intrusive, and I didn’t really appreciate it.
So, if you were one of the revelers who chose to cheer loudly and drunkenly in a restaurant that was not a sports bar, fuck you. Get tickets and go see the game, or watch it at home with a bunch of like-minded friends, or watch it with a modicum of basic courtesy at your local taproom. If you’re going to drag your knuckles and insist that your sexual organs are only viable and large if the tribe with your fucking turtle on their shirts wins the annual Spring Fertility festival, go get bent in a sports bar.
Neurotik, I thought you hated the Yankees, although I must be thinking of someone else. Anyone who hates the Yankees should be able to understand the universal hatred of Duke.
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They win far too damn often with five ACC tournament titles in a row and are consistent contenders for the NCAA championship, and have been for the better part of the last fifteen years (which means they knocked off a lot of other teams).
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Their fans multiply like cockroaches and seem to be about as indestructible. I’d guess that over half of Duke fans are just bandwagoners, and if Duke ever started to suck they’d just hop off to another team.
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Maryland hates them because we’ve busted heads with them in more important games then I can count and they still have a condescending attitude towards us. I mean, we hate Duke, but we sure as hell respect them as an opponent.
On a side note, today’s coaches poll is out and Maryland is ranked 21[sup]st[/sup], giving the ACC six ranked teams out of nine. Yow.
I don’t think so. Duke is more like the Braves, but less so. Consistently good, always a threat, dominate their conference, but mostly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
They’re not in the top 10 of consecutive tourney appearances, heck, Maryland has a longer current streak going.
And they’ve only got 3 NCAA Championships. Big whoop.
Yeah, but who cares? It’s just the ACC Tournament. It’s a great conference, granted. Probably the best basketball conference ever, but outside of ACC schools, no one cares. And they have knocked out a lot of other schools in the Big Dance, but that’s the nature of the game. It’s not like they are outspending every other team to ridiculous degrees like the Yankees.
I suppose, but I’ve never really come across a Duke fan. Maybe it’s because I’m in DC and they all jumped ship to Maryland a few years ago.
Why should they when you can pretty much never beat them when it counts outside of this year? Frankly, I don’t think Duke cares about Maryland at all really. In other words, Maryland fans think there’s a rivalry with Duke, but Duke fans only recognize UNC.
Again, Duke isn’t the Yankees and doesn’t deserve the scorn that teams like the Yankees or Cowboys rightfully receive. They aren’t dirty, they play fair, and as near as I can tell, they run an upstanding program that a lot of other schools would do well to emulate.
It really made my day to see Duke loose the ACC title after seeing Kentucky win the SEC.
Seeing that 5 year old Duke fan almost made me feel sorry for him though.
Shot himself in the ass, no less. Some of my colleagues were working as medical personnel for the Friday games, in exchange for getting in free. I can’t wait to hear the details on that one.
[Nelson]Ha ha![/Nelson]
Dr. J
I say to hell with the whole ACC and their waste of time conference tournament.
Conference tourneys for power conferences are just a way to try to get more teams into the NCAAs. Losing in the ACC tourney isn’t a sink or swim proposition, because the good teams, and even the mediocre teams in the ACC, stand a good chance of getting an NCAA invite anyway.
The win or go home (or to the NIT) excitement is at a conference tourney where losing has a real cost. Kent State losing the MAC tournament finale, and UW-Milwaukee losing the Horizon League championship game, cost both teams their only shot at the NCAAs.
Go look up old tournament brackets and see how many times in the last fifteen years that Duke has gotten a number one seed and IIRC, except for the year they missed the tournament they only once had a seed lower than three. That consistency is unmatched by any other program today.
Maryland may have a longer streak going, but if you look at the last fifteen years Maryland has eleven tournament appearances and Duke has fourteen, usually with higher seeds. I’d argue that both teams are consistent, but Duke has consistently been better.
Besides, Duke doesn’t have to win every tournament to piss other people off, they just have to go far enough consistently to crush the hopes of fans of other teams.
I was pointing at Duke’s ACC wins to demonstrate how dominant Duke has become. You yourself note that the ACC is a great conference, so how do you think teams that face Duke in their non-conference schedule feel about going up against them? And yes, it’s the nature of the game for school’s to get knocked out of the NCAA Tournament, but it seems like Duke does it far more often than other teams.
Maybe it is a local thing, and maybe because I’m so close to the Maryland campus I get to see more of the jerks who like to root for the team the locals hate just to piss them off. But looking at some of the other responses in this thread and elsewhere I doubt it.
