Pathetic. Consider UCONN beat No 1 seed Duke in the 99 and 04 final fours, and No. 1 Florida in the 2014 final 4l.Duke plays a better seed in Houston in Sweet 16.
Duke hasn’t beaten a better seeded team since 1994.
Their guy McCain shot out of his mind, 8-11 from 3. The rest of the team was also a respectable 6-17.How did they beat JMU by so much? I missed that game. JMU had looked so good previously.
that was not lost on me either. I rationalized that Jared McCain and the rest of the Duke team used up the allotted 3 pointers made for the day in Brooklyn.Their guy McCain shot out of his mind, 8-11 from 3. The rest of the team was also a respectable 6-17.
And this was in the same arena with the same balls where we then shot 3-23.
Expanding on this, we were actually ridiculously unlucky for most of the 90s and 00s how often brackets didn't fall apart in our favor, and we ended up facing the chalkiest possible seeds in 1994 (#3 Florida in S16), 1995 (#1 UCLA), 1998 (#1 UNC), 2002 (#1 Maryland), and 2003 (#1 Texas).Also, for all the talk about the brackets disintegrating to our benefit, over that time we have actually beaten higher seeds in:
- 2023 (#4 over #3 Gonzaga)
- 2016 (#9 over #8 Colorado)
- 2014 (#7 over #2 Villanova, #3 Iowa State, #4 Michigan State, and #1 Florida)
- 2011 (#3 over #2 SDSU)
- 2004 (#2 over #1 Duke)
- 2003 (#5 over #4 Stanford)
Our problem in the mid-00s was losing to lower seeds and in the 90s and early 00s was not being able to get over the hump against #1 seeds.
We would've if Donyell made one of those free throws.Expanding on this, we were actually ridiculously unlucky for most of the 90s and 00s how often brackets didn't fall apart in our favor, and we ended up facing the chalkiest possible seeds in 1994 (#3 Florida in S16), 1995 (#1 UCLA), 1998 (#1 UNC), 2002 (#1 Maryland), and 2003 (#1 Texas).
Not once did we benefit from a 1 seed losing prematurely, when it should have happened at least once or twice. In fact, it wasn't until 2004 that we benefited from a 1 seed being upset before we were set to face them.