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View Full Version : Explain the Duke Curse Please



wgl1228
09-01-2010, 05:06 PM
I remember it has something to do with teams that beat us in the tournament having problems the next year but I can't remember if there is anything else to it.

airowe
09-01-2010, 05:16 PM
I remember it has something to do with teams that beat us in the tournament having problems the next year but I can't remember if there is anything else to it.

This should help: http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/articles/?p=24946

Greg_Newton
09-01-2010, 05:19 PM
So should this (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=duke+curse&l=1). :p

weezie
09-01-2010, 08:53 PM
If I 'splain it to you, then you fall to the curse.

Just steer clear of the crazy lady with the Duke gear on over there......:mad:

DukieBoy
09-01-2010, 11:35 PM
So should this (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=duke+curse&l=1). :p

holy crap! how did you do that?

JG Nothing
09-02-2010, 07:48 AM
holy crap! how did you do that?

http://tinyurl.com/632hcv

RelativeWays
09-02-2010, 08:43 AM
I HATE the Duke curse. It makes it sound like Duke fans have no faith that their team can handle business on their own, they need some mystical deus ex machina to step in to handle past grievances and shortcomings. We didn't need the Duke curse to handle WVU, UNC or UConn this year, the Duke basketball team did that themselves.

CrazieDUMB
09-02-2010, 09:27 AM
I have to say, I'm a bit bored with the Duke curse. Especially since Duke has been great during almost every year of the modern era, there are so many teams out there that have beaten Duke. Pretty much any negative story in college basketball can be traced back to Duke via the program beating Duke at one time or another. Schadenfreude is fun though.

Indoor66
09-02-2010, 09:31 AM
I have to say, I'm a bit bored with the Duke curse. Especially since Duke has been great during almost every year of the modern era, there are so many teams out there that have beaten Duke. Pretty much any negative story in college basketball can be traced back to Duke via the program beating Duke at one time or another. Schadenfreude is fun though.

I agree with you - bored. I find it to be a childish and narcissistic reaction to unrelated external events.

airowe
09-02-2010, 10:48 AM
I think you guys are taking this way too seriously. It's tongue in cheek.

JohnGalt
09-02-2010, 11:14 AM
I agree with you - bored. I find it to be a childish and narcissistic reaction to unrelated external events.

Unfotunately for us, Indoor, I'd best most would characterize our much too frequent perusing of this Board to be somewhat childish and narcissitic, what with the rampant speculation surrounding 16, 17, and 18 year olds and all.

FORTUNATELY for us, they're all wrong. ALL OF THEM!

SCMatt33
09-02-2010, 12:28 PM
I agree with you - bored. I find it to be a childish and narcissistic reaction to unrelated external events.

I think that it has gotten this way for a reason. It's a little childish, but entertaining, to point out immediate failures and bad luck right after a team beats Duke in the tourney, but it is applied WAY too liberally, both for severity of incident, and length of time after beating Duke. Take Florida as an example. Losing guys to the NBA immediately isn't all that big of a deal. Maybe 10-15 years ago it was, but looking back, it's a pretty minor thing, unless the program turned out to be a complete fluke. All Florida did after beating us was go on to have the best decade by far in its history. Florida had only been to the tournament 6 times before 2000 and have been there 8 times since. Missing the tournament in 2008 and 2009 is not part of a curse.

That being said, there are things that are fun to look back on and document. Going back to Florida, all of the Teddy Dupay stuff is totally appropriate for this sort of thing. The best example for an appropriate "cursed" moment is Huggy Bear falling in the airport just months after WVU beat Duke. On the basketball side, UNLV is the perfect example. We got our revenge on them and the program fell apart for a decade. You don't have to stretch to include things that aren't appropriate (such as randomly expanding the field to include people and teams who haven't beat Duke in the tourney), there's enough good stuff there to produce something entertaining and relevant.

David
09-02-2010, 12:38 PM
The Duke Curse is a variation of what statisticians call 'regression towards the mean' - in English, what goes up, must usually come down. Given that Duke is a top-ranked team most seasons, the team that beats Duke is typically having an exceptional season (all is going right both on and off the court). It is hard to maintain this level in subsequent seasons. Thus, the so-called Duke curse...

