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| Seth Trimble called game and then put 'em to sleep. |
New Face, Same Duke
Out of those 15 games, Carolina had more fouls called against them in 8. Duke had more in 5. Two games were even.
That means Carolina has been on the wrong side of the whistle 53.33 percent of the time. Duke only 33.33 percent. The rest is a wash.
So when Duke fans complain about fouls, what they are really upset about is that the math did not favor them on this particular night.
And since specifics matter, try this one; Carolina did not shoot a single free throw in the last 5 minutes of the game. Zero. It was a comeback built on energy, belief, stops, and a game winner, not whistles.
Yes, the Duke bigs got in foul trouble. Duke has always played a physical, technical brand of defense that flirts with what officials will allow. That didn’t start with Jon Scheyer and it didn’t end with Coach K.
Take the Henri Veesaar play in the first half. Henri was pushed from behind, and probably hit on the wrist, going up for a put back. If there’s contact, it’s a shooting foul. Instead, no foul is called and it’s ruled Carolina ball. Duke challenges and possession flips.
That doesn’t just vanish overnight.
And now the story is quietly shifting. Duke journalists are walking it back. Carolina sources say nothing happened. Theo Pinson has made it clear he was joking.
Which leaves a simple question. Could it be that Scheyer just wasn’t ready to take the loss cleanly? That he didn’t want to spend the week hearing about blowing the biggest lead to Carolina in a quarter century?
In the closing minutes, Scheyer showed enough of his many “faces” for us to recognize the old ones. The posture. The deflection. The vitriol. The tirades. The immediate need for an alternate story.
by Will Triplett
It was April 4th, 2022.
I was standing in front of my TV next to my wife when Armando Bacot caught the ball on the baseline and the floor slid out from under him. Not symbolically. Not dramatically. Literally.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But the floor moved.”
Ball out of bounds to Kansas. Moments later, the clock hits zero. KU completed a historic comeback on the biggest stage, and won the sport’s biggest prize.
When that game is talked about now, it has hardened into a clean, efficient story. Yes, Carolina ended Coach K’s career in the Final Four. But Carolina also blew a seventeen point lead in the title game and finished runner up. That’s it. There’s no legend of the “Moving Floor Game.” No side conversations. No curiosity.
It never became anything other than a Kansas national title and Carolina as the team that gave it away.
And we let it. Our coach let it. Our program let it. We said we blew the lead. Congrats to them.
We didn’t demand rewrites or invent villains. We took the loss with a kind of boring dignity and moved on. If only our rival understood that courtesy.
Fast forward to Saturday night in Chapel Hill.
Carolina was down double digits multiple times in the second half. Much of the half lived between seven and nine points. The Heels cut it to six and then, with under three minutes left, Dixon and Veesaar hit two straight threes. Tie game. We ended the game on four straight defensive stops, and as you’ve likely heard by now, Seth HIMble won the game at the buzzer.
A comeback. A real one. The kind that usually becomes the story.
Instead, today is about two things. Foul totals and a “punch.”
I’ve heard enough.
The outrage coming from Duke fans is impressive in its commitment to fiction. This is a fanbase that has benefited from the most generous whistle in modern college basketball suddenly discovering oppression.
Still, I went back and did the work. I looked at the last fifteen Carolina Duke games dating back to 2020 and tracked the fouls. Total fouls are nearly even, with Duke slightly higher. Duke at 248. Carolina at 244. They took over the lead on Saturday.
But totals don’t tell the story. Distribution does.
It was April 4th, 2022.
I was standing in front of my TV next to my wife when Armando Bacot caught the ball on the baseline and the floor slid out from under him. Not symbolically. Not dramatically. Literally.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But the floor moved.”
Ball out of bounds to Kansas. Moments later, the clock hits zero. KU completed a historic comeback on the biggest stage, and won the sport’s biggest prize.
When that game is talked about now, it has hardened into a clean, efficient story. Yes, Carolina ended Coach K’s career in the Final Four. But Carolina also blew a seventeen point lead in the title game and finished runner up. That’s it. There’s no legend of the “Moving Floor Game.” No side conversations. No curiosity.
It never became anything other than a Kansas national title and Carolina as the team that gave it away.
And we let it. Our coach let it. Our program let it. We said we blew the lead. Congrats to them.
We didn’t demand rewrites or invent villains. We took the loss with a kind of boring dignity and moved on. If only our rival understood that courtesy.
Fast forward to Saturday night in Chapel Hill.
