Word: duked
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...just becuase the Duke players can win despite help from the officials does not mean that the zebras don't favor them...
Consider that Duke, a team that regularly hoists thirty threes a game, got to the foul line hundreds of times more than its opponets this year. This is without any semblance of an inside game--save for Carlos Boozer, who was inconsistent for much of the year...
...like there's some elaborate conspiracy going on. But officials are human, and superb, hard-working, talented teams like Duke tend to get the benefit of the doubt, just as superb teams do in the NBA. Michael Jordan traveled half the time--that doesn't make him any less of a player...
Anyone who doesn't think the referees have given Duke the benefit of the doubt this year should remember the words of coach Mike Krzyzewski himself. In 1984, when Duke first began to show signs of future greatness, Krzyzewski publicly railed on ACC officiating, provlaiming to all that there was a double standard in the conference--and North Carolina was the sole beneficiary...
...coach was right. Carolina, consistently among the greatest programs in college basketball, did get the benefit of the doubt back then, much to the chagrin of ABCers across the country. Krzyzewski's famous outcry won him a degree of national respect and, more than anything, established Duke as that intended to nto just compete with the North Carolina of the basketball, but to beat them...