Slammin Samy: Dissecting Duke's Dominance As An NCAA Tournament Dynasty

It's that time of year again. The snow is melting, spring break is right around the corner, and the most exciting three weeks in all of sports is about to descend upon us. I'm talking about the playoff-push in the XFL, of course!

Well, since we all seem to think that we'll win our respective NCAA pools (beware Crimson colleagues), I'll spare you the misery and just tell you that it's going to be Duke, Michigan State, Stanford, and Illinois that go to Minneapolis for the final act in the Big Dance. The Blue Devils will beat the Spartans 75-70 on April 2nd to win their third championship in 11 years.

See, I have a funny way of filling out my bracket. With the exception of a few first round upsets, I almost always take the higher seed to advance, as evidenced by my Final Four projections including all the No. 1 regional seeds.

Almost certainly, all four of these teams will probably not make it this far. There will surely be countless upsets and unpredictable finishes along the way. That's the sheer madness of college basketball in March, but I learned a long time ago that trying to predict upsets is a riskier proposition than going with the conventional wisdom.

One thing I'm sure of, though, is that Duke, which ended the regular season as the top ranked team in the nation, will be the most formidable force in the tournament since its 1999 squad.

We all remember the 1999 Duke team, right? It was hailed as the "Team of the Century" and a validation of the Blue Devils as the collegiate athletic program of the decade. With Elton Brand, Trajan Langdon a.k.a. the Alaskan Assassin, Chris Carrawell, Shane Battier, and Corey Maggette, Duke steamrolled to a 16-0 ACC regular season record and a 37-1 mark entering the championship game.

Duke's matchup with UConn in the NCAA final was supposed to be little more than icing on the cake for a team whose average margin of victory during March Madness was 25 points per game.

Despite these accolades and having four players who would be drafted in the top 15 of that year's NBA draft, the Blue Devils were shocked by the Huskies, who were led by none other than portly 5'9 Khalid El-Amin, now a "star" point guard for Chicago Bulls.

You get my point, right? If Duke could lose to UConn in 1999 despite being 15 point favorites, no sane person can predict with little more than a hunch who will be dancing on the Hubert Humphrey Metrodome court three Monday nights from now.

The 2001 Blue Devils are unique in today's college basketball game though. At a time when the emerging trend is to declare for the NBA draft as early as high school, and when a highlight on SportsCenter is more important than contributing to the team's success, this squad breaks many stereotypes.

As Dick Vitale and Jim Nantz have pointed out, Duke is the most unselfish team in the NCAA. Despite having several future NBA lottery picks on the court at the same time, the Blue Devils have some of the best ball movement in the country, with players often passing up high percentage shots so they can pass the ball to a more open teammate.

Duke consistently has four or five players who score in double digits each game, a feat unheard of in college basketball anymore. During its 14-point romp of North Carolina in the ACC regular-season finale, the Blue Devils had top scorers of 33, 25, 16, and 15 points. Even NBA teams would be hard pressed to maintain a distribution like that.

The Duke is one of best hustling teams in nation and undoubtedly leads the country in floor burns. If you watched this past weekend's ACC Tournament, hardly a minute would pass before you'd see Battier, point guard Jason Williams or another teammate dive on the court to get a loose ball.

What's even more astonishing than the fact that Duke's captain and the James Naismith Award recipient for college basketball player of the year, Shane Battier, stayed all four years in school, is that super-sophomore Williams has already declared his intention not to turn pro until he graduates.

Keeping in mind that the Chicago Bulls or Washington Wizards would gladly select with him with one of the top picks in this year's draft, and the fact that he would be turning down millions of dollars over the next two years, Jason Williams offers a stark contrast to many of today's young basketball stars.

Just ask Corey Maggette, who left after one season at Duke, how much better his game would be had he stayed in coach Mike Krzyzewski's program the last two years.

Considered a lock for future NBA stardom after a sensational freshman year in 1999, Maggette passed up a chance to become the "big man" on campus and instead opted to turn pro. Instead of stardom, he's now a bench player on the Los Angeles Clippers. Some fun, huh?

In my opinion, the only thing that can stop Duke over the next three weeks is injuries. Judging by recent events, it's quite possible that this will end up being Achilles' heel of the Blue Devils. They have not only lost starting center Carlos Boozer to a broken foot, but have also been without Williams' services after he sprained his ankle against North Carolina in Sunday's ACC Championship game.

Barring any further mishaps, though, Duke remains the team to beat in the tournament. Like I mentioned earlier, I predict that the Blue Devils' will defeat defending champion Michigan State on April 2nd in an old-fashioned shootout and claim its third championship in the last 11 years.

But then again, I'm just a guy who fills out his NCAA bracket by religiously choosing the higher seed. So what do I know?