Who's The Man? Killingsworth breathes life into debate
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Marco Killingsworth was worth it. He was worth the wait, worth the scholarship, worth the two-year investment for the one-year return. Worth all of it.
Killingsworth, a 6-foot-8, 268-pound Auburn transfer, played his first game for Indiana on a national stage Wednesday night. The hype had been huge. Indiana coach Mike Davis hadn't been wondering in the preseason if Killingsworth was the best player in the Big Ten. He'd been wondering if Killingsworth was the best player in America.
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| With the Duke defense focusing on the perimeter, Marco Killingsworth wins the one-on-one battle with Shelden Williams. (AP) |
Being the best player on the court Wednesday night was pretty damn impressive, considering the competition included Duke All-Americans Shelden Williams and J.J. Redick. No -- scratch that. The competition only included Redick.
Williams was no competition for Killingsworth.
Killingsworth was that good.
Think about it. If Shelden Williams is All-America material -- and Shelden Williams is definitely All-America material -- what does that make Killingsworth? He went one-on-one with Williams, outscoring him 34-13 and outrebounding him 10-9, before fouling him out. Killingsworth looked like a cross between Anthony Mason and Antoine Walker, an enormous and agile athlete superior to everyone else on the floor.
Still, it wasn't enough for No. 17 Indiana to win Wednesday night. No. 1 Duke won 75-67, a result and a margin that accurately reflected the difference between the two teams. Duke was better than Indiana. Eight points better? Sounds about right.
But Killingsworth was the best player on the floor. Better than Redick, who had 29 points and five assists? Yes, better than Redick.
OK, maybe not better than Redick. That's a close, close call. But as good as Redick was -- and after the game, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was talking up Redick as one of the college game's all-time greats -- Killingsworth was every bit as unstoppable.
He scored 10 points in little more than three minutes late in the first half against Williams, the easiest 10 points you'll ever see -- and they came at the expense of Williams, last year's national defensive player of the year.
"I thought I had an easy game," Killingsworth said. "I guess (Williams) was lackadaisical with me: 'He's just another guy on my plate.' He took me lightly."
Not exactly, Krzyzewski said. The Blue Devils, according to Krzyzewski, were playing rope-a-dope with Killingsworth and Indiana. Duke's goal was to take away the perimeter, considering Indiana came into the game shooting 58.3 percent on 3-pointers, having made 42 of them through three games.
