“Busy Painting His Nails”: Duke’s Upset Loss Blamed on 20 Year Old Star as NC State Advances to Final Four

Duke Blue Devils’ March Madness run has come to an end. The NC State Wolfpack defeated the Duke at the Elite Eight stage of the NCAA tournament by 64-76. Some believe that Duke’s defense and its guard trio not being up to the mark led to their loss. Meanwhile, ex-NBA star Nick Young has pointed fingers at a particular member of the team.

Nick believes that Jared McCain’s distractions are the reason that his team could not advance to the Final Four stage of the tourney. In a now-deleted post on X, Nick had stated “Duke lost because Jared to busy painting his nails and trying to get smack by Collin =}”.

Notably, this is not the first time that Jared received criticism for his nail painting. Netizens have trolled the Duke for this quite a few times. However, he stated the reason for painting his nails is that it prevents him from biting them. And he gave the trolls a sarcastically befitting reply after he signed a NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) deal with nail polish brand Sally Hansen. “Sorry if that offends any of you guys,” he stated in a social media post.

And it seems Jared speaking out his mind has had a positive impact. Nick Young deleting his post from X is an indication of this fact. The ex-NBA star received a lot of backlash after his comments against the Duke Blue Devils’ guard. Another reason for deleting the post could be him realizing that it does not make sense to put blame on McCain as he was the highest scoring player for the team at the Elite Eight stage.

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What led to Duke Blue Devils’ exit from March Madness?

As evident from the scorecard itself, none of the players clicked on the team except for Jared McCain with his 32 points against NC State. While Jeremy Roach and Kyle Filipowski scored 13 and 11 points respectively, Tyrese Proctor could not get even a single point for the team.   

On the other hand, NC State found its offensive touch from the first few minutes of the second quarter of the game itself. And the Duke Blue Devils’ defense crumbled under the pressure of the big stage. However, Duke’s coach Jon Scheyer believes that offense was the major issue for his team.

“…I thought in the first half, we played great defense. They only scored 21 points, but we never had a rhythm on offense. It was probably the most disjointed game that we’ve had all year…” he stated as per the post by the official X account of Duke’s men’s basketball team.  

What do you think was the root cause behind the Duke Blue Devils losing at the Elite Eight Stage? And what is your opinion of Nick Young’s comments against Jared McCain? Let us know your views in the comments. 

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