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Right, so I was bouncing around the interwebz a little while ago basking in the fact that Duke lost and that we are #1 for now, and then discovered this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke%E2%80%93Michigan_basketball_rivalry
Apparently the "rivalry" between Michigan and Duke is big enough to warrant a Wiki page. I was utterly unaware of this. I mean... what?
Discuss.
Are you under the age of 25? That might explain it.
I'm aware of a "rivalry type thing" between us and Duke, I was mostly amused that it was considered big enough to have its own Wiki entry.
Wiki is known for being especially selective with their content.
Board should be one word. Not split into two paragraphs.
-dbag
You must be bored.
Rivalry, no... bad blood, yes
Exactly. Well said
It's because Grant Hill's a BITCH.
And because Christian Laettner is an overrated PUSSY. And a bitch
In the early 1990s, UM was on the verge of looking like national power, Duke was the establish. We just could not beat them consistently. It drove me crazy. Then everything fell apart when an explorer fed.
I kind of agree, although Duke actually never won a national title before 1991 (so we won one before they did). For a long time they were considered an elite team that couldn't get over the hump, sort of like Oregon in football now. They had their breakthrough the year before the Fab Five arrived, when they pulled a huge upset and beat an undefeated UNLV team in the Final Four.
Delete this post...young people learn about your university's sports history before posting on your university's biggest fan blog!
This is just one man's opinion but the message board of the most prominent Michigan sports blog on the internet, frequented by the university's most ardent fans, seems like a pretty good place for a youngun to come to learn some things about the history of Michigan athletics.
exactly. This is our opportunity to teach. The OP might have worded his/her post slightly differently, more asking for knowledge, but hey, this post as written doesn't bother me.
I bet he will now be educated.
Now we can teach him about Gary Grant and the smoothest of shooters, Mr. Rice.
You have said this well.
The OP clearly is not aware of a decade called "the 90's"
or the Fab 5
21-8 Duke leads, not a very good rivalry.
2.9% different than the State's winning percentage in the Michigan-Michigan State football series.
M-Duke: .276 (8-21)
MSU-M: .305 (32-68-5)
Can't believe MSU won that many..
It is hard to believe, but MSU won a bunch of games in the 50s and 60s. They were even relevant nationally 50-60 years ago.
Good thing the space program was still in its infancy stages then or MSU's recruiting would be unstoppable by now!
Exactly... 50 years ago they must have recruited nationally.... Mork is recruiting galactically to awaken the echoes.
A True Michigan Man.
I've always filed this one under the "Michigan-Illinois rivalry" category, where one school's fans are intense about it and the other school's fans are utterly unaware of the existence of the rivalry.
Yeah, I'm sure Duke has about 50 rivalries, 40 of which they don't even know exist.
This is true.
In this aspect Duke bball is like M football... there are lots of schools that consider Duke to be their rival, yet Duke would not say the same.
Duke does not consider Michigan a rival.
Duke's rival is UNC. I really don't consider any other school to be Duke's rival, including Maryland, and a lot of other Duke people would agree with this.
Cosigned.
It's really like the Michigan - ND football series, if Michigan hadn't falled off the Earth for 12 years after the Fab 5.
Disagree . . . Michigan-ND football has a lot more history and bad blood than Michigan-Duke basketball ever did. ND fans regularly say things like "USC is our rival, Navy is our friend and Michigan is our enemy."
"if Michigan hadn't fallen off the Earth for 12 years after the Fab 5."
Which is to say, not at all really. Could have been in some parallel universe.
You're right. But what's crazy is that Duke has only won 4 national championships. When you think about their dominance, that number seems low, right? Looks like UNC and Indiana have 5.
It doesn't seem low to me. Keep in mind that in basketball, there are no shared titles, since there's always (for 60+ years anyway) been a tournament. UCLA has won 11 titles, Kentucky eight, Indiana and UNC five . . . there's only so many titles to go around. Also note that all four of Duke's titles have come since 1991.
its not a rivalry until both sides start beating each other on a regular basis. right now, duke clearly has the upper hand. so i don't consider it much of a rivalry. for now.......
