Written by Bill Reiter at CBSSports.com
The Oregon locker room was frenetic with the kind of joy that is earned but in no way surprising. The Duke locker room was a muted, antiseptic space where seasons go to end. And the difference between them after the Ducks’ 82-68 dismantling of the Blue Devils was as much a reality correction as a runaway victory.
This was real: Oregon, the most underrated and under-appreciated powerhouse in college hoops, doesn’t need believers to power its way to the top of the NCAA hierarchy. It proved that. It can win, Major League-style, the whole damn thing with or without the kind of belief and respect we too often bestow on Duke simply because it is Duke.
And this was an illusion: The 2015-16 Duke Blue Devils. They were never last season’s team, and they were never going to be next season’s group. All they shared with last season’s champion and next season’s youth-infused, one-and-done-powered contender was that all-powerful name.
Thursday’s West Region semifinal wasn’t just an entry to the Elite Eight, or even a sliver of respectability for the Pac-12, which could claim little after the first two rounds of the tournament. What happened was a reminder that brands and impressions may rule most days, but all of that goes in the trash heap when the game is played.
The gulf between how these two teams were viewed was as stark and inverted as what happened at the Honda Center.
Duke was the No. 5 team in the preseason poll. Oregon didn’t crack the Top 25.
Duke was the team to fear, the team that knew how to win, the team with Coach K. Oregon was that West Coast team that would get a lesson in greatness from a real program, with a head coach who had never been to an Elite Eight, from a conference that was a joke.
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