Originally Posted by
SCMatt33
I want to give Duke a huge break in this game for a lot of effort and energy stats. I know the commentator harped a lot on rest and "tired legs" for Duke, but this is not like when Lenny Elmore does it. I talked about this in the in game thread, but it's worth mentioning again. Va Tech had just about every single intangible and physical advantage you could have. Physically, Duke had one day of rest to travel in from Florida, while Va Tech had three days rest to come in from Blacksburg. Going back further, Duke had a trip that went Boston-Durham-Tallahassee-Durham in just 7 days, while Tech, while Tech had 2 home games before this in the last 8 days. Also, Duke had to go with a 3 man big guy rotation with Hairston's injury. This was a game where they really could have used him in spurts to give the other guys more rest. That's a huge physical advantage. Intangibly, Duke came off an emotional revenge win against a team it beat by 15 on the road and Tech was coming off a tough rivalry loss (which definitely has its own emotional toll), but had the revenge factor themselves. With the exception of Va Tech's recent in-state rivalry game, that's just about every physical and intangible advantage a team can have, not to mention that the game went an extra 5 minutes. So for those reasons, it's hard to criticize things like poor shooting, missing a lot of free throws early in OT, giving up a ton of offensive boards (including one that could have lost the game on the last possession), and allowing Va Tech to dominate the 50-50 ball battle.