Originally Posted by
jimsumner
"All five starters wer awesome that season--you can't get to a Final Four otherwise. Shav was possibly the most effective player in the tournament that year."
Excluding the Alabama State game, Shav averaged 7.8 points and 4.3 rebounds in the 2004 NCAAs. That includes a 15-minute, 3-point game against Xavier in the regional finals. I'm pretty sure that he wasn't Duke's most effective player in the NCAAs.
I'm also pretty sure that all five Duke starters weren't awesome that year, at least as I would define the term. If Ewing was awesome in '04, then so were Nelson, Singler, Paulus, and Scheyer last year, with Henderson as a maybe.
It's nice to have five awesome players but lots of Duke teams have made Final Fours without five awesome starters, unless we're including Bilas in '86, Snyder in '88 and '89, Hurley in '90 (35.7 fg%, 4.4 topg), Koubek '91, and Capel '94 et. al. as awesome, in which case the term pretty much loses meaning).
Look, the '09 Duke team isn't likely to be perfect. But perfect teams don't come around very often and a Final Four is a realistic goal for imperfect but talented teams, which this one promises to be. The NCAA Tournament is likely to be the measuring stick but the NCAA Tournament is a crap shoot, in which the best teams don't always win. I think the WVU game has caused some to forget how good Duke was last year and how good they can be this year.
I trust we can all agree that it should be fun to find out.