Coming from a friend that went to grad school at Duke (I don't think it was that dude that posted a thread...),
No. It's not a rivalry. This should be obvious, but Duke doesn't consider us in their stratosphere and honestly, rightfully so.
It kind of does sound like that guy from the other post though.
It rose to the level of a rivalry-like substance back in the 90's, but after that... Yeah, not so much.
Traylor thru the lane, for the dunk, for the win!
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19961209&id=dhVVAAAAIBAJ&...
Tried to find a vid, but best I could find was this. Imagine being down 1, with seconds remaining, and Traylor beasting his way thru the lane.
THIS game was awesome! Michigan-Duke hasn't been a rivalry in close to 20 years but at one time it was intense. I remember hating Cherokee Parks as much as Lawrence Funderburk and Shawn Respert as a kid. It's still not a real rivalry since we don't play them annually anymore but, make no mistake, if we see them in the tournament all of the bad blood will be revisited especially the comment from Jalen calling Duke's players "Uncle Toms"
Cherokee was def the latter day Laettner, also, we cannot forget Mich/Duke in 08', when the Novak/Douglass era was put on the map. Would embbed, but I'm too drunk to learn new things. Keep in mind, walkons (Lee/Merrit, love em both) played vital minutes during this season, we've come a long way!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMfH3JD2VEw
There were some good ones between Michigan and Duke in the 1990s, and this was one of them - I think Bullock came out with 14 points in that game too, and Duke shot only about 35% or something like that from the floor.
1995 was a good game too - we were more or less neck-and-neck the whole game statistically, and I think the 2nd half score was identical, so it was the four points Duke didn't get early on that decided the game in the end in our favor. Maceo Baston and Maurice Taylor both scored over 20 points, as I recall.
Michigan wants to be Duke's rival!
It done restarted. Ask Jalen.
Don't mean to take my frustration for both board posts out on you, but YES I've always loathed Duke and consider them a rival, and YES i do badly want to be ranked #1. Maybe you guys are way younger than me, but obvious things should be obvious.
those who lived through the early '90s feel the rivalry. The only basketball team I hate more than Duke is MSU. That even includes Ohio.
I do accept that our hatred towards them is mostly one way. I accept that it is somewhat of a UM vs. MSU football rivarly. Hopefully, with a changing of our program, the rivalry will become more two-sided and grow.
In '97, beat them for the 3rd year in a row, and then later that day Woodson won the Heisman. Ah, the memories...
Hard to say that 20 years ago and the Fab Five is already "back in the day" but nevertheless it is true. 20 years ago this was developing into a big national rivalry. Then the Fab Five scandal hit and the rivalry as it were disentegrated. That said in the last couple of years that rivalry has been reignited but at this point it's not really a rivalry but as someone else pointed out more like bad blood.
I do remember hating on Laetner, Hurley and Parks. I had a hard time at points even liking the Dream Team because of Laetner but Jordan helped ease that. At any rate the only Duke player I ever liked and respected back then was Grant Hill. Today that hatred of all things Duke has certainly evaporated aside from those early 90's players, still can't stand them. But today's Duke teams do not hold that same level of disdain, perhaps because the smugness has been knocked out of them by losing som often early in the tournament despite high seeding.
Reminds me of walking to a football game in the early 90's. Guy walking toward me had a shirt that said "DUKE SUCKS." As he passed and walked away, on his back it said "AND LAETNER SWALLOWS!"
If your defintion of Rivalry is them beating us almost every time we've played since the 90's most of the time by big margins than yes we could be considered rivals :-)
I have a little different take on this. Most everyone here has a slightly different definition of the word..Rival.
