MBB: Duke 79, BC 59 Post-Game Thread

[davekay1971]

I'm most excited by the further development of our inside game.

The last few years, we simply don't beat an ACC team by 20 shooting 1/12 from beyond the arc.

Miles and Zoubs continued to show improvement. Zoubs was a monster in the second half, dominating the rebounds when he was in, playing solid post defense, and making several nice put-backs (including that great sequence where he got his own miss twice and made the bucket).

Mason...he's going to be so good.

LT has become very consistent - bringing great defense every game, doing a nice job on the boards. Whatever offense he gives is a nice bonus.

(As an aside, a radio in the background has Britney Spears "If You Seek Amy" on. My IQ is dropping by the second. Why is that talentless hack still on the radio?)

[hq2]

Our inside game is getting better. Our defense was bad in the first half, but we made adjustments, which shows we can do it as needed. Nice reverse layup by MP1. Another thing I liked, which they should do more of, is a drive and dish by Singler. Since the other teams tend to come out on him when he drives, positioning the Plumlees down low for the alley oop or a layup when he goes in the lane should work effectively.

[-jk]

OK, a bit late posting here (I got home from the game 1:30ish, and had a busy day; sorry). I saw BC really challenging our 3 - a lot of times we faked, moved in a few feet, and fired for a long two. They just didn't want us shooting 3's.

Zoubs had a very good game, but I have to take two rebounds away from his line - he rebounded two of his own misses! But he gets what he can, and can't, do. Maybe he's been studying Shane...

Kyle decided to show his stuff. I do enjoy watching him learn a whole new skill set; we don't often get to see it happen real-time. Alaa was a similar revelation in his senior year. Odd tech, though. I can't recall the last time I saw that one.

Lance did well on Trapani. Nearly came to blows once or twice. (Trapani lead with his elbow several times early in the second half, but Lance didn't rise to it.)

Nolan was fabulous. They had no one who was anywhere near as fast. Nice.

I'm suspicious that K (and Dean, too) comes into games with two completely different game plans - one for each half. The other team adjusts at halftime to our first half strategy, and completely misses the boat.

Lastly, I had the pleasure of sitting next to a couple of former BC football players. We got to trash talk a bit, but - alas - they left with about 8 minutes to go.

-jk

[chrisheery]

Can someone explain how BC's Flex is different than Maryland's Flex?

Its run much closer to the lane with repeated "entry passes" to get closer and closer to the hoop. Maryland runs a similar series of cuts, but they use the width of the court. They also just let Vasquez do whatever he wants.

[gumbomoop]

I guess it's true, people only come out after a loss. Here we have a solid win at home against BC and we have only 3 pages of posts.

It's an interesting point. I'm guessing it might be explained as follows:

1. Duke's win was "routine," in the sense that we've come to expect Duke's first-half flaws to be routinely addressed by K at half.
2. It was further "routine" in that it wasn't, relatively speaking, a "flashy" win, punctuated by flashy performances. Save NS's underappreciated excellence last eve, our guys individually and collectively played a relentlessly solid 2d half, so the game was in hand with 10 minutes to go, not tense, therefore not requiring post-game relief, celebration, and/or calming-down-through-posting.
3. What was required, however, was schadenfreude-through-posting re UNC's embarrassing performance at Littlejohn. To quote UNC-grad Will Blythe's wonderful