Maryland has lost big games to Duke in the past (Final Four, ACC championship), but there have been other big games that Duke lost that cost them (Maryland knocking them out of first place in the rankings two years ago). And even in the big games that Maryland lost they still managed to put a scare into Duke (Maryland being up by twenty in the Final Four).
I won’t deny that the Duke-UNC rivalry is the stuff of legend, but as of late the largest threat to Duke’s dominance of the ACC has been Maryland and Duke fans refuse to recognize that, and that’s pretty fucking condescending. Duke fans know the rivalry exists, but they try and get our goat by denying it. If they really didn’t care about Maryland then why were they chanting “Not our rival” when they faced off three weeks ago? Sounds a lot like denial to me.
In the long run the Maryland-Duke rivalry may fade away and it will likely never replace the UNC-Duke rivalry, but it sure as hell exists now.
So? There are other reasons to dislike a team, such as continuing dominance and obnoxious fans. Duke’s got both.
Besides, Duke always pulls in great players based upon their reputation which ensures that they’re going to continue having a great program. Not unfair, but frustrating for lesser teams. Gary Williams has had to put together teams with players that others had written off. Remember Lonny Baxter? People thought he would ride the pine in the NCAA and he wound up being a key player in Maryland’s National Championship run, earning MVP of the West bracket. Granted, the overall situation has changed for Maryland since then.
Ultimately what it comes down to is that Duke is the most dominant team on the college basketball landscape. They’re the closest thing to the modern equivalent of 60s UCLA in today’s age of players leaving early to go to the pros. Fans of other teams band together to hate them until the dominance falls off.
Maryland fans hate them because we’ve most often been the threat to their dominance and they’ve most often played spoiler to our aspirations and then they look down their noses at us.
Really, for myself, the hatred is in fun and not to be taken too seriously. It’s great to have a team to root against and just let it all out, and being frustrated by them makes the wins against them all the sweeter. In spite of any comments I might make I hope that no ill befalls any Duke players or fans and I have a ton of respect for coach K. Part of the fun is hating the Goliath of the NCAAs, and although I gleefully point out whenever they fail, I know that when their dynasty ends part of me will be disappointed.
Sure, but it doesn’t translate into championship wins. Like I said, look at the Braves. Won the division 12 or 13 years in a row, but only came away with the big prize once. That’s sort of like Duke. Highly ranked, win their conference, but don’t win the whole shebang that often.
It’s hard for me, as a fan of UCLA (even with the current program woes), to really get that up in arms about them. Which is why the only team I consistently root against in basketball is Kentucky, since I don’t want to see them surpass UCLA.
True enough.
I disagree. Granted, winning every ACC tournament for the past however many years certainly gives other ACC teams a legit gripe against them. Other than that, though…
Probably great, since they schedule them. It’s a win-win proposition for them. They boost their strength of schedule and if they win, it’s a huge deal. If they lose, well, that’s expected. (Obviously, I’m not talking about teams like Kentucky, Kansas or Stanford here - they should be able to square off quite nicely).
Well, they do it more often than other teams, but not that much. Consider the Final Four since they won their first championship in 1991 - Duke’s been there 5 times, but UNC has been there 6, Kansas and Kentucky at 4 apiece.
Sounds like they know it bugs you and they are rubbing your face in it.
So really, your beef here is that you don’t get enough respect? Sorry, but Maryland’s been their ACC rival for what, three years? That’s not a rivalry, that’s an irritation.
Except, I don’t think it does. I mean, you’re rivals in the sense that you’re in the same conference, but that’s like saying Baltimore-New York in the mid-90s was a rivalry. It wasn’t, except maybe to Baltimoreans.
Again, I think comparing them to the evil that is the Yankees and the Cowboys is going a bit overboard. Maybe the Braves, but again, outside of the ACC, they don’t really bug that many people. I know on the West Coast, no one cares that much about Duke, aside from respecting them as a solid, upstanding program. But no one gets that amped to play them like they do Stanford-Cal or something.
Well, Asylum, I’m a Duke alum. I’ve been a fan for around the last fifteen years (since high school). And I have to say that, while I have all the respect in the world for Mayland as an opponent, Sunday’s loss didn’t bother me one-tenth as much as it would have if it had been to Carolina. I don’t think that means that I’m looking down my nose at you. If it is, I apologize–I don’t hate Maryland like I hate UNC. I’m happy to see Maryland do well out-of-conference (as I am with the other seven non-Tar Heel ACC teams), and I rooted for them in the championship game in 2002. You guys have classy players–Juan Dixon will always be my favorite non-Dukie–and, while I may not like your coach, I recognize that he’s damn good. And Maryland fans are passionate, if sometimes overexuberant. 