Do I hate Duke BB? (and NC for that matter) Yes. Are we a rivalS in acedemics? Yes. Are we rivals in FB? no. Are we rivals in BB? No.
I define a rival as someone, some entity, some school that has an equal amount of hatred for each other. A rival is that the outcome of the game means something a little more than bragging rights. In my opinion, it has to go both ways.
I am sure that most Michigan BB fans hate Duke. But that does not make them our "rival". There is nothing to gain (save NCAA Tourney) on the outcome. Duke's rival is NC. NC's rival is Duke. There is no question about this.
Our rival is ohio, (in most sports). Their rival is us. We are NOT rivals with moo U. We are NOT rivals with ND. We are not rivals with EMU. As I have posted previously, there are 5 Big Ten FB teams that consider us their rival. However we only have one.
I still dislike Grant Hill. As far as Laetner, there was never any mystery about his d-baggery. But Grant Hill was placed on a pedestal and we were all expected to worship his bloodline, supposed intellect, work ethic and clean life. This continued well into his NBA career until his injuries and complete inability to help his many different teams advance into the post season. I may not hate Duke, but its really difficult for me to like them.
But I'm not sure any of that translates into a current rivalry. I live in the Triangle, have Duke friends, and can assure you that UM doesn't make their list. It's probably composed of UNC and...and that's it. I actually get the impression that they feel like they should win every game and if they don't it was because of bad luck (other team exceeds expectations or one of their own is injured). Think Notre Dame - but without the Catholic pretense.
I actually get the impression that they feel like they should win every game and if they don't it was because of bad luck (other team exceeds expectations
It's been my experience that if Duke or UNC loses a game in basketball, except to each other, that much credit is rarely given to the opponent. Though UNC is guiltier of this than Duke.
This was a legit, out of conference rivalry for both programs before Michigan effectively stopped fielding a competitive basketball team from 1999-2007 due to major sanctions.
First game in the modern series between these 2 teams took place in the 89-90 season, the year after Michigan won the NC and 1 year before Coach K won his first. Michigan won that initial game, and the 2 teams started playing every year in the non-conference schedule all the way through 2008 or 2009, I believe.
This rivalry was big nationally in the 90's, especially during the Fab 5 era. It was an OT loss on national TV against Duke in 91 that basically launched the Fab 5 to National stardom. The Fab 5 went 0-fer against some great Duke teams, most notably in the NCAA title game in 92. Post Fab 5, Michigan B-Ball started underachieving every year but finally started beating Duke with a little more frequency, including wins in 95, 97 and 98 (3 out of my 4 years in college, incidentally).
After 1998, the Dark Period began for Michigan B-Ball, and even though the 2 teams kept playing every year it became a series of Duke blowouts. It was kind of like RichRod vs Tressel, only for 9 years instead of 3. We finally beat them again in 08 once we started to field a halfway decent team, but years of apathy and suckitude allowed the rivalry to fizzle out, to the point where the annual series got canceled.
It was ironic, then, that the two teams played each other in the Tourney in 11, so soon after the series had been canceled. It came on the heels of Jalen's awesome Fab 5 documentary, which of course stoked a bunch of old flames and led to Grant Hill's editorial rebuttal. Just for old time's sake, Michigan found a way to break its fan base's hearts by losing that Tourney game to Duke in the final seconds.
Now that Michigan is respectable as a national program again, it would be nice to see them resume the series in future years.
I don't think Wiki was wrong for listing this as a rivalry. For those who remember, Duke-Michigan games used to be a huge deal and got a ton of national coverage. The Duke game was our basketball equivalent of the Notre Dame rivalry in football.
Actually, we stopped playing them when Amaker was here (2002-03 was the last time), supposedly because Coach K doesn't like playing his assistants. We briefly resumed the series when Beilein came here and then it was stopped again.
You're right that we didn't play them during the 2002-2007 period - my bad on that one. Either way, it wouldn't have mattered in the scope of the rivalry given how awful Michigan basketball was during this stretch.