Carolina was down double digits multiple times in the second half. Much of the half lived between seven and nine points. The Heels cut it to six and then, with under three minutes left, Dixon and Veesaar hit two straight threes. Tie game. We ended the game on four straight defensive stops, and as you’ve likely heard by now, Seth HIMble won the game at the buzzer.
A comeback. A real one. The kind that usually becomes the story.
Instead, today is about two things. Foul totals and a “punch.”
I’ve heard enough.
The outrage coming from Duke fans is impressive in its commitment to fiction. This is a fanbase that has benefited from the most generous whistle in modern college basketball suddenly discovering oppression.
Still, I went back and did the work. I looked at the last fifteen Carolina Duke games dating back to 2020 and tracked the fouls. Total fouls are nearly even, with Duke slightly higher. Duke at 248. Carolina at 244. They took over the lead on Saturday.
But totals don’t tell the story. Distribution does.
Out of those 15 games, Carolina had more fouls called against them in 8. Duke had more in 5. Two games were even.
That means Carolina has been on the wrong side of the whistle 53.33 percent of the time. Duke only 33.33 percent. The rest is a wash.
So when Duke fans complain about fouls, what they are really upset about is that the math did not favor them on this particular night.
And since specifics matter, try this one; Carolina did not shoot a single free throw in the last 5 minutes of the game. Zero. It was a comeback built on energy, belief, stops, and a game winner, not whistles.
Yes, the Duke bigs got in foul trouble. Duke has always played a physical, technical brand of defense that flirts with what officials will allow. That didn’t start with Jon Scheyer and it didn’t end with Coach K.
Take the Henri Veesaar play in the first half. Henri was pushed from behind, and probably hit on the wrist, going up for a put back. If there’s contact, it’s a shooting foul. Instead, no foul is called and it’s ruled Carolina ball. Duke challenges and possession flips.
If that sounds familiar, it should. It's officiating doing what it so often does. Especially ACC officials.
It's muscle memory.
The larger point remains. If you are a program that has benefited from the whistle more often than not, you do not get to build your postgame identity around grievance, especially when the game was not decided by it.
Ngongba fouling out did not hurt Duke. Brown was better both positionally and defensively. Cameron Boozer didn't foul out despite earning his second foul midway through the first half. His missed final shot had nothing to do with contact. Let's put this plainly; he was not fouled. Watch it from every angle you want. It isn't there.
Which brings us to the “punch.”
Jon Scheyer went to the post game microphone and said one of his staffers was “punched in the face.” Theo Pinson joked about “free licks.” Within hours, the story morphed into a full-blown accusation that Theo Pinson assaulted a Duke coach and that something criminal had occurred. Here’s the issue:
There were 23,000 people in the Dean Dome. Every one of them had a phone. The court was surrounded by broadcast cameras. If something happened near Duke’s bench, there were hundreds of Duke fans with perfect sight lines and immediate motivation to film it. And yet there is no video. Not one clip. Not one angle. Not one shaky phone recording from section 106.
The larger point remains. If you are a program that has benefited from the whistle more often than not, you do not get to build your postgame identity around grievance, especially when the game was not decided by it.
Ngongba fouling out did not hurt Duke. Brown was better both positionally and defensively. Cameron Boozer didn't foul out despite earning his second foul midway through the first half. His missed final shot had nothing to do with contact. Let's put this plainly; he was not fouled. Watch it from every angle you want. It isn't there.
Which brings us to the “punch.”
Jon Scheyer went to the post game microphone and said one of his staffers was “punched in the face.” Theo Pinson joked about “free licks.” Within hours, the story morphed into a full-blown accusation that Theo Pinson assaulted a Duke coach and that something criminal had occurred. Here’s the issue:
There were 23,000 people in the Dean Dome. Every one of them had a phone. The court was surrounded by broadcast cameras. If something happened near Duke’s bench, there were hundreds of Duke fans with perfect sight lines and immediate motivation to film it. And yet there is no video. Not one clip. Not one angle. Not one shaky phone recording from section 106.
When Kyle Filipowski was violently murdered by Wake Forest fans on the court a few years ago, a discourse that took over college basketball for nearly a week, he never missed a single second of game action. But at least we had what occurred on tape. Visual evidence.
If this had happened, it would already be everywhere. (Side note; what IS everywhere is video of Isaiah Evans smacking a Heels fan's phone out of their hand, and kicking a wall in the locker room tunnel after assaulting a wet floor sign. Strange how none of that was on the ESPN homepage.)
Look, I’m not reaching for conspiracy here. It’s entirely possible Scheyer thought he saw something.
It’s possible emotions were high and information got distorted before it was checked. That happens.
