The men's basketball team may be searching for its first win in the Atlantic Coast Conference, but Duke hoops is still a big hit on the internet. From newsgroups to the world wide web to e-mail, there are many ways to find information about Duke basketball online.
Want to commiserate with other Duke fans on the team's poor start this year? Well, you could post a message on the "rec.sport.basketball.college" newsgroup, which gets more than 100 messages per day. Some seem to know why Duke is doing poorly, while others spend their time speculating on the nature of Coach K's illness.
Unfortunately for Duke fans, one is as likely to find someone gloating over Duke's fall from the Associated Press poll as to find a fellow fan. To find more objective college basketball news, stories from various wire services can be found in the "clari.sports.basketball.college" newsgroup.
Hundreds of Duke fans get their hoops fix from the dukehoops mailing list, which is run by Orin Day, Trinity '91. Begun to keep friends updated on Duke basketball, the list has grown to include fans in Europe, Asia and Australia, Day said.
Though he lives in Chicago, Day said he keeps abreast of the team by watching games using his satellite dish, by recruiting "spies" who attend games in Cameron and by going to away games; this year he has attended Duke games in Detroit, Chicago and Hawaii. About five people join the list each week; to subscribe, send the message "subscribe dukehoop-l [your-address]" to the address "listserv@netcom.com" (no quotes).
The world-wide-web portion of the internet, accessible from the computer clusters using web browsers like Mosaic, Netscape and Lynx, is also filled with information about Duke basketball
Scott Reilly, a graduate student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, has what might be the most extensive collection of information about college basketball and Duke basketball in particular. His page includes detailed statistics for just about every men's basketball player in every season since 1982-83 (including statistics for this year's team which are frequently updated) and news about the team.
Reilly's page also contains a copy of the not-really-official Duke basketball Frequently Asked Questions list, compiled by James Armstrong, Trinity '82. Also posted regularly to the "rec.sport. basketball.college" newsgroups, it contains facts, figures and trivia. For example, one can learn about Duke's largest margin of victory in a men's basketball game.
Links to other college basketball resources, including a picture of Trinity sophomore Jeff Capel driving into the lane during a game last year, are accessible from Reilly's web page. The page is located at "http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/wsr/Web/bball/duke.html."
An archive of recent postings to the dukehoops mailing list, final statistics for last season, this season's schedule and information about the team are all available on the home page of King Rhoton, a computer programmer for Management Information Services. His web page is located at "http:// www.mis.duke.edu/Kings_Dominion.html".
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