Loved these -
Didn’t matter, of course. Flagg ultimately chose Duke, like Williamson and so many other future NBA stars before him. But his spurning of UConn matters for two very important reasons: (1) It gave us this photo of Flagg holding a burning pitchfork, which will surely come in handy throughout his career, and (2) it was a critical reminder that UConn is not Duke. Never has been Duke. Never wanted to be Duke, either.
That’s what’s been so hard for me to reconcile about this new era of Huskies, who became the first repeat men’s champions since the mid-aughts Florida Gators with Monday’s 75-60 win over Purdue in the national title game. Yes, it’s nice to be widely acknowledged as a “blue blood” alongside the schools that built college basketball as we know it. But this aristocratic is directly at odds with the program’s bedrock identity.