Jay Williams Duke bias was showing in worst way after Blue Devils Final Four collapse

The Duke Blue Devils choked about as badly as you'll ever see from a college basketball program in March Madness. Jon Scheyer, Cooper Flagg and this team had full control of their Final Four matchup against the Houston Cougars right up until the final minute when it came crumbling down.

Duke led by as many as 14 points in the game and led by six points with under 35 seconds remaining against Houston. And they lost. It was a confluence of multiple miscues, errors, questionable foul calls and everything going wrong at the worst time. However, there was almost no one who didn't come away thinking that the Blue Devils had collapsed to the umpteenth degree in San Antonio.

It's important to use the phrase "almost no one", though, because former Duke star and now-ESPN analyst Jay Williams was a bit kinder to the Blue Devils than others were.

Williams didn't totally shy away from the shortcomings that Duke showed in the historic loss, even noting that it was the first time Flagg and his Blue Devils teammates actually looked like a young team, but it was a line that "Duke didn't give the game away" while crediting Houston for seizing the opportunity that really stood out near the end of his post-mortem for the game.

Jay Williams wasn't as harsh as he should've been on Duke for Final Four collapse

Again, I'll cut Williams some semblance of slack here because, well, he deserves it. Any time that he's using words like "shrinking" and criticizing the execution down the stretch, there is some blame being placed there. Moreover, he did note that he wasn't "trying to take anything away from Houston."

At the same time, there are few people who came out of Saturday night's game talking about anything other than Duke choking a surefire win away. That's what happens when a program that had previously gone 79-0 under Scheyer when leading by 11 or more points loses on the biggest stage in college basketball, especially while giving up a 9-0 run in the final 35-ish seconds of the game. It's deserved.

What really stands out and feels a bit biased on the part of Williams, though, is that he didn't single anyone out. That's not to say he should've taken aim at any Duke players but, rather, that he didn't mention Scheyer. The late-game execution (or lack thereof), the final plays for the Blue Devils and really so much of the entire game felt like Scheyer was out-coached. That didn't show on the scoreboard until the bitter end for Duke, but it was apparent.

To not criticize the coaching, especially how that relates to the criticized late-game execution, feels odd from a broadcaster. It's even more so that when the player spent his college career at the program in question.

Overall, I like Williams as an analyst and think he brings quite a lot to the broadcast whenever he's on the screen. Having said that, we need him to take the Duke goggles off in moments like this. He might've had them on the bridge of his nose, so close to coming down, but there were aspects of his assessment where the Blue Devil in him was apparent.