Amidst all the Alan Davis Band Armadillo Grill concert publicity, thousands of Duke students trekked to Cameron Indoor Stadium or tuned in to ESPN2 Saturday night to watch undefeated No. 1 Duke's valiant comeback run out of time against undefeated No. 2 Connecticut, following a bad start caused by the players being stunned to actually see a sellout crowd at home. Anyway, it left Duke fans with many questions about the game. Fortunately, THEODORE HUXTABLE'S PROTEGE, with help from research assistant Dr. Sy-(Snootles)-and-the-Ramblin-(Root-Beer)-Gnome, is here to answer many of those questions.
Duke shot 44 percent from the floor in the second half, but hit only 22 percent of their shots in the first half. Why?
Ah, excellent question. Even weirder, Duke center Mistie Bass actually made 75 percent of her free throws in the first half; this indicates that perhaps there was something amiss with the rim. I blame Geno Auriemma.
Is there a reason why Auriemma didn't shake any of the Duke players' hands before the game?
Hmm. Maybe he's an a--hole.
This sellout game brought many to Cameron who had never seen a women's basketball game before. How could you tell the novices from the die-hard fans?
Well, obviously the men's team fans would object to 10-second violations not being called, but besides that, if someone compared which team had prettier players and conjectured about why none of the athletes wore make-up, that would be an indication that they might not be the biggest of fans.
Why were fans referring to Auriemma as Luigi?
Well, Luigi is his actual first name; he just makes people call him Geno for some reason. The irony is that he has basically the same shape, appearance, and behavior, not of Luigi, but of another Super Mario Bros. character, the goomba (see picture).
Was watching Luigi tramping around the sidelines with his arms extended like a schmuck the funniest sight at the game?
No, actually, it was watching assistant coach Chris Dailey restraining Luigi about 57 times when he strutted too far out of his coach's box. Like a schmuck. With his arms extended. Her atrocious blond hairdo made it even funnier, on a side note.
With about 15:30 left in the second half, the refs began calling fouls with much more frequency. Why was this?
Perhaps they thought they could make up for ignoring The Most Obvious Offensive Foul Ever, by Diana Taurasi a few seconds earlier, by calling a foul on every single play for the next few minutes. Then again, there was also the phone call the scorer's table received from ESPN2, saying that it wouldn't hurt if the game went a little bit over the allotted two hours, because, "We realize maybe showing everyone the entire Hula Bowl isn't necessarily the best idea."
Why did Auriemma make those comments before the game about Duke guard Jessica Foley, who is from Australia, drinking Foster's?
Apparently he couldn't think of anything clever involving Crocodile Dundee or Crocodile Dundee 2. Plus, he hadn't seen Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles yet. He didn't really know anything else about Australia.
Why did Auriemma go to the effort of insulting Duke's academic reputation before the game as well?
Maybe he's pissed off because he went to West Chester University, a school so obscure that even he probably hadn't even heard of it until he actually started going there.
It is well publicized that Auriemma and Connecticut men's coach Jim Calhoun despise each other. Why is this?
It actually began when the life-size LEGO Auriemma replica started making fun of the life-size LEGO Calhoun replica at the LEGO Walk of Fame in Hartford, Conn. Completely out of the blue, Auriemma's replica said that Dare to Dream, Calhoun's attempt at writing a book, "sucked," adding that it made Dean Smith's A Coach's Life look like "The Great f---ing Gatsby."
Both Peter Lange and Nan Keohane were at the game. To what did we owe their presence?
Well, Lange slept through a tent check Thursday night, but Keohane got line monitor Jeremy Morgan to give them a reprieve on the grounds that they had both been really busy lately doing president and provost things, which caused them to be a bit fatigued. "It was also really cold," she added. Morgan was about to call them a bunch of wimps, but then he realized he had never tented before, so he kept quiet and eventually let them into the stadium.
THEODORE HUXTABLE'S PROTEGE would like to say that, with all due respect to the Goomba photo, the Atari 2600 is still the best video game system ever made, and remains a conduit of joy amongst the enlightened, not to mention a system whose games you don't have to blow in to get them to work.
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