duke's goal = win championships
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Kedsy
There is no such thing as a "highly probabl[e] lock to take your team far into the tournament" in college basketball. No such thing. Kyrie and Austin were both rated the #2 prospect in their class. How much more of a "lock" could there be? It's true Davis and Shabazz were/are rated #1 in their class, but even #1 isn't a lock (witness Derrick Favors in 2009, OJ Mayo in 2007, and Josh McRoberts in 2005).
Lock is bad word. Sorry. But the probability assessment we have made on who those "high probability guys" are has been off. Rivers is not that guy. Davis is. Rivers was predicted to be that guy. Didn't work out.
If Austin and Mason both leave and we get nobody else, we'll have 7 guys who were in the top 30 in their high school class (including Alex and Andre who were both top 15 before they re-classified), plus a third-team All-ACC player plus an athletic 7-footer. Under your definition, who won't be desperate for talent?
sorry you're right. conflated talent with athleticism. i want athletes! the powerful, quick, and leaping types that can dominate a game with raw ability. we don't have that, haven't recruited that. NC state, UNC, and a host of others in the ACC have that. Florida State. they are not desperate for that. we are and it seems to be working for those teams.
Just because something is a goal doesn't mean you're a failure if you don't reach it. If you evaluate Kyrie and Austin solely based on how many NCAA national championships they won, there are a whole lot of players who failed over the course of time.
This is the key thing. Duke has a lofty goal. To win it all, every year. That's how I see it and to answer your question...yes, most fail. The best are the ones who admit they failed to achieve the goal, address the issues that came in the way, diagnose why they came in the way of your goal, and then ultimately go out and put the design and people in place to achieve the goal. it's rapid evolution and the faster teams can do that the faster they evolve and move toward the goal of winning championships. everyone fails, so it's not like it makes you a bad person or player. it just means you didn't achieve your goal. and anyone who thinks we achieved duke's goal for the season this year i will beg to differ and argue against that until the end.