Rich
09-02-2010, 12:55 PM
I think that it has gotten this way for a reason. It's a little childish, but entertaining, to point out immediate failures and bad luck right after a team beats Duke in the tourney, but it is applied WAY too liberally, both for severity of incident, and length of time after beating Duke. Take Florida as an example. Losing guys to the NBA immediately isn't all that big of a deal. Maybe 10-15 years ago it was, but looking back, it's a pretty minor thing, unless the program turned out to be a complete fluke. All Florida did after beating us was go on to have the best decade by far in its history. Florida had only been to the tournament 6 times before 2000 and have been there 8 times since. Missing the tournament in 2008 and 2009 is not part of a curse.

That being said, there are things that are fun to look back on and document. Going back to Florida, all of the Teddy Dupay stuff is totally appropriate for this sort of thing. The best example for an appropriate "cursed" moment is Huggy Bear falling in the airport just months after WVU beat Duke. On the basketball side, UNLV is the perfect example. We got our revenge on them and the program fell apart for a decade. You don't have to stretch to include things that aren't appropriate (such as randomly expanding the field to include people and teams who haven't beat Duke in the tourney), there's enough good stuff there to produce something entertaining and relevant.

I always thought the Duke Curse should be limited to what happens to a team and/or their players the season after they beat us in the tourney. There was a string from 1986-1994 or so where you could pinpoint a specific event that happened to the team the year after they beat us in the tourney. It really seemed like teams that beat us were cursed. I agree that pointing out bad things that happen to teams years later (e.g., UConn this year) doesn't make sense and diminishes what truly seemed like a Duke curse.

UrinalCake
09-02-2010, 02:44 PM
The Duke Curse is a variation of what statisticians call 'regression towards the mean' - in English, what goes up, must usually come down.

This is as good an explanation as any, combined with the aforementioned statement that you could find something negative to say about just about any program. The SI curse is essentially the same thing.

Also, I'm not sure what the technical term for this is, but when someone beats Duke (or is on the cover of SI) and something bad does NOT happen, no one ever points it out. Since you only hear about times when something bad does happen, it makes you believe that bad things are always happening in these situations.

David
09-02-2010, 04:09 PM
Also, I'm not sure what the technical term for this is, but when someone beats Duke (or is on the cover of SI) and something bad does NOT happen, no one ever points it out. Since you only hear about times when something bad does happen, it makes you believe that bad things are always happening in these situations.

You just described confirmation bias - the tendency to favor data that supports a hypothesis (e.g., the Duke Curse) and ignore data that refutes it.

jjh1080
09-02-2010, 05:05 PM
In discussions with others, many people pointed out that the curse was because of losses to other teams, not Duke. We are not the only team they beat the previous year. Thus, to them Duke fans looked silly for talking about the curse.

Plus, for the past some many years UNC fans laughed when they heard Duke fans talking about the curse, because they felt since Duke fans talked about the curse Duke was cursed, early exits and all. Duke broke the curse this year but...

I think the talk should be put to bed.

brevity
09-02-2010, 09:30 PM
I HATE the Duke curse. It makes it sound like Duke fans have no faith that their team can handle business on their own, they need some mystical deus ex machina to step in to handle past grievances and shortcomings. We didn't need the Duke curse to handle WVU, UNC or UConn this year, the Duke basketball team did that themselves.

At first this statement made it sound like you didn't understand the Duke curse, but a rereading led me to your meaning. Interesting response.

I've long believed (and mentioned in passing a few times here) that "past grievances and shortcomings" DO ultimately get addressed, not by a curse but by future Duke squads. Take a look at the championship squads of 1991, 1992, and 2010: specifically, the teams they beat in the NCAA Tournament. It's partially a list of teams that knocked us out in previous NCAA Tournaments.

1991: St. John's (1979), Kansas (1988), UNLV (1990).
1992: Kentucky (1978), Indiana (1987), Seton Hall (1989).
2010: California (1993), West Virginia (2008).

