View Poll Results: Who is our best assistant coach?

Voters
35. You may not vote on this poll
  • Dawkins

    27 77.14%
  • Collins

    5 14.29%
  • Wojo

    3 8.57%
Results 1 to 9 of 9
  1. #1

    Best Assistant Coaches?

    All,

    While I welcome opening day of the baseball season, many months remain before the blue-white scrimmage. In the spirit of coping with duke basketball withdrawal syndrome...

    We are all accustomed to a lot of talk about who the best coaches in the game are, and of course we know that Coach K's achievements are unrivaled (thanks to Al Featherstone for documenting the evidence and making the case on DBR recently).

    Questions:
    1) How do we evaluate our assistant coaches? Can we?
    2) Who are the best assistants in the ACC? In the NCAA? How do our guys stack up?

    Duke Kahanamoku

  2. #2

    Dawkins is the Man!

    Well, based on the answers to the poll so far, it seems that most would agree with me that Dawkins is the best coach, for many reasons.

    1) He is great at recruiting, and many players (Henderson and Nolan Smith recently) have talked about the connection with Dawkins as one of the main reasons they came to Duke

    2) He was a great player, arguably Duke's best, and as result earns the instant respect of any player, especially those with NBA dreams

    3) He is the first guy K looks to on the bench, as he should given his role

    4) He has been doing this a long time - knows the system and I am sure has learned a ton from Coach K (who I think did a great job this year)

    5) He was a fantastic gaurd and I am sure can teach the gaurds a bunch from his personal experience

    I guess this brings up the question of Wojo, seems crazy he is the big man coach. Seems like Wojo should be a PG or gaurd coach.

  3. #3

    Wojo as big man coach

    This is something I wonder about as a fan:

    1) How valuable is it to have played the position for someone who is coaching the position?

    Wojo is coaching big men despite his expertise as a guard. Is this a disadvantage or is it irrelevant?

    2) How can we assess his expertise coaching big men?

    Under Wojo's tenure, Boozer and Shelden both came on board and progressed tremendously. For each of them, if you think back to the progress they made between freshman and sophomore years it was truly amazing. And Shelden went on to really master all phases of the game. Either they were very well coached or very fast learners.

    Does the fact that high quality prospects joined during Wojo's tenure and that they progressed rapidly to become top NBA players indicate the coaches' quality? If Wojo gets credit for the progress of these 2 players, could that actually make him one of the best big man coaches in the country?

    Is it nature or nurture (or both)?

  4. #4
    Nuture, at least. But I also remember reading somewhere that one of the reasons that Wojo is a good big-man coach is because as a guard, he knows where big-men should be to receive passes, and how to get there given different defenses. But, I'm only a "fan" of basketball, not a "techincian", so... FWIW...

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Brian Zoubek will be a good test case for Wojo's competency as a big man coach. He's an in-between recruit, meaning in between a Brand/Boozer-type, a great talent who will have success no matter which program he plays for, and a Sanders/Christensen-type, a player who is talent-deficient or fatally flawed in one way or another and can't be expected to become a good player.

    Zoubek should become a good ACC center. He has the size, hands, and touch. Let's remember that he was an early season phenom, even dominating the Blue/White game. But he will need some coaching to reach his potential. We'll see what happens.

  6. #6
    Obviously, dominating the blue-white scrimmage is not a good predictor of what is to come in regular season play. Zoubek's size gives him a nice advantage. However, he needs to mature. Get stronger, work on his fitness level, etc. We'll see what kind of player Wojo can make him into. As for now, I would have to leave him closer to the Christensen category (but, yes, with better hands). He seems to be a hard worker, just lacking in overall physical ability. Let's hope he comes around.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Quote Originally Posted by baltimoron View Post
    Obviously, dominating the blue-white scrimmage is not a good predictor of what is to come in regular season play. Zoubek's size gives him a nice advantage. However, he needs to mature. Get stronger, work on his fitness level, etc. We'll see what kind of player Wojo can make him into. As for now, I would have to leave him closer to the Christensen category (but, yes, with better hands). He seems to be a hard worker, just lacking in overall physical ability. Let's hope he comes around.
    I wouldn't say he's closer to Christensen. Zoubek is much more coordinated. There's a reason he was compared to G-man and there's a reason he threw up 27/10 in the Blue-White. There is innate talent there in terms of coordination and touch in a 7-foot body. He needs to get stronger and he needs to get used to playing against big players, but there should not be any reason he doesn't develop into a good ACC center, imo.

  8. #8

    Zoubek's feet

    Troublemaker- we're all banking on you being correct obviously.

    Do you see any footwork issues for Zoubek? For whatever reason, toward the end of the season he routinely committed travels when handling the ball in the paint.

    Obviously everything gets better with practice and hard work over the long summer.

  9. #9

    Footwork seems ok, but

    Zoubek's footwork is ok, its just way too orchestrated. In other words, it is very pre-meditated, which results in him taking for ever to make his move. When he trys to speed things up, he ends up travelling as you point out. When you are 7-1 in highschool, you can me robotic and dominate, but not in the ACC

    Hopefully with tons of repetition, this will get better. That is why I think Zoubek is 2 years away (or even 3) - he is like Roy Hibbert or Aaron Grey, those guys took at least 2 years to develop

    The anti-Zoubkek in this regard, and the guy who has made a career out of making his move the instant he gets the ball is Antwan (sp?) Jamison. That guy would get his shots off in a blink

    I have actually heard the same thing about Patterson in one of the scouting reviews - gets his shot off very quikcly in the paint.

    In Duke's motion offense, I think this is a huge plus

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