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Predictable. Compelling. Depressing. Exciting. Indicative of future tournaments that will lack the charm America has grown to love. Indicative of a weekend ahead that will thrill American basketball lovers.
We’re well past the stage of fretting about lost underdog stories. Check back next year as trends are extended or bucked. Give the selection committee a nod for seeding correctly. Take in the best four teams playing each other in the three biggest games of the season. Be surprised if the Duke Blue Devils aren’t the ones carving away at the Alamodome nets Monday night.
West No. 1 seed Florida, Midwest No. 1 seed Houston and South No. 1 seed Auburn could win it. But East champion Duke is the clear favorite.
Flagg is the NBA’s next No. 1 overall pick, a dynamo of a help defender and an offensive creator who sees things before they materialize on both ends of the floor. The Blue Devils (35-3) might have succumbed to Arizona star Caleb Love’s 35-point hero turn in the Sweet 16 but for a Flagg performance coach Jon Scheyer called “one of the best tournament performances I’ve ever coached or been a part of”: 30 points, seven assists, six rebounds and three blocks in the 100-93 win, stuffing the box score like no player in this event since Marquette’s Dwyane Wade in 2003.
Then Flagg had an off night by his standards — 16 points, eight rebounds, 6-for-16 shooting, four turnovers — but Duke smashed No. 2 seed Alabama in the Elite Eight anyway, 85-65.
That’s why Duke is the favorite to win two more games and its sixth national title, the first non-Krzyzewski title in school history. That would also tie Duke with rival North Carolina and Connecticut for third all-time, behind UCLA (11) and Kentucky (eight).
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