I think Gerald will play the 2nd guard in the NBA and his size will not hurt him there. His defense has really picked up this year, his outside shot is good and he can drive the ball. I don't know if he will be the best Duke pro, but he certainly has the opportunity. Go Duke!
I'm really surprised by this game. Maryland usually gives us a great effort, but today we just jumped on them from the start and they had nothing. It was a total butt kicking, so much so that I started to worry about Wake about four minutes into the second half. That's when I considered this game over.
Dominant, dominant, dominant. Kudos to everyone on the team.
I really didn't fault UMD's effort today, at least in the first half. They really quit in the 2nd half, but that is understandable, if not forgivable.
Look, you can hustle and give it the ol' college try, but against superior players it just doesn't matter.
Excepting Vazques, Duke was more talented at every position. And it Vaques is only a positional winner if he is listed as a PG, and not by much, over Nolan. If he is a SG or SF, then UMD loses every positional battle. And it is not a close loss. Outside of Vazques, UMD does not have a single player who would get quality minutes on one the Duke-WFU-UNC triumverate. They are awful.
Effort and Hustle mean nothing against vastly superior talent. Effort and hustle by a great team like Duke CAN overcome a more talented team like UNC, because the disparity level is not that great.
UMD is a Bad, bad team. They will be lucky to make the NIT. One of the pregame articles said it best: Duke has the one of the weaker low post games in the ACC. If our guys can go bananas, some of the bigger teams will also go nuts (but without the stellar G-F play of Duke). There just aren't a lot of easy wins on UMD's schedule.
I'm embarrassed for Maryland, not because they got spanked, but that they quit in the 2nd half.
It's even more hilarious that Len Elmore tried to justify them quitting by blaming it on not getting calls from the refs and stopped trying because of that.
This has been a great season to watch. They play beautiful team basketball and boy is it FUN to watch. Go Duke!!!!
Duke 2nd Half = 45
MD game total = 44
Good win for the good guys. Lots of minutes for developing the youngins which is always good in an ACC game, regardless of how bad the other team plays. Plumlee has a chance to be really really good on defense. I think he can be a solid contributor on offense once he matures. Is it just me, or does he look like he's still trying to fit into his body a little? Almost like he's uncomfortable with being so big right now. He's more athletic than Zoubs (who played really well against bad competition today) so I think he's got a shot if he sticks with it and keeps his head up. Just needs some time to develop. I expect him to be a factor later on down the road, if not by the end of this year. All in all, not much to complain about! Next play.
That... was... GREAT.
I agree. It is also a great recruiting tool if your grads/alums/ex-players are doing well in the NBA. I think Kenny Boynton would have been a lot more receptive to Duke's J-Will comparisons if J-Will were a regular All-star (like he would've been sans bike accident).
Duke is going hard after a Jr named Harrison Barnes, a freak athlete at the 2/3 a la Hendo. If Hendo is blowing it up in the league next year, that will look good to HB. It doesn't always work, see wide-body low post bangers, but that is as much a testimony to the scarce number of Duke Caliber (academic) low posts as anything else.
I also agree with the original post, that Hendo could be Duke's BEST pro. Right now it is still G-Hill, but his injuries sapped what should have been an All-Time level career into merely a perenial all-star career. It sux, but there it is.
Hendo, in the right situation, could be great. He has the body, he has the effort, and now he has the skills. There is almost no one in college that can stop him. I don't see that many in the pros. Some of the truly greats can lock him down, but they will have to work their tails off to do it. With him hitting J's, his game is almost flawless. Heck, his ally-oop to Singler was pretty. Passing is his weak link, and it is really good.
With Hendo having spent 3 years, at least, as a Dukie, it would be a real feather in Duke's cap. K can rightly take credit for molding an athlete into a basketball player. We rail against the "entourages" of some prep athletes, but most of those people arround a player DO have the player's best interests at heart, even if they have selfish motivations for doing so. Hendo was a freak athlete. Lots of freak athletes never learn to play ball, and never do anything. K turned a dissappointing Frosh into a POY candidate, and more importantly to recruits, into a high lottery selection in the near future. Recruits and the people arround them will remember that.
Starting with Harrison Barnes.
What a fantastic effort. The combination of Duke's talent and desire and Maryland's lack of talent, desire and focus created an avalanche. There were so many great things to see, including:
-Zoubek stepping back up and taking advantage of a mismatch. Duke looked to him early and he delivered. He really is quite a good passer, too.
-Scheyer finding his stroke from deep. He was 4-8 from three, one of which was a desparation heave at the end of the clock and two others which were halfway down. Granted, it help that Maryland decided to stop guarding anyone and none of our shooters even had a hand in the face for most of the game. Still, it was clearly early on that he wanted the bal and he was ready to be aggressive. I thought he got fouled on the three where he tried to draw contact and got hit on a drive. A couple of those missed layups were just weird.
-Lance Thomas' best game in a while. He was aggressive at both ends.
-Kyle being Kyle, Gerald being Gerald.
-Paulus seems to have finally latched on to a role.
-Dave knocked down a jumper!
I also think this game offered a nice explanation for why our top eight guys are playing more than the next three. Granted, you'd expect Williams, Plumlee and Pocius to struggle a little bit because they were on the court with each other (as well as Czyz and Paulus), rather than one at a time with a bunch of starters. Still, you could see that Miles is REALLY raw offensively and struggles to finish, that Williams hasn't learned pacing (be quick, but don't be in a hurry -- you don't have to go full speed all the time) and that Marty's jumper is off.
But for the people who believe game experience is critical for development, they got a nice, long stint on the floor. Hopefully it will benefit them in the long haul. As I've said, I'm fine with the eight-man rotation in close games, as long as Plumlee, Williams and Pocius remain options when needed (as Plumlee showed against Georgetown, Pocius against Georgia Tech, etc.). Hopefully this game will help quell the minutes-played arguments down the line.
What a great, fun, awesome win. Enjoy it!
Impressive win, my Blue Devil friends! My favorite part was what happened in the grad section right before half-time. I got to the walk-up line pretty late this morning, so I ended up standing way over in the corner, next to where the Maryland players walked to get to the locker room. Of course, they were ribbed pretty bad when they were down 40-15 at the half. Gary Williams came out about a minute after the rest of the team after half-time, and one grad student was standing next to the rope and yelling "Sweat, Gary, Sweat." Gary stopped, took a couple steps toward the guy, pointed at him, and said "You're fat and you're ugly," and then walked into the arena. By the end of the 2nd half, the guy was a legend in our section. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen at a basketball game.
Unless I blinked and missed it, Jordan Davidson did not get into the game. On the goduke.com boxscore, he is not listed. He is a terrific kid, has played the point for the Blue team for a while, and I was really hoping to get a chance to see him even play 30 seconds!
Otherwise, however, sensational game. Best entire 40 minutes we've played in a long, long time!
DukeDevilDeb
This morphed into the "post game" thread yet remains as a stand-alone.
When I click on "Are we Having fun".
Not really a whole lot to say. Duke was fantastic. I was especially pleased to see our defense forcing turnovers and getting rebounds that led to fastbreak opportunities. It looked like the run-and-gun Duke teams we've all enjoyed for years but maybe haven't seen as much of over the past two years or so. Maryland never looked comfortable and, as a mentally weaker team (who is the perfect embodiment of their overly emotion, desperate coach), they allowed their frustrations to derail any chance at victory.
Great to see Duke not let up in the second half as we've done this month--FSU, Davidson.
On to Wake!