It’s not just that Robbie Hummel blowing out his knee for the second time in eight months has once again dashed NCAA tournament title hopes for Purdue.
The larger problem is that it’s cleared the path for Duke to win another unsatisfying national championship.
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The NCAA Selection Committee pummeled Hummel and the Boilermakers when the favorite player of every head coach in the Big Ten went down last February. Instead of earning the No. 1 seed it had been in line for all season, a Hummel-less Purdue stumbled into March, got dropped to No. 4 and landed in the softest corner of the bracket, a region headlined by the Blue Devils — who were gifted the spot that should’ve been Big East-champion West Virginia’s in the first place. (It’s hard to forget NCAA selection chair Dan Guerrero‘s circular logic: “We look at the entire body of work from November all the way through the conference tournament, and we put a lot of value in the way that Duke finished.”)
Without the versatile 6-foot-8 Hummel, Purdue got to the Sweet 16 but it couldn’t keep Duke from pulling away on the back of its perimeter prowess when the two teams eventually collided at Reliant Stadium.
With Hummel out this year, the Boilermakers again have gone from a 2011 Final Four hopeful to just another Big Ten contender. As for the Blue Devils, they’ve been handed yet another head start on, fittingly, the road back to Houston.
