Duke Students Now Required To Take Test, Camp Out for UNC Game Tickets
One of the oldest jokes in dating is that of the woman who, on a date with one of those guys who likes sports more than is healthy, brings up that she likes the local team too.
And the guy, incredulous and clueless in equal measure, decides that she can’t be telling the truth unless she can name the backup third baseman on the 1921 Red Sox and give his batting average (Ossie Vitt, who hit .190, and if you knew that without using Baseball Reference, you’re either lying or need to get out more).
Every student at Duke is that woman on that date, and the guy is played by the gatekeeper of the Blue Devils’ tent city outside the ticket office, “Krzyzewskiville,” who decides who gets to sit in the student section for the big rivalry game at Cameron Indoor Stadium against North Carolina.
The test was administered Thursday.
More than 1800 undergraduates are currently taking this trivia test to determine who will be able to tent for the @DukeMBB vs. UNC game Feb. 20. Check out the test below and let us know how you fared:https://t.co/1XlLnRu6k7
— Duke Basketball (@dukebasketball) January 11, 2019
Jokes aside, there is a useful purpose to all this. Nothing is worse than attending a college game where even the school’s own students can’t be bothered to get riled up for the rivalry game; it’s what separates the true “toughest places to play” from the “this feels like a home game for the other team” venues.
The university said 1,800 students took the test, with the top 70 finishers receiving the coveted spots — and that was just for the right to camp out (in a tent with 12 students to the tent, for a total of 840 spots), not even for the tickets.
The Duke Chronicle student newspaper got a crib sheet and shared it with the public.
The questions ranged from relative cupcakes to “are you kidding me, even Coach K would have to Google it” level.
The easy ones included gimmes like naming the team’s leaders in points, assists and rebounds, and then providing those figures to the nearest integer along with their rank in the ACC.
Along the same lines, “Who scored the most points against Yale and how many?”
A little harder but still well within range for a true Duke stat geek — and the student body is chock-full of geeks who are good with numbers — was a request to name Marques Bolden’s stat line in points, blocks and rebounds against Auburn.
Where things went off the rails was in some of the esoterica.
An example: Name all 15 players on the roster, with their jersey number, position and hometown. Everyone knows Zion Williamson, but what about the guys who don’t even get into the game in garbage time?
Speaking of Williamson, there is one question on the test that regular readers of this very publication can get right without having to look:
“What did Zion rank his dunk against Clemson on a scale of 1-10?” Just like dunking a basketball, you get an easy two points for that one.
Oh, and as if all of the above weren’t bad enough? The first quiz is only to determine which 70 tents get in.
There’s a second quiz to determine the order in which the students then get to stand in line for tickets.
It’s like the old nursery school song “The Bear Went Over the Mountain.” What do you think he saw? He saw another mountain!
But those lucky few who get the best scores get to go crazy on Feb. 20 when the Blue Devils host their hated foes from Chapel Hill.
And maybe this year, they’ll get flu shots.
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