When it comes down to Duke teams that were sheer fun to watch, it was hard to beat the 2001 group. That bunch was a blast.
Start with Shane Battier, who was sort of the ultimate Dukie, add in Jason Williams, Chris Duhon, Nate James, Mike Dunleavy, Reggie Love and Carlos Boozer and that was a tremendous team.
Duke lost to Maryland at home on February 28th when Jason Williams had a relatively minor injury but Carlos Boozer had a serious problem that kept him out for some time. Duke went with Love and Casey
Sanders down low.
They got back on track in Chapel Hill, winning there 95-81 and then were off to Atlanta for the ACC Tournament, where they played NC State then Maryland and UNC again in the semifinals and finals respectively.
True story: just before she was supposed to depart for Atlanta, our mom (Julian and John’s) felt ill and drove straight to DUMC (aka Duke Hospital). She was diagnosed with streptococcal pneumonia, which is a terrible condition that can kill you in a matter of hours. It’s what killed Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets.
Relatively quickly, the doctors induced a coma and so we watched much of the tournament from her hospital room.
On Saturday while UNC was playing Georgia Tech, a nurse came in and asked “how’s Carolina doing?”
We said they were winning…and the blood pressure monitor shot up about 10 points. We thought it was funny but coincidental.
Then on Sunday, another nurse asked how the championship was going and we said “Carolina’s up right now.”
And the blood pressure reading shot back up again.
That was when we were pretty sure she was going to make it: even in a coma, Liz King couldn’t stand hearing UNC was doing well.
Anyway, here’s the game we watched in that hospital room which, of course, Duke won. It was the height of the mercifully brief Matt Doherty era.
Postscript: some dweeby little Canadian nurse suggested to us that we weren’t helping her by talking and cheering and tried to have us put out. That guy clearly didn’t understand the therapeutic medicine that game provided to all of us and was not too far from needing some medicine himself. Cooler heads prevailed in the end though.
