In the final minutes of Duke University's 61-59 win over Butler University, I was actually having some minor respiratory problems. There's nothing medically wrong with me (knock on government-provided therapeutic wood), it's just that I simply forgot to breathe at times. These oversights are bound to happen, especially during incredible finishes of NCAA championship games.
Duke was up by one at halftime. And what a goofy half it was; Butler was surprisingly outrebounding the Blue Devils and Bulldogs senior Avery Jukes, a little-used reserve, was the team's leading scorer with 10 points.
Still, though, there was no way Butler would keep this up, right? Yet somehow they did. Once Duke was up by five with 2:30 left with the ball, it again seemed like a foregone conclusion that Kyle Singler or somebody would drain a three and the dream would die an agonizing death, (perhaps by asphyxiation).
It didn't happen then either. And I fully blame Matt Howard for my acute asthmatic symptoms.
Howard, Butler's decently-sized but hack-happy junior forward, was silent for most of the first half and sporadically sat on the bench because of foul trouble. But he never relented. In the final two minutes, he compensated for some of his missed layups with an incredible offensive rebound and subsequent put-back. That and another one of his layups hewed the five-point lead down to one in the final minute.
Pant. Pant. Where's my inhaler? Oh crap, I don't have one.
In the final three minutes, Duke only attempted two shots, neither one going in. And as circumstance would have it, Butler would have what could've been the final shot. Down one, they gave it to Gordon Heyward, their perhaps-NBA-bound sophomore leader, who drove to his right and launched a high-arcing fade-away shot that seemed to hover in mid-air forever before bouncing off the rim and into the hands of Duke's Ivan Drago of rebounds and fouls, Brian Zoubek, who himself was hacked in desperation.
Article comments
1 - Baritone
No one - namely you and my wife - gave Butler a snow ball's chance against Duke. And there were at least 2 or 3 times during the game including the 1 you mentioned when it appeared that the Devils were going to take control and coast to a relatively easy win with the hapless Bulldogs gasping for breath somewhat like yourself and wondering what hit them.
The most frustrating thing about the game was watching all those Butler shots clang off the iron or bounce away off the backboard.
In the end, though, it was just a damned good basketball game. While the outcome was disappointing, I can't find anything bad to say about Duke and certainly not their coach. While I refuse to check Wikipedia to see how to spell his name, Coach K (will suffice) is truly one of the class acts in college athletics. For some reason I was mildly surprised to hear that this was his 30th season at Duke.
I go back to the early Bob Knight days at IU. Coach K had been one of Knight's assistants at Army. Since his arrival at Duke, he has put together one of the best coaching careers ever, at any level, and done so with class. It's certainly no cause for embarrassment to lose to a Mike Kshcxowicr@;)zski team.
B