Our 3* Duke Blue Devils blew their shot at a NCAA Championship Saturday night by SCORING 1 FIELD GOAL in the final 10.5 MINUTES and blowing the following leads: up 14 with 8:17 left, up 9 with 2:25 left and up 6 with 34 seconds left! Astonishingly the Duke players forgot how to inbound a basketball repeatedly in one of the BIGGEST CHOKE JOBS in Final 4 history. Star Freshmen Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel did their part but the rest of the team wilted under pressure as Senior guard Sion James committed key turnovers and Junior guard Tyrese Proctor missed key free throws down the stretch. The two upperclassmen have been the glue all season but combined to shoot 5-17, including 1-7 from deep. Proctor, in particular, had an uncharacteristically terrible performance bricking three wide open 3 pointers and sleepwalking through most of the game. Then we have Center Khaman Muluach, all 7’2’, 250 pounds of him, collecting exactly ZERO REBOUNDS in 21 minutes. And with all that, the Blue Devils still had the game in the bag, if they could only get the ball inbounds, until they didn’t. We give the Cougars credit for fighting until the end but, let’s just say it, they received a GIFT and the best team did not win the game. Monday night should be interesting as both teams, Florida and Houston, basically have a FREE ROLL as Houston shouldn’t be there and the Gators easily could have lost 2 games, and should have certainly lost to Texas Tech before their Dukesque meltdown in the last 3 minutes. This one was doubly tough as we Released Duke to Win the Championship at 9-1 odds back in January. Losing 3 Units brings our rolling 40 day record to 73-56 for Plus 70.6 UNITS. We move on handicapping the National Championship looking for an actionable edge.
3* VERY STRONG – Duke (67-70) LOSS