But context matters.
Scheyer spent the formative years of his career under a coach who was a master at shaping narratives. Long before social media, Coach K understood how to frame losses, how to redirect attention, and how to tell the world not to believe what it just watched.
If this had happened, it would already be everywhere. (Side note; what IS everywhere is video of Isaiah Evans smacking a Heels fan's phone out of their hand, and kicking a wall in the locker room tunnel after assaulting a wet floor sign. Strange how none of that was on the ESPN homepage.)
Look, I’m not reaching for conspiracy here. It’s entirely possible Scheyer thought he saw something.
It’s possible emotions were high and information got distorted before it was checked. That happens.
But context matters.
Scheyer spent the formative years of his career under a coach who was a master at shaping narratives. Long before social media, Coach K understood how to frame losses, how to redirect attention, and how to tell the world not to believe what it just watched.
That doesn’t just vanish overnight.
And now the story is quietly shifting. Duke journalists are walking it back. Carolina sources say nothing happened. Theo Pinson has made it clear he was joking.
Which leaves a simple question. Could it be that Scheyer just wasn’t ready to take the loss cleanly? That he didn’t want to spend the week hearing about blowing the biggest lead to Carolina in a quarter century?
In the closing minutes, Scheyer showed enough of his many “faces” for us to recognize the old ones. The posture. The deflection. The vitriol. The tirades. The immediate need for an alternate story.
The program didn’t
change. The haircut did.
Duke is not just a basketball team. It's a perception engine. The game doesn’t end at the buzzer. The postgame narrative is part of the strategy, and always has been. What happened on the court is only half the job. The rest is selling something cleaner, simpler, and more flattering than reality.
And it works.
Because Duke has not played for a national title in over a decade. Yet listen to the way they’re discussed at large and you’d never know it. The assumption is always inevitability. Always relevance. Always dominance. As if the banners are still warm.
That story doesn’t write itself. When the NBA commissioner is a Duke alum. When Duke voices populate major broadcasts. When you hire a marketing exec to run your basketball program. When the megaphones belong to your people. The benefit of the doubt becomes structural. The narrative becomes your canvas.
They even branded it. The "Brotherhood." A word meant to suggest permanence, loyalty, shared sacrifice. Except most of their elite talent over the last decade has spent less than five months together as an actual team before scattering to the league. Brotherhood? Semesterhood. A group project in matching sweats. A stopover on the way to a payday.
Carolina lost to Kansas and accepted the simplified version of history. We wore the choke label. We didn’t fight the edit. We moved on.
Duke loses one heartbreaker to their hated rival and immediately needs a second and third explanation.
Fouls. A “punch.” Anything to keep them out of the lowlight.
That’s the difference.
Carolina lets the truth hurt.
Duke brands a lie and sells it back to you.
The new face still wins a lot.
But, just like the old one, he can’t lose honestly.
Oscar Wilde once wrote- "Give a man a mask, and he will show you his true face."
In college basketball, it seems, all you need is a Duke quarter zip and a microphone.
Duke is not just a basketball team. It's a perception engine. The game doesn’t end at the buzzer. The postgame narrative is part of the strategy, and always has been. What happened on the court is only half the job. The rest is selling something cleaner, simpler, and more flattering than reality.
And it works.
Because Duke has not played for a national title in over a decade. Yet listen to the way they’re discussed at large and you’d never know it. The assumption is always inevitability. Always relevance. Always dominance. As if the banners are still warm.
That story doesn’t write itself. When the NBA commissioner is a Duke alum. When Duke voices populate major broadcasts. When you hire a marketing exec to run your basketball program. When the megaphones belong to your people. The benefit of the doubt becomes structural. The narrative becomes your canvas.
They even branded it. The "Brotherhood." A word meant to suggest permanence, loyalty, shared sacrifice. Except most of their elite talent over the last decade has spent less than five months together as an actual team before scattering to the league. Brotherhood? Semesterhood. A group project in matching sweats. A stopover on the way to a payday.
Carolina lost to Kansas and accepted the simplified version of history. We wore the choke label. We didn’t fight the edit. We moved on.
Duke loses one heartbreaker to their hated rival and immediately needs a second and third explanation.
Fouls. A “punch.” Anything to keep them out of the lowlight.
That’s the difference.
Carolina lets the truth hurt.
Duke brands a lie and sells it back to you.
The new face still wins a lot.
But, just like the old one, he can’t lose honestly.
Oscar Wilde once wrote- "Give a man a mask, and he will show you his true face."
In college basketball, it seems, all you need is a Duke quarter zip and a microphone.