I wouldn’t be saying anything nearly so nice about Carolina.
Now, I’ve lived in D.C. the last three years, and I know a lot of Maryland fans, and I know the rivalry thing bugs y’all. (Hell, look at Thomas Boswell’s article in today’s Post.) But I can’t change the fact that I’d gladly trade, say, four losses against Maryland for one win versus UNC. It was the same way with Wake Forest back when I was at undergrad–we seemingly lost to them every single time during the Duncan/Childress years, and while the losses sucked, I never harbored any real animosity for the school itself. They came in, they played hard, they won. They deserved it.
I’d welcome further discussion about this, although I think it’s more likely that I’ll just get dogpiled by the Duke-haters in this thread.
Obviously people on the southern portion of the East Coast hate Duke, but it sure seems from derogatory statements that get made about them nationwide that a lot of other people do as well. We can toss stats at each other all day, but shrug. Whatever, I’m not going to convince you, and you’re not going to convince me. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
As far as Gadarene’s post goes, maybe some Duke fans don’t consider Maryland to be a rival, but their constant taunting us about not being their rival sure seems suspicious to me, among other annoying behaviors they exhibit. Maybe Maryland fans are touchier on the issue because area Duke fans love to bait us. I don’t think that Duke wants to admit that Maryland has arrived on the national scene and is a serious threat to them (neither do most Maryland fans for that matter, but that’s another topic).
On a side note I will admit that Maryland fans in the College Park area do go overboard. The one downside to a big Maryland win is that I know a bunch of idiots are going to riot right outside my favorite comicbook shop.
Those are two different things. You’ve obviously arrived on the national scene, and you don’t need us to tell you that. As for being “a serious threat,” what does that mean? That you’ve got a good chance of beating us every time out? Well, yes. Who hasn’t admitted that? That you’re our primary rival? You’re not. But you can be (and are) a damn good team without being our arch-nemesis.
By “constant taunting,” what do you mean, other than the fact that Duke students have chanted ‘not our rival’ at your team several times? Are the Cameron Crazies more representative of Duke fandom than I am? Is the average Duke fan a 20-year-old wearing blue paint? And what other annoying behaviors do we exhibit?
Look, you are a rival. Wake Forest is a rival. Duke’s had some unbelievable games against Maryland the last few years. But that doesn’t make you the rival, because that spot’s taken. I don’t see how that’s condescending to Maryland.
Gadarene, I never said that Maryland was the biggest rival for Duke. UNC is. Go look at my second post back or so to see that I said that.
What I’m saying is that behind UNC Maryland is the team that Duke hates the most. Sort of like how Washington gets geared up for games against the NY Giants, but not as much for games against Dallas.
I’m saying that the reason for this animosity is recent, and I’ll admit that in the long run it might fade away, unlike the Duke-UNC rivalry.
If you agree with the above then we have no problem.
And I’m saying that from the perspective of most of the Duke fans I know (I’m on an e-mail list with a bunch of other alums who live and breathe Duke basketball), “hate” is entirely the wrong word. I mean, I can’t speak for anyone else, but at the end of the game, though I was pretty upset that Duke lost, I was happy that Nik Caner-Medley and John Gilchrist and Hassan Fofana and the rest of the Terps would get to experience an ACC championship–they looked so ecstatic as the thing wound down, you couldn’t help but empathize. I wouldn’t have been feeling the same way towards Rashad McCants and Ray Felton.
Rather than “hate,” I’d say that behind UNC Maryland is the team that Duke respects most as an opponent. We know you guys aren’t going to be intimidated; we know you have just as much chance of beating us at home as away; we know you’ll always get up for Duke games in a major way.
If anything, the team I hate most behind UNC right now–and it isn’t even hate, just a severe dislike–is Georgia Tech. They play dirty; seems like every Tech-Duke game is a scuffle waiting to happen. I’m still incensed about Muhammed’s takedown of Daniel Ewing on the breakaway.
So I guess I’m still not understanding, Asylum, how you claim to know Duke fans so well that you can tell me how I feel about your team. Or if, when you talk about who “Duke hates the most,” you mean that the Duke team hates Maryland, I’d suggest you’re still wrong. Players don’t buy into rivalries like fans do. At least at Duke, one of Coach K’s credos is that the team play just as hard, with as much fire and energy, for every single opponent. I would hope we don’t view Maryland (or UNC) as anything other than just another team, in that context.