I was at UM in early 90s and was at the OT game you mention. But I don't remember the Fab Five playing at Duke during the regular season the following year (Dec of 92)?
We did. That was the last time we were the #1-ranked team. A few of the guys mouthed off about how they were going to destroy Duke in the game. We ended up losing by about 10.
I don't remember that at all ... and I remember way more than I should about past Michigan games!
SI actually wrote an article on that game (not very flattering to us):
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1004645/index...
I don't think Wiki was wrong for listing this as a rivalry.
It should be noted that Wikipedia is a completely user-generated encyclopedia. They didn't write that article; individual contributors (most of whom are probably Michigan fans) did.
I was a fan during the Fab Five years and at that point it certainly felt like a rivalry. But that feeling only lasted a few years during the 1990s. During the Ellerbe years it certainly didn't feel like a big deal, and when the series was cancelled under Amaker most people hardly noticed. (You wrote above that we played them every year under Ellerbe/Amaker, but that's inaccurate. We did not play in between 2002 and 2007.)
For us to call it a "rivalry" now feels a lot like Illinois fans saying that about Michigan-Illinois. It clearly means much more to one school than the other. It had its moments, but rivalries are built on more than just a few memorable games. Or is Michigan-Colorado a rivalry in football?
We were (although to be honest, it was one-sided, mattering more to us than them, aside from perhaps when the Fab Five was here) . . . but we aren't anymore. The series needs to be restarted.
and there is bad blood. Even my eight-year-old hates Duke. Of course, that's not just because of me but because we live in Tallahassee, but still.
I think it takes more than just hatred (from one side) for there to be a rivalry. A lot of people here hate Alabama, USC, etc., but I don't think that means we have a rivalry with them.
Lots of fans hate Duke - they're successful, they're private, they have a reputation as being kind of preppy, etc. - but that doesn't mean Duke has 100 different rivalries. We've played some great games with them, but not enough to make it a meaningful year-in, year-out thing. Really, if someone has to ask "Is it a rivalry?" then no, it probably isn't.
think both are true. To some extent it is in our (Michigan's) minds, that is true--and a matter of resentment. Also may be truer for us old guys, who lived through the pain of the big beatings during the Fab Five era, and really absorbed the hate between the Fab Five and Hill. I was so happy when we beat them in 08.
I remember the Fab Five games. I despised Duke during that time. But it was just a couple of years. If we had stayed a national power all that and continued to play them annually, it might be a rivalry. But I don't know how you could say it is now.
Along the same lines, while Michigan-Indiana was a huge deal for awhile in the '80s and early '90s, I don't think we can really say that we currently have a rivalry with them, given how the last 15 years have gone down for the two schools. That may change, though.
people see it as I do--hence the wikipiece. Agree about Indiana. And would love it, like you, if these "rivalries" became more heated.
I remember watching that Duke game in 1997, coming back in the second half and the students charging the court. The 1996 game was a 1 point win at Cameron Indoor.
The Fab Five will be remembered long after the players for Duke from the 90's have been cast onto the ash pile of sports.
Ssssh. Cherokee Parks might write an OpEd to WSJ, or something. The Dukies are very sensitive on this issue.
I think we can all agree that when Duke and Michigan play, it's going to be more special than when Duke and Michigan State play or Michigan and Wake Forest play. There's history, there's quality and there's strong fan support. Of course, Michigan and Duke are not each other's biggest rivals, but it's definitely something that gets the fans pumped. That, to me, is a pretty good rivalry.
One of the first strikes against Amaker, IMO, was that he didn't want to play Duke once he became coach here. Sharp contrast from Bo, who'd been an assistant at tOSU but who, as we all know, absolutely lived to beat them.
so not a good analogy.
It could be a rivalry if we scheduled it annually, but, IMO we aren't quite there. That differs from whoever created this wikipedia article, but, just my 2 cents.
And something about both being known for great academics.
