After East region top seed Villanova lost 65-62 to Wisconsin Saturday, many felt the path to the Final Four got a lot easier for Duke. For The Win’s Adi Joseph perhaps made that argument in the most definitive terms, though, writing a piece titled “Duke’s path to the Final Four looks ridiculously clear with Villanova’s loss.”
Of course, there were still schools in the Blue Devils’ way, and the seventh-seeded South Carolina Gamecocks wound up knocking them off 88-81 Sunday. That led to the university’s official Twitter account (not even the athletic department, but the overall university) calling out USA Today Sports (For The Win is owned by USA Today)’s tweet of Joseph’s article. Here’s that tweet from Saturday:
Duke’s path to the Final Four looks ridiculously clear with Villanova’s loss. https://t.co/T7ivac3qV4
— USA TODAY Sports (@usatodaysports) March 19, 2017
And South Carolina’s response after their win Sunday:
https://twitter.com/UofSC/status/843662497525776386
They also went on to blast Duke in general:
Scale from 1-10, how shook is #Duke right now? #marchmadness
— University of South Carolina (@UofSC) March 20, 2017
It’s not often you see “shook” on an official university Twitter feed, but this seems like the appropriate occasion. This also was quite the way for them to call out Joseph’s piece, but hey, anything headlined “ridiculously clear” that comes up this short deserves that.
Joseph’s piece did note that South Carolina might pose a tough test for the Blue Devils, and it wasn’t necessarily that outrageous overall. (In fact, actually, an even better one to call out would be his March 13th “This is going to be the most obnoxious Duke national championship team ever.”) Still, he (or his editors) went with “ridiculously clear” in the headline. That’s the kind of take that’s going to get some backlash if it comes up freezing cold, as this USA Today one definitely did.
