Perspective. Gratitude. That’s about it.
A lot of us have been dreading this eventuality, for decades, still smacked 31 years later, by the closest call. The people whose primary stress response is fight are thriving; those of us who lean freeze, fawn, or flight are not well. And yes I know this is "just" sports. But I've never, ever been happier to have left North Carolina a long time ago. You could give me a $2M house in the Triangle for free and I'd say keep it or I'd transact it. I'm not even sure I'll watch the game live.
This is messed up. This should not be an awful week. One should be savoring every moment of Krzyzewski's last ride, every last court minute of each of these regulars, all of whom will likely be gone from Duke in 2022-23. This is an amazing, beautiful time, and a great gift from these players, managers, and coaches. Yet many of us are positively ill.
Please help us reframe this week. How are you dealing with the day most Duke fans hoped would never come? How will you enjoy this week?
All I know is, acting as pathologically cruel to Carolina fans as they are to us isn't the answer.
Perspective. Gratitude. That’s about it.
As UCLA blew the game against UNC Friday night, I started to spiral into this kind of negative headspace, dreading playing UNC. By the time I went to bed Friday, I'd planned to DVR the game, if we both made it, hide in the basement during the game, and watch it in fast forward alone.
Funny thing happened Saturday as I watched golf and then the Nova-Houston game. I became incredibly calm about the possibility of playing UNC. So calm that I'm heading to New Orleans.
How? A combination of three different ideas, I think.
(1) It doesn't matter. It's just a game. It doesn't tell us anything about anything other than who was better -- and sometimes, just luckier -- over a particular 40 minutes. I get that this isn't just a game, it's tournament game. A National Semifinal. As much as I love the NCAA tourney, all it does is crown a champion. It doesn't tell you a damned thing about who the better team was over the course of a season. It's one game. Anything can happen for good and bad. So don't over emphasize it.
(2) UNC isn't worth it. I don't know that they ever have been worth it, but how unworthy of this kind of concern and energy was laid bare with the academic scandal for which the skated and what they were willing to sacrifice in order to save their precious basketball program and its phony-I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this.I'm a real wanker for saying this. legacy. If that's who they have to be to beat us, we've already won where it really matters. To hell with the classless lot of them.
(3) Faith. These guys have turned a corner. This isn't the same team that UNC beat three weeks ago. They've earned our belief. Our trust.
Being where we are is an enormous gift. We should all appreciated how lucky we've been with tourney success, and how we shouldn't ever take it for granted -- particularly with the changes happening in the basketball program. You can't let UNC rob you of the joy of this experience. They aren't worth it.
Great post. I have been swinging back and forth from confident in the team to terrified about the possibility of that worst-case outcome. But this post is exactly what I needed. You’re right: UNC just isn’t worth robbing any of the joy of this moment. If they win, whatever. Coach K’s legacy is brilliant already, and having reached 13 Final Fours is amazing. And these kids had an amazing season. So screw those UNC fans, even if they win I won’t let it ruin that. Losing would suck of course. But I won’t let it ruin the rest of this season.
I will choose to be optimistic that we will win, and I will choose to not let the possibility of a loss ruin the week leading up as we celebrate this great team and this great coach one last week.
huh, I guess I wasn't the only one who thought some of the pregame thread had gone to a weird, dark place.
I could use some help here too. I keep thinking that losing to UNC in the Final Four, in Coach K's final season, after they already spoiled the party at Cameron, would be the most difficult loss for fans to absorb ever in the history of college basketball (perhaps except the Laettner game) and maybe more broadly across many sports.
Thanks for starting this thread. I think it's super important to recognize that two things can be true simultaneously: we can acknowledge that it's objectively silly for the performance of teenagers in a basketball game to affect our mental health, but also recognize that for whatever reason it does, and respond accordingly. As someone who has had his share of mental health challenges during the pandemic, I empathize with anyone feeling the stress of this week.
Here's what I'll say: the things that's been the most challenging about living through a pandemic has been the lack of distractions. This was worst during the initial shutdown, but for those who are still taking things cautiously and/or working from home, it's still a reality. So the fact that I have Duke Basketball to look forward to for another week is a huge boon. Heck, the fact that I have Duke Basketball to be anxious about for another week is a huge boon. Why? As heavy as that anxiety gets (and trust me, it gets heavy!), I know I'll eventually be able to get my rational brain back in charge, and it will be able to put things in perspective with the rest of what's going on in life right now.
Let me put things another way: my wife often asks me why I golf when I get so frustrated by my mistakes, or why I play fantasy football when I agonize over bad beat losses, or even why I'm such a crazy Duke fan when all she sees is how stressed the games make me. My answer is always the same: if I'm stressed about one of those things, which are relatively inconsequential in the grand scheme, it's a distraction from the other things that ARE major stressors. If what it takes for me to break the cycle of work stress is for me to be stressed slightly less by something else, I'll take it. Plus, when things work out, the highs are DEFINITELY worth it
Plus, from a more focused sports lens, we can sleep soundly knowing we're the good guys
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Thank you all for starting this.I kind of started a mini mental health thread after Coach Ks last game.I was crushed then and now I'm just fn pissed.A lot of people reached out to me.I want to thank everyone because I revealed I deal with depression internally. I don't really talk much about it.Im hoping for a good result Saturday night.Thank u again to everyone who posts here,u helped me a lot.Matt
If our mental wellbeing is effected by a game with balls, played by teenagers, we simply need help. It's an addiction problem.
