March Madness Thoughts, Day 3.0

We absolutely (positively)...wait while we slap the floor to signal we are serious...loved watching Duke go down on Saturday to West Virginia. No one will come out and say it, but most many people think Duke has become "too white" to contend for Final Fours. Our answer? Is Wisconsin too white? How about Butler? No, we contend the Duke problem is Coach K has never adapted to the one or even two year wonder recruit. The Dukies were about the last school to begin to lose underclassmen to the NBA. The team that lost to UConn in the 1999 Championship was stocked with blue chip youngsters. But less than a week after the loss to the Huskies, Coach K's world changed forever. Sophomore point guard William Avery declared for the NBA. Sophomore All-American Elton Brand did likewise. Super frosh Corey Maggette (left) went pro. And freshman forward Chris Burgess, a top five HS recruit, transferred to Utah. Of those four, only Brand (the eventual number one pick overall) received Coach K's blessing. The other three ignored his pleas and Coach K did a slow burn. Two months later, ESPN the Magazine profiled Krzyzewski's crumbling world. The piece was filled with inside anecdotes and anonymous quotes of Coach K using the...wait for it...slap the defensive floor...F-Bomb to the departing players and their parents. (Most assumed the anonymous source was Burgess' father.)

After that, Coach K went underground for nearly two months. He resurfaced on the summer camp circuit. But suddenly Duke was no longer going after the one and done players. The last straw was when they took a chance on Shaun Livingston. When he never set foot on campus, Krzyzewski threw in the towel and began targeting the good, but not great, players. Don't believe it? Look at their current roster. They have maybe two marginal NBA prospects -- sophomore Gerald Henderson and freshman Kyle Singler. After that, the rest of the team will soon be working on Wall Street. (That or they will follow the famed Duke Tradition of becoming Coach K's assistant coaches.)

And until Mr. American Express starts going after the one or two and done type of players, his teams will continue their recent March Madness trend of going one or two and done.