The Daily Cinderella, live from the Elite Eight

Some notes from being EXTREMELY CLOSE to the best college basketball team while they were playing basketball.

The other day I mentioned in my post that my seats at the game were extremely high up. I hope this didn’t come across as whiny or complainy—very cool to even be in the building! It’s the NCAA Tournament!–but maybe it read that way, because THEY PUT ME ON THE DAMN COURT SATURDAY.

Like I said the other day, I’m working on something Big and Good about Duke now that they’re headed to San Antonio. Until then, some quick notes.

• This might sound like a CEO giving ski resort recs to an employee making $30k, but… watching a high-level basketball game from up close is really, truly, breathtaking. You’ve gotta do it once in your life. You’d think it would be the size of the players that blows you away, but really, the most shocking part is the speed of the game—how fast those big bodies move, and how quickly everybody has to make decisions. Imagine a truck driving down the highway. Now imagine standing next to the highway, maybe a few feet from the road, and feeling the sensation of that truck hurtling by you at 65 mph. That’s what it feels like.

• I’m talking about the whole game, but… yeah, I’m talking about Cooper Flagg.

  

  Flagg didn’t have his best offensive game Saturday night (16 points on 16 shots), but I was struck by his defense, his athleticism, and his sheer audacity. He skies for blocks and rebounds at moments when a normal basketball brain says he has no business being in the play.

• Scorching hot 5-alarm take incoming, but I think this Duke team might win it all. When the most talented team in the sport is also totally locked in on every possession… what are you supposed to do about that? I guess hope you hit shots and they don’t?

• That didn’t work for Alabama. The Tide scored 113 points on Thursday, setting an NCAA Tournament record for made threes. They scored 65 against Duke, just one point higher than their season-low. Some of that was poor shooting, but Duke makes you fight for every inch. They’re taller than you and faster than you, and too young to realize they can slack off.

• I was in the second row behind Alabama’s bench, so I got to watch the Nate Oats Coaching Experience. No off switch on that guy. There was a moment very late in the game with the Tide that I thought Oats might sub out some of his seniors—after all, Alabama started four grad students this year, and they were looking back at the bench with linked arms down by about 20 with a minute left to go. Nope! They were just trying to hear Oats’ coaching instructions. He kept orchestrating the press from the sideline until the clock hit zeroes.

• My favorite moment was when the refs were conferring about who a foul was on, and Oats walked over to the table with a biiiiiig grin on his face and said “that one was on 2, right?” while holding up two fingers. (It was not, in fact, on Cooper Flagg, but it was a nice try.

• I wasn’t planning on writing from the scene so I didn’t bring my laptop. Big mistake. I have some great stickers on here that deserved to be in the background of the TV shot.

• Ken Jeong got most of the hype as the most famous Duke alum in the building but I think the actual winner of that category was Adam Silver.

  

  Ken just got the credit because Silver refuses to show up in full Duke gear in the name of neutrality. Is the NBA commissioner not allowed to root for his favorite college team? Come on, Commish, live a little!

• Jay Williams was sitting directly behind me. To avoid a repeat of The Rich Eisen Incident, I draped my jacket over the back of my chair.

• One of my favorite NCAA Tournament things is that they bring out champions of other NCAA sports at halftime. (Cheaper than hiring Red Panda!) Saturday we got the Division III women’s basketball champs, the NYU Violets.

  

  The Violets have won 62 straight games over the course of back-to-back undefeated seasons. They hung around until the very end to watch Duke cut down the nets, perhaps to compare form.

• The star of the net-cutting ceremony was Jon Scheyer’s youngest kid. Here he is in the arms of 7-foot-2 freshman Khaman Maluach, who is slightly older but significantly taller.

Sorry if watching videos of Duke being likable actually makes you like Duke. I know, it’s hard for all of us to deal with.

I’m gonna come back tomorrow with a fuller recap of fun things around college basketball. For now, I just wanted to say: Thanks for reading this, and thanks for being here. Clearly somebody somewhere thinks what I’m doing here is worthy of a spot in the nice seats, and, well, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing here if you guys weren’t reading it. So thanks.

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