Brandon, your number, please
I send out this message in the hopes that the mysterious Brandon, the caller who left angry voicemails on my phone the last two days, calls back and leaves his number. At the end of his diatribe - during which he accused me of having a strong anti-Duke bias - Brandon said he'd be happy to talk more with me, and that I had his number, which he'd left in his message.
Actually Brandon, you didn't leave a number.
So I'll use this blog to answer your complaints, as well as those of another caller.
The bone Brandon wanted to pick with me had to do with my Thursday story, headlined "Duke hits the road - finally." In the story, I made the point that the Blue Devils' upcoming game at N.C. State a would be Duke's first real road test of the season, since the other three games away from Cameron were all on essentially neutral floors.
That's all. I wasn't saying that Duke was ducking anyone, wasn't saying they didn't have a right to be ranked where they were. I was only saying that Duke had gone almost two months into the season without a true road game.
Apparently this touched a nerve with Brandon. He wanted to know 1) Why I didn't pick on UNC? and 2) what did I have against Duke?
Here's my simple explanation. One, I don't cover UNC, so I wasn't going to address their schedule in my story. Even if I did, the Tar Heels have played at Indiana and at Virginia Tech. I know, hardly impressive foes, but they still qualify as road games.
Two, in the article, I quoted Lee Melchionni and Mike Krzyzewski, both of whom said there were no concerns about how Duke would handle its first game in front of a hostile crowd. I also made note that the RBC Center had been a tough place to play, because the Blue Devils had lost their the last two seasons. After Sean Dockery said Duke might have been overconfident coming into last season's meeting in Raleigh, I wrote that overconfidence wouldn't be a problem with this season's team, and then had a quote from Krzyzewski to back up that assessment.
So why, exactly did that tick people off? I'm not really sure. Maybe someone can explain it to me.
Now, as for my blog last night predicting an N.C. State victory, I'll readily eat my deserved crow on that. Everything happened as I thought it would - Duke with a slow start, State playing at a high level at home - except for the part where the Blue Devils clawed back in the game and the Wolfpack had no response.
I said in my Thursday story that Duke would know a lot more about itself after its experience in Raleigh. Here's the knowledge the Blue Devils gained: they've got other weapons aside from the big three, and they've got plenty of mental toughness, regardless of the number of players on the bench.