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Matt and his cohort Rob began writing their Two Dukies Pick the ACC material for Internet newsgroup rec.sport.basketball.college in 1997-1998, and debuted a Two Dukies website the next season while continuing to post on r.s.b.c.  In September of 1999, Dukies.com was born, and since then, the site has continued to feature the Two Dukies material, now long past its shelf life in its twelfth (can that be right??) season, as well as other pieces on ACC basketball and life in general.  Dukies.com was redesigned and relaunched in November of 2007 with enhanced features and graphics, if not, sadly, any improvement in content.  Also in November of 2007, Rob's pressing duties such as having a life caused him to step away from participation in the site, and longtime Friend of the Site and frequent guest writer duhomme stepped in to become the new better half of the Two Dukies. For more information on the site, its content, and its history, please visit the FAQ, linked off the main page, and see if anyone’s gotten around to populating it yet. Truth be told, it has been populated, and it's a hoot, if we do say so ourselves, so go read it. 

Matt is a 1992 graduate of Duke University and a 1997 graduate of the Wake Forest University School of Law, and in his spare time not spent presiding over the Dukies.com Command Center, practices law in the West.  Matt comes from a family of Duke grads, including his parents, who were married in the Duke Chapel, and has been watching Duke basketball avidly since roughly 1984 or 1985, when someone very important convinced him that college basketball was worth keeping an eye on.  Matt was born in New Haven, CT, and has lived in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Oklahoma (yep!), California, and North Carolina.  The years in Oklahoma turned him into a fan of the Dallas Cowboys, and being born in New England spurred him to swear an early allegiance to the Boston Red Sox, but Duke is first among equals as far as his rooting interests.  Matt has a little habit of visiting sports stadiums, including 29 of the 30 current major league baseball parks (the missing culript is one of those vexing new parks in New York City that he is honestly in no hurry to visit), as well as many of their predecessors.  He has also been to men's games at 81 Division I basketball arenas, and is trying to get to all 340+ someday, if they let him in, of course.  Those 81 venues include every ACC arena except Miami’s pad and Virginia’s new abode.  Matt’s hobbies include liberal Democratic politics, movies, one-hour television dramas, “reading” long books for months, and droning on in senseless bios.  Many of these elements, especially the senseless droning, make their way into the material you will read (or not read) on this site.  Matt claims to provide the content management for Dukies.com, and can be reached with questions or comments at matt[at]dukies.com. 

duhomme, a 1990 Duke University graduate who clearly knows less about French than he does basketball, is the Dukies.com Washington, D.C.- based political dirty trickster. Despite constant goading by Matt to out him as a Republican, he is a registered independent and has more in common with the Libertarian philosophy than either of the established parties. Unless he’s being paid by one of the established parties. A native of Western North Carolina, he grew up a Clemson fan, as his cousin played for the women’s team, but started following Duke after being accepted for admittance in December 1985, just in time to see the Blue Devils fall short of a national championship against Louisville. This trend would continue through three more Final Fours until he departed from the campus, allowing a grateful Coach K to pick up two rings in a row. duhomme’s musical interests are all across the board, and a quick look at his MP3 player reveals a selection including David Bowie, The Doors, Oingo Boingo, Miles Davis, King Crimson, Pat Metheny, The Talking Heads, Orbital, R.E.M., Roxy Music, The Police, The Bad Plus, The Sex Pistols, X, Weather Report, Echo and the Bunnymen, Jeff Beck, Metallica, The Chemical Brothers, Public Image Ltd. and Monsieur de Sainte Colombe. To name just a few. He also enjoys cooking and long walks . . . oh, wait, this isn’t Match.com. Seriously, he really loves the science involved in producing good food and, when faced with a really crappy game he’s supposed to be writing about but doesn’t want to, is likely to replace it with a recipe for, say, cream of potato soup or beef roulade filled with feta, spinach and roasted pine nuts and hopes to sneak it past Matt’s watchful eyes. duhomme stumbled upon Dukies.com somewhere around the time the first Bootsy was cast. A couple of years later, he somehow faked his way into participating as a guest Dukie. In November of 2007, duhomme covertly signed a twenty-two decade, five million peso option contract voidable at Matt's will to become one of the Two Dukies, and joined the site on a full-time basis. In addition to his other many duties, duhomme writes in depth (well - - you get the general idea) about all the VPI games as an ongoing, online memorial to his cousin Reema Samaha, who was murdered on April 16, 2007, in the Virginia Tech shooting that could have been prevented at about 10 different points. And, yes, duhomme is not his real name, but rather the internet undercover moniker he got from his favorite Faulkner story. If you know which one, email him at duhomme[at]dukies.com. 

Rob is a graduate of Duke University, but thankfully didn’t know Matt until much later.  He abandoned a promising career in information technology and Florida politics to study and practice law, and currently resides with his wife and three children in the Southeast.  Rob has been a fan of Duke basketball for his entire life, and has provided excellent historical perspective on the halcyon days of the ACC, before it was bloated and corrupted by college football.  Two Dukies Pick the ACC was Rob’s brainchild, and he provided tireless IT support to Dukies.com for an uncounted sum of your Earth years.       

Matt and duhomme are joined in their endeavors by an outstanding supporting cast, including Al White, a fluent speaker of jive and a West Coast corporate apparatchik who is not to be confused with any Hollywood actors; CDG, a citizen of Canada who lends her valuable north-of-the-border perspective to her fervent support of the Blue Devils; ClemsonGuest, a (get this) frequent guest writer who attended Clemson but doesn't mind contributing to the odd (or even really odd) Duke site here and there; and the many fine men, women and other species who have become registered users and offer their comments for all to see in response to the palaver posted here.  Dukies.com would not exist without its readers, who number in the tens and whose number is growing steadily when it’s not shrinking.    

Last updated December 31, 2009.