After last night’s loss to Notre Dame, Duke’s third straight, like a lot of Duke fans we guess, we were a little despondent. But then a couple of related things clicked into place and helped make sense of it.
The first is what Coach K said afterwards about how struggling will ultimately help. He pointed back to several situations - his very early years, 1995, 2000 and 2007 - as teams that struggled and then ultimately benefited from that struggle.
That reminded us of something he said a long time ago about the value of failure, which is a huge difference from his predecessor, Bill Foster, who really struggled to come to terms with failure, much to the cost of his team (after a loss, Foster used to drive around Durham listening to country music, which, despite its many virtues, is not going to do much to alleviate depression over losing).