My way of coping is not focusing on the result as much as the journey. A loss Saturday is simply another chapter of the basketball program, one where we made the final four. Duke will bring in the #1 class next year. We'll be competing for a title every year for the foreseeable future.
If Duke wasn't a good program then we won't be having these problems.
There will always be the next game, the next recruit, the next season, the next cheating scandal. Nothing in sports is ever the end all be all no matter how many times sportswriters and pundits make that claim. I still hurt that our 86 and 99 teams lost in the finals. It killed the heels that we won back to back in 91 and 92, but that didn't stop them from winning in 93 and passing us in national championships. The game will go on and so will life and our enjoyment of duke basketball. Now let's go win that damn championship!
"This is the best of all possible worlds."
Dr. Pangloss - Candide
Some interesting posts here. But, I wonder, how many of you live in the Triangle area?
I have lived here all my life, and the thought of having to deal with 'holes, regardless of the outcome of this game, fills me with dread. They are THAT obnoxious and plentiful, again, REGARDLESS of the outcome.
I am seriously thinking that I will lose a chunk of my Facebook friends after this game. Which, actually, does not really bother me.
When I was in the 4th grade, I wore a Duke shirt to school the day after we won, and my teacher, a 'hole grad, sent me out into the hall. I MAY have said something about the game . . . but I was ten. She was an adult. She did apologize later.
So for those of you who do not live in this area, how much exposure to the bad guys do you really have?
I live in the Triangle, grew up in NC, and took a graduate degree from Duke. I think the *gratuitous* cruelty from the UNC folks is the most troubling part. They can’t conceive of a world where Duke, or K, means anything positive to anyone else. I didn’t care for Roy or their program, but I felt for him on a human level when he retired. I know that K’s retirement circumstances haven’t been the same as Roy’s sad sack wake of a retirement (a dissimilarity for which I am eternally grateful), but UNC’s refusal to muster any respect for K as a fellow human at the end of his career really bothers me. One of the more emotional parts of this entire tournament has been K’s little limp in his gait, a stark reminder of the aging process. I’d think that anyone who has seen a parent age can recognize these signs and muster at least token decency. Many of them can’t or won’t.
Maya Angelou reminded us that when someone shows us who they are that it is on us to believe them. This year especially, I’ve seen who many of them are. I believe them.
Earlier today I posted the following as a preemptive measure, because obviously one of us is going to lose, and if it's us, I don't want it taking more of a toll on me than it has to.
The "This right here" is referencing an article I linked, that gets it.This right here. I've never wanted a Duke - UNC game in the Big Dance because it is too much to bear. ACC Tourney matchups were always great, but they were never on a stage as big as this. Lose the ACCT, no biggie, both teams go on to play another day. In fact, it happened that a rivalry loss in the ACCT came before shaking it off and going on to the National Championship.
Saturday night is going to be incredibly emotional. I'm talking personally. Both winning and losing when it comes to Carolina affects me like no other matchup.
So with that being said, and especially to my UNC fan friends, if you happen to win, I expect to see you celebrate. And likewise you'll see it from myself if Duke prevails. You won't see me rubbing it in to anyone, though.
So, if Duke goes down, knowing that it is Coach K's last game, and you come on my page and gloat, or send me messages and texts like some of the ones I got after the game in Cameron, I will kick your butt to the curb so hard that you will be winding up on a street in some other country, and I won't look back.
Respect the rivalry, respect my passion for it, and pay the same respect to each other in defeat as we do in victory.
Go Duke
https://sports.yahoo.com/duke-caroli...074458647.html
All that being said, Duke won't lose, and I'll feel badly for my Carolina friends that have to suffer some of the darker shade of blue folks that can sadly be just as ugly in our own victories.
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."
We all have a choice: love/gratitude or fear.
Fear will steal the joy of this moment and the team’s accomplishment. If UNC wins, so what? It’s one game between two teams. They were better than us on that one night and that’s it.
So choose love/gratitude. Celebrate this team and this coach. And if the ball bounces our way on Saturday - which I’m confident it will - what an incredible night it will be. We are all very lucky to get to experience this season. It’s been an amazing run already.
Mtn Devil, I, too, am from WNC, and while the vitriol here in the left end of the state may not come as hard and heavy as it does in the Triangle, it comes. We used to go to football games with a neighboring family, and I was always outnumbered 7-1. My poor little wife catches it at work from her boss on down. I always say this state should be proud of Duke being located here, but it falls on deaf ears. The only fans that rival Carolina’s in my experience is Kentucky’s. Neither can endure Duke replacing them as the face of college basketball. It is a badge of honor, but it sure gets tiresome. They love to dish it out, but most get right prickly if forced to take it. I hope they’re all porcupines after Saturday night.
Our entire society is living through this with the political divide. There is now nothing that happens, from a snowstorm to a slap in the face on national TV that doesn’t turn into a national debate pitting neighbor against neighbor. I’ve often thought the Duke/Holes divide was ahead of its time, but here we are.
I will deal with this weekend like I have dealt with the last 5-plus years. Finding joy in the simple moments of nature.
Spring is coming and rebirth is happening…yet again. And, as I breath deeply to get in touch with the moment of being, I turn to my mantra….
9F!!!!!!
If you are religious, win or lose can't you take solace in the knowledge that the Cheats will burn in Hell for eternity?