It's far from perfect and hardly definitive -- the 2001 tourney run doesn't work here at all -- but it is fascinating in a "what goes around comes around" kind of way. I mentioned during Round 1 of this year's tournament that payback was inevitable in Round 2, whether we faced California or Louisville (1986).

gam7
09-03-2010, 01:34 AM
A corollary to the Duke curse is that when no one beats us (i.e., when we win a national championship), the curse turns on us. And, in particular on our NC point guards:

'91 and '92: Hurley - car accident; NBA career over

'01: Jay Williams - motorcycle accident; NBA career over

'10: Scheyer - eye injury; NBA career uncertain

RelativeWays
09-03-2010, 07:40 AM
The Duke Curse is a variation of what statisticians call 'regression towards the mean' - in English, what goes up, must usually come down. Given that Duke is a top-ranked team most seasons, the team that beats Duke is typically having an exceptional season (all is going right both on and off the court). It is hard to maintain this level in subsequent seasons. Thus, the so-called Duke curse...

Then logically that could be applied with just about any perennial basketball power.

David
09-03-2010, 01:30 PM
Then logically that could be applied with just about any perennial basketball power.

Indeed it could. As a silly example, I would like to propose an NCAA tournament championship curse. Since 1974, only Duke '92 and Florida '07 (and hopefully Duke '11!) have been able to repeat as champions. Thus, in almost 95% of the recent cases, teams are 'cursed' the season after winning the championship! :rolleyes:

SCMatt33
09-03-2010, 02:09 PM
Then logically that could be applied with just about any perennial basketball power.

This got me thinking. Here is the UNC curse off the pretty much off the top of my head. If you do some research, I'm sure that you can find plenty of player incidents and other stuff I missed. I set it up much like the Duke Curse in that time since loss is not a factor. BTW, this is somewhat enjoyable to do since you get to reminisce about wins by our second favorite team, and subsequent failures from when they are no longer our second favorite team.

2008-Kansas - NBA defections, bad loss to UNI as favorites in '10.
2007-Gtown - After beating UNC to make the final four, they fell back to the pack, Getting upset by Davidson in '08 and Ohio in '10, not to mention a complete collapse in '09.
2006 - George Mason - The 2006 run seems like a complete fluke as the Patriots have not capitalized much on their success outside of a tourney appearance in '08.
2004 - Texas - Though they have had some tournament success since '04, the program has come up painfully short of matching their '03 Final Four with 2 elite 8 losses. Also went from #1 to an 8 seed in 2010 and a first round loss to a team whose coach got fired for not being able to win in March.
2001-Penn State- It's Penn State, I don't need to point out basketball failures of Penn State since 2001.
2000-Florida-Copy and paste anything Duke gets for Florida beating them in 2000.
1999-Weber State- After pulling off two 14 over 3 upsets in 4 years, Weber State has only been back to the dance twice since then, losing both it's games.
1998-Utah-While moderately successful at times (see Bogut, Andrew), the Utes have failed to come close to the heights they reached in 1998, while fellow Utah teams Utah State and BYU have been tourney fixtures in the past few years.
1997-Arizona-They would return to the final four in 2001 (how did that end again???), but have seen a steady decline leading to their consecutive appearance streak being snapped. They also had their 1999 appearance vacated and have just received sanctions this year.
1996-Texas Tech-Recieved a slight bump in stature after hiring Bob Knight, but still lag far behind UT and even A&M. Since Knights retirement, they have mediocre at best.
1995-Arkansas-Arkansas has been in steady decline since this win, forcing out Nolan Richardson after a heated dispute and have been off the college hoops map in the woeful SEC west since then.
1994-BC-Have not been back to the elite eight since the '94 campaign. In fact the only sweet 16 appearance since then was a painful loss to Villanova in '06 on a goaltending call with just 3 seconds left in OT.
1992-Ohio St.-The buckeyes have seen their ups and downs since then, including a vacated final four in '99.
1991-Kansas-See above for most recent, but lost their coach eventually to the team they beat before he could bring them the title they expected.
1990-Arkansas-See above.

snowdenscold
09-03-2010, 04:17 PM
I agree with the people who say it should be limited to the season after. Including events that happen six years later really cheapens the value of it. Plus, it's pretty much guaranteed something 'bad' will happen to a team given a long enough time interval.