Storybook vs. storybook

 So now the network suits have half their storybook finale. The other half will likely happen today, which will blow up a whole other storybook.

Thus does the Madness become Literature Wars, with Mike Krzyzewski's last ride taking him to his 13th, and final, Final Four, and ancient rival North Carolina waiting in the wings to punch its ticket. Unfortunately the Tar Heels will have to ruin Storybook 2 to do it.

That would be St. Peter's, the Little Peacock That Could, who will try to take down yet another blueblood in the Elite Eight today. The tiny New Jersey school (undergrad enrollment: 2,124) has already sidelined Kentucky and Purdue, the winningest school in Big Ten history. Now it gets Carolina and the whole House of Dean Smith line of royal succession.

Logic says Carolina, currently playing perhaps the best basketball in the tournament, will dispatch the Peacocks with, um, dispatch. But logic  has had little or nothing to do with Da Tournament so far, so why start now?

Of course, Coach K and Duke have already ruined one storybook storyline, In beating Arkansas by nine yesterday, the Blue Devils deprived Razorback assistant Keith Smart a return to the Superdome in New Orleans, scene of his now-legendary Shot.

Indiana fans can still diagram the Shot down to Smart's drift-to-the-baseline-and-pop, because of course they can. It gave Bob Knight his third and last national title, after all.

How much good juju would the Hogs have gotten from that mystic chord of memory? And how many column inches of  Final Four copy would it have generated?

Instead, they'll write even more about Coach K's last ride, which surely has been written about enough already. K's entire hagiography will be hauled out once more for inspection. Every other coach in the Final Four will be asked to offer up a Coach K testimonial. By Saturday, we'll be praying for the Blue Devils' semifinal opponent to end it.

Which, if logic and the chalk finally prevails, will be North Carolina. And that, of course, will be storybook on steroids.

It doesn't get much more perfect than K having to beat the Tar Heels one last time to get to one last national title game -- especially after the Heels humiliated his Blue Devils not a month ago, ruining K's auld lang syne moment in Cameron Indoor. It would be incontrovertible evidence that Naismith or one of the lesser basketball gods is pulling the strings here, which raises a question: Is god interference an NCAA violation? 

Surely the rulebook must say something about it, 800-pound gorilla that it is.

And Literature Wars?

Gotta be a Level 2 infraction. Gotta be.