UConn Believe It!

Here lies Duke: RIP.

Richard “Rip” Hamilton, Connecticut’s slender stiletto of a scorer, buried mighty Duke on Monday.

With a slashing drive here and a three-point dagger there, Hamilton scored 27 points that devastated Duke.

He gave the Blue Devils a coronary on the way to the coronation.

“Everybody was telling us, ‘Y’all are going to lose by this much,’ or ‘What are you going to do to stop them?’ ” Hamilton said.

“Everybody was looking at Duke like they were invincible.”

Check that.

The score was Connecticut 77, Duke 74. The Huskies are national champions.

“We feel as though, OK, they’re considered the best team ever?” Hamilton said. “We want to know where we stand.”

They stood on the top of a ladder cutting down the nets Monday night at Tropicana Field.

“When we heard we were 10 point underdogs . . . I mean, we’ve never been 10-point underdogs since my freshman year,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton, a 6-foot-6, 185-pound swingman, became an afterthought in the national player-of-the-year race after he bruised his thigh in midseason and struggled to make it back--missing the Huskies’ first loss of the season to Syracuse and a victory over Stanford.

By the time he was back in top form, Duke was dominant and Elton Brand was the default player of the year.

The votes were cast, but the national championship game had yet to be played.

And the skinny scorer with a tattoo on his chest of a basketball shaped as a heart and the simple statement, “Love for the Game,” had the final word.

“The first thing about him, he’s a great basketball player,” Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun said. “Scott Burrell, Ray Allen, Donyell Marshall, all of them had greatness of their own. But the greatest scorer I’ve ever coached--because he can beat you so many ways--is Richard Hamilton.

“He had 27 points. Sometimes he puts up 30 points, and I say, ‘Are your Mom and Dad keeping the score book?’ He’s so deceptive. He’s an amazing scorer.”

Amazing, yes.

In the NCAA tournament, Hamilton scored 28 against Texas San Antonio, 21 against New Mexico, 24 against Iowa, 21 against Gonzaga, 24 against Ohio State and 27 against Duke.

“I think Hamilton expects to put points up on the board every night. He expects to win,” Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said.

“You can’t find him in one area of the court. Jim gives him great freedom of movement. They look for him in transition. They set things up for him. And then he can just make his own moves whenever he sees it.

“He’s really as good a scorer as there is in college basketball, I think. Because he can hit the three, drive, and when he gets fouled, from the free-throw line I think he’s tough. He’s really tough. There’s no question he’s as good an offensive player as we’ve played against all year.”

Duke’s Chris Carrawell could match Hamilton’s height, but not his quickness. Hamilton was a terror on the break and deadly in the half court.

“He comes off picks really well,” Carrawell said. “He might get two or three on the same play. If he’s open for a split-second, he knocks down shots.”

Hamilton ran onto the court for both games in the Final Four with this beatific smile on his face.

“One thought I had before the game, was don’t pressure yourself. Go play,” he said.

And as Duke got tighter, he got looser.

“He’s been that way the whole tournament,” Calhoun said. “I think being healthy does that. What he’d been through with his thigh, before that his foot.

“He was the best player in the tournament in my opinion coming into this game.”

Hamilton, it’s easy to forget, was a question mark coming into the season after breaking his foot while practicing with the U.S. World Championship team last summer.

“Not to be with us, it affected him a lot,” teammate Kevin Freeman said. “He came back and made himself work so hard in practice to get back. It gave him motivation to prove he’s the best player in the country.”

He almost did, at least on this night, when he was named the most outstanding player of the Final Four.

“I don’t even know how to tell you. Just being hurt, being in a situation where you’re not around the players, it’s kind of frustrating,” Hamilton said.

‘To come back and be the national champions, it’s unbelievable. At first I thought, this is just joy. I still can’t believe we did what we did.”

And then he thought of his grandfather, Edward, who died during the last year.

“One thing my Dad told me before the game was, ‘Grandpa wants a national championship.’ I kind of brushed it off at the time. They’re a great team. But after the game, I just looked up and thought of him.”

Others thought of Kobe Bryant, a high school teammate on Pennsylvania AAU teams, and a high school rival.

“His last high school game, I saw Rip play in the semifinals against Kobe in the Palestra in one of the greatest games I ever saw,” Calhoun said. “Rip wasn’t strong enough then. Kobe was a man, truly a man. We talked about that leap he needed to take as a player.”

He has taken it now.

“I think he’d be happy for me,” Hamilton said. “I saw him win a state championship in high school. For him to see me win a national championship, I think he’s happy.”

Now the question is whether Hamilton, a junior, will return for his senior year. It looks questionable.

“I don’t want to think about it. I’m so happy we won the national championship,” he said. “I never won a state championship in high school. I never won a championship in anything.”

What a nice place to start.