Fill out your brackets now
According to this article in the Rocky Mount paper, Duke will lose to UConn in the final. Glad we got that cleared up now.
Here's the theory behind the article: the ACC will be so down next year - see UNC, Wake, Georgia Tech - that Duke will cruise through the regular season untested and won't react well when it finally runs into trouble in the NCAA tournament. Think Duke circa 1999.
I'm not quite sure I agree with the author here. First, that Blue Devils team in 1999 was a once-in-a-generation team, just loaded with immense talent and equipped with a certain ruthlessness most college teams don't have. Don't look for Duke '06 to beat everyone by 30 like that team did.
The second example the author trots out to back up his argument is the Illinois team this season. Again, I don't quite agree. It's really a strech to say that the Illini lost to UNC in the title game because Illinois wasn't tested during the season. Bruce Weber's boys played a tough non-conference schedule, then won on the road at tough places like Wisconsin and Michigan State. Then they showed tremendous guts by coming back against an Arizona team - granted the Cats choked - in the regional final. And in the title game, Illinois made a furious comeback, only to come up short against a very, very, very good UNC team. I don't think you can blame a soft Big Ten schedule for that loss.
So am I annointing Duke the '06 national champs? Nope. Not yet, anyway. And I do think there's some merit to the argument that a weak ACC won't help the Blue Devils. Look for K to beef up the non-conference schedule accordingly.