Did NCAA Script this Final Four match?

Ryan and Matt discuss how UNC/Duke happened

Ryan Griffin: And these two teams right here are like the standard-bearers of what college basketball has been for so long. The only shame is that it’s not a Roy Williams coached team is that it’s Hubert Davis. If there was one thing you could change about the story, it would be both Roy and K’s last year, but Roy went out just one year too early.

I’m super excited to see how this game plays out. I can’t imagine there’s more. Hate, going on from either side. Cause after they beat Duke, last time North Carolina was all on Twitter, all their players talking about, oh yeah. Hate to see it. What a shame. Kay had to end it like this.

And he said it might not be then, could karma come back, or are you guys going to beat them again? Cause that’s the game. Duke was up. What? 10. With or however many points they were up with eight minutes left and then, choked the game.

Matt Bassin: And this is a team that dumped on North Carolina in Chapel Hill a month and a half earlier, had no problems with the tar heels, beating them by 20 plus, and then to turn around and have that second half against them at home in what should have been coach K’s last game against his biggest rival? It looked really bad for Duke memories and now you’ve got one more shot. The thing that blew my mind was, these two teams over the last 20 years. The number of national championships, they had a number of almost, just contending teams, one seed, two seed, three seed to the NCAA tournament, and the fact that they had never met before now.

And then I saw the rules and I was like, oh, this actually makes sense because there are all these rules in place for teams in the same conference. If they are a top-four seed, they can’t be in the same and the earliest they could face each other was a final four. When you think about how great both these teams have been for 20 plus years, it makes sense now, when you hear that they couldn’t have possibly been, it’s not by chance. There are rules to bracketing, They create storylines. I didn’t think this was going to be one of the storylines when you saw when we saw Michigan state and as the seven and Duke’s two okay, we’re going to get Izzo and Krzyzewski one last time because it’s the second-most ever by two coaches and then NCAA tournament. It’s two legendary coaches, two Hall of Fame coaches. Why not give them one more chance to battle it out when you know, it’s Coach K’s last run. That made sense. I didn’t see North Carolina steamrolling, Baylor before letting them back into it and then continue in this run and tough fought battle against UCLA.

They really steamrolled the Peacocks of St Peter’s. It just happened to be that time. But both these teams jelling at the absolute right time, we had talked about, Duke growing up in the NCAA tournament, they grew up in those final few minutes against Michigan State. We had a five-point lead and we weren’t able to close the door on them.

North Carolina was in the same situation. Duke shot outside shot sailed for outside shots. Didn’t force the issue as they did against us. So we saw them grow and become better. We saw it against Texas tech as well, and Arkansas was just outclassed. I didn’t, that was an easy matchup for Duke in the elite eight.

So now we got it. One more time. We’ve got the legendary basketball rivals for college and it’s not for all the marbles but it’s almost for all the marbles.

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