Nope, Maryland?s separation from the Atlantic Coast Conference wasn?t going to be smooth and gracious. Not exactly a wave of warm farewell and best-of-luck-in-your-new-home messages.
Lawsuits and countersuits, yes. Condemnation from fans, students, alumni and longtime observers of the school and the league, naturally. And ... a volley of trash talk from an unanticipated source. Sure, why not?
?I have a great deal of respect for Maryland," said a sour Mike Krzyzewski Saturday night, down the hall from thousands of fans still jostling on the Comcast Center court after the unranked Terrapins? two-point win over second-ranked Duke. He paused briefly, then added: ?If it was such a rivalry, they?d still be in the ACC. Obviously they don?t think it?s that important, or they wouldn?t be in the Big Ten."
Zing.
Yes, there are hard feelings about Maryland leaving the conference to which it had belonged from its inception 60 years ago. And the injured parties are starting expressing it a year early, as the Terps don?t depart for the Big Ten until 2014-15. But, just to add to the saltiness, Krzyzewski indicated earlier that the ACC was unlikely to schedule Duke at Maryland next season.
Even after the schedule became unbalanced when the ACC raided the Big East?er, increased its geographic footprint?Duke and Maryland always played home-and-home.
No Duke for you anymore, traitors.
That was unexpected enough. The hint of sour grapes, after an otherwise tough but not-unprecedented road conference loss in a notoriously hostile environment, was a bigger surprise. Krzyzewski publicly exuded mutual admiration for Maryland, even when the battles with Gary Williams? teams were at a boiling point.
It was all about breaking up the family.
Maryland still stands alone in the impact of its leap from one conference to another. Realignment is hardly meaningless around the rest of the country, but it?s still the only school splitting from its home since the 1950s. The Big East might be coming apart at the seams, but it?s been around only half the time the ACC has, and some of its departures hadn?t been there a whole decade.
Maryland, though? Charter member. This was going to hurt. If it already hadn?t become the ACC?s black sheep, it crept closer to it than ever Saturday.
Ironically, Krzyzewski might have done Maryland a huge favor by going off-script. From the buildup to the likely final Duke visit as an ACC foe to the traditional start of the post-game stampede through the streets of College Park (not a riot this time, at least), the Maryland faithful had been bittersweet, at best, about the end of this era. At worst, they were hating their own school?s administration worse than they?d ever hated Christian Laettner or J.J. Redick.
Based on the social media reaction to Coach K, Terp fans were briefly distracted from staring daggers at their own leaders and redirecting the glares to a more familiar, comfortable target. The fans? argument, of course, was that long-standing rivalries and passions shouldn?t be thrown away just because a program can?t manage its finances. Is that infusion of cash going to fill the building when Nebraska or Iowa come to town instead of Duke and Carolina?
Those are much tougher questions to answer than, ?Is Coach K becoming a sore loser??
For what it?s worth, the not-too-subtle needle from Krzyzewski wasn?t limited to his own program. His counterpart on the women?s team, Joanne P. McCallie, dropped this bomb on her Twitter account earlier in the evening, while the men were toiling up in College Park: ?What would all these venues do without Duke basketball? Sell fewer tickets, have less to dream about, & just melt away into oblivion. GoDuke.?
After the loss, the tweet was deleted. The message it sent remained: We?re Duke. You left us, not the other way around. Your loss.
Again, it was cold-blooded, especially coming from a coach who had only been in the league herself for six years. Not exactly cloaked in history there, Coach P.
On the other hand, it strikes a raw nerve among the very fans angered by it: Yeah, actually, we did leave you. We can?t stand it. We feel like it?s being forced on us. We are going to miss you all. If we weren?t, why are we storming the court and running up and down Route 1 like lunatics again?
This is probably only the latest jab Maryland will hear, this year and next, in basketball and the other sports, as the official split draws closer. The post-partum pain felt by the ACC as one of its children exits will only increase. But at least Maryland knows what to expect now, and why.
Krzyzewski?s words were harsh, and all things considered, unnecessarily petty and small. But they were also tough love. Maryland, you?re not our rivals, and we?ll hate not being your rivals anymore.
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