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Enjoy from my personal collection of NCAA Tournament games. I remember missing most of these games as I went out with a few buddies of mine to watch a high school playoff game between Chicago's Gordon Tech and Maine South. One of our teammates who we played with our first two seasons of high school basketball had transferred to Gordon Tech, which had a few Division-I players on the team, including Jitim Young and Jerry Sanders, who played at Northwestern and Northern Illinois. Sadly, Gordon Tech would lose that night to Maine South. As for these tourney games, this first set featured two #1 seeds in Michigan State and Duke that would meet up during the 1999 NCAA Final Four. While I can no longer stand Duke, I loved this 1998-99 Duke team. Honestly, I feel this might be the best Duke team Mike Krzyzewski ever had. I was a big fan of Duke freshman Corey Maggette since he sent to nearby Fenwick High School. Having seen Maggette up close and personal several times, I can safely say he was the best high school player I had ever seen in person at that time of my life. In fact, with the Bulls eventually having the first overall pick of the 1999 NBA Draft, part of me wanted Chicago to draft Maggette. The Bulls would take his Duke teammate Elton Brand instead. Brand would be traded after two seasons in Chicago to the Los Angeles Clippers, where he would team up with Maggette. As for Michigan State, the Spartans were a year away from winning it all. Man, I loved this MSU team with Mateen Cleaves, Morris Peterson and Antonio Smith, despite them beating Illinois two years in a row during the Big Ten Tournament championship game.
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