The Duke Curse Lives

We’ve had a joke for years decades now about the Duke Curse.

It started in 1991, when we held up a big posterboard at the Final Four listing bad things that happened to teams that beat Duke and asked UNLV: is it really worth it?

For the record, within a few years of the 1990 beatdown UNLV placed on Duke, Jerry Tarkanian was gone, a photo of players in a hot tub with a guy many believed to be a fixer turned up and UNLV has been gone ever since.

The Duke Curse?

Well pick a school. Cal? Please. Arkansas? Poof. West Virginia? We actually feel kind of bad about that one.

Point is, we mostly treated it as a joke but ultimately concluded that what it really is is very simple: Duke stays at a very high level and other teams get there for a while but can’t usually maintain it.

So we kind of quit tracking it.

Even so, some there are things make you go hmmmmm.....take Stephen F. Austin.

The Lumberjacks had an inspirational win in Cameron, snapping Duke’s non-conference home court winning streak that stretched over years decades.

Or did they?

Because now it looks like that win is gone: the NCAA has hit SFA with penalties for APR violations including the dreaded lack of institutional control.” A total of 117 basketball victories from 2014-2019 are gone and tons of wins in other sports as well. Is Duke one of them?

We’re not sure, but according to this guy, it’s toast.

Does that mean the win streak is back on?

Unfortunately, no. But the Curse is!

So anyone who wants to beat Duke, just like UNLV, Cal, Arkansas, West Virginia and Stephen Freakin’ Austin and the rest, you should first ask yourself: is it really worth it?