HOW dook GOT PUNK’D
dook fans hurled merciless barbs at junior forward Nik Caner-Medley Wednesday night.
DURHAM, N.C. — The Cameron Crazies, Duke University’s famous student fan section, were bamboozled into chanting about a Duke scandal involving a former crack cocaine dealer instead of criticizing Terrapin forward Nik Caner-Medley as they had intended during Wednesday’s night’s nationally televised Duke-Maryland basketball game.
Upon entering Cameron Indoor Stadium, Duke students received a cheer sheet full of “The Dirt on Our Opponent – University of Maryland Terrapins.” In the section on Caner-Medley, in addition to details of his summer arrest in Maine, was a statement about his girlfriend — “NCM’s girlfriend is named Myra, and her pet name for him is ‘Piggy.’”
The Duke fans made oink noises and chanted “Piggy” not only while Caner-Medley was attempting free throws but also throughout the game.
But the information about his girlfriend and her pet name for him was false, planted by a person who wished for the Cameron Crazies to embarrass themselves.
If the Cameron Crazies had chanted “Myra Piggy,” it would have sounded like “Myron Piggie,” the name of a former basketball coach and crack cocaine dealer who pleaded guilty to giving money to college basketball players, including former Blue Devil Corey Maggette, in one of Duke’s scandals.
The prank worked, conceded Duke senior Stephen Rawson, the student in charge of controlling student admission to games and passing out the cheer sheets.
“We got hoodwinked on that,” he said. “Somebody pulled a fast one on us.”
A person claiming responsibility for the false information called The Diamondback Thursday night. The caller, a 23-year-old male from North Carolina who operated under the pseudonym “Lance Nichols,” said he received an e-mail copy of the cheer sheet for Duke’s last home game against Virginia. At the bottom of the sheet is a screen name, CheerSheets, that students can instant message to “contribute for the next game.”
“Nichols” made up a false screen name — JerseyKidatDuke — and by answering several trivia questions about Duke campus life with the help of his friend, a Duke graduate student, he was able to convince the student monitoring the CheerSheets screen name that he was a Duke student.
“Nichols” sent a copy of the alleged conversation to The Diamondback, but it was not independently verified that the conversation was legitimate.
The cheer sheets are not produced just for the Maryland game. Prior to every Duke home game, a select group of students brainstorm and solicit information from the Blue Devil community that the Cameron Crazies can use against the opponent, Rawson said. Cheer sheets are produced from this information and distributed to the students .
Aside from the bogus information, the cheer sheet for Wednesday night’s game contained a lot of material for the Cameron Crazies’ creative juices.
From details on Caner-Medley’s summer arrest in Maine came pregame chants of “Alcoholic!” During the game, while he was attempting a free throw, Caner-Medley was treated to different bleacher sections alternately bellowing “I’m from Maryland” and “Nobody can beat me” — the phrase he was heard shouting prior to his arrest.
After contemplating handing out bags of flour last year to replicate the cocaine Terp guard D.J. Strawberry’s father, Darryl, once used, the Cameron Crazies gave the injured sophomore a reprieve.
“D.J. Strawberry is entirely off limits, NO EXCEPTIONS,” the cheer sheet read. “Just don’t go there. We’re classier than that.”
While the Duke fans may not have used vulgarity against the Terps — as this university’s students did when the Blue Devils played in College Park last January — the Cameron Crazies did not shy away from ridiculing the Terps.
Williams, who is known to perspire heavily during games, was the target of multiple “Sweat, Gary, Sweat!” chants, the same cheer that provoked the coach to flick off the Cameron Crazies two years ago.
Duke sophomore Emily Bruckner suggested the differences between Terp fans and her fellow Cameron Crazies.
“We try to keep the cheers classier,” she said. “We just try to think of things that are more clever and funny and not just mean.”
Given their repeated references to the bogus information on Caner-Medley, the Cameron Crazies seemed to think they had a golden nugget of information that fit Bruckner’s criteria. Rawson suggested the students will use a thicker comb in the future to weed out false facts.
“It’s a lesson to be learned,” he said. “We were enthusiastic about getting something on Nik and maybe we got a little overzealous and we’ll have to be a little more careful.”