Rarely does a title game feel anticlimactic—especially if it involves two of the top four ranked teams in the country, and one of them is Duke—but that’s what we have in store for Monday night when Wisconsin takes on the aforementioned Blue Devils, in the aftermath of Kentucky’s shocking loss in the national semis.
The Badgers already took the air out of the ball when they did the impossible and slayed college basketball’s giant on Saturday night. Now they hope to do what Duke did 24 years ago after they took down heavily favored and previously undefeated UNLV (also in the semis) in having enough left to win the title game two nights later over Kansas.
Duke, which already beat Wisconsin earlier in the season, poses a major threat as always, though they were in Kentucky’s shadow for most of the season—an unusual position for Coach K since his teams started dominating the college basketball landscape some 30 years ago.
But this year, it was the Wildcats who looked invincible until Wisconsin took them down. Their plan seemed simple: Move Frank Kaminsky inside and out to create mismatches and thus keep pace with the Wildcats and then execute down the stretch. Easier said than done, but they did it and will have to do it again Monday night.
