The college basketball scene closed out last evening with Connecticut illustrating why the women's team there has not lost in two years. It was a bit of an ugly game with neither one able to make points the first half. Stanford continued that problem in the second half. So, we have Connecticut and Duke at the top of the heap for 2009-2010.
Yesterday I wrote about Butler, the small school that battled Duke to the wire. Here is a bit of Duke University history.
It's origin is traced back to 1838 when Methodist and Quaker families started a small school called Union Institute. Normal College began in 1851. The Methodist Episcopal church kept it operating to train their preachers. It formally became Trinity College in 1859. The school was resettled in Durham in 1892 largely through the generosity of the Duke family who were respected Methodists and prosperous tobacco growers. In 1894 women were accepted "on equal footing" as students. Plans for a university began to grow as the Duke's established an endowment fund of forty million dollars. It was decided to rename the school Duke University as a memorial to this generous family. They had become a school of religion, and in 1931 a school of nursing. They have law, engineering, business and other schools today.
Duke University has about 6300 undergraduate and 4500 graduate students . Their school motto is "Knowledge and Religion". I imagine they will soon add "basketball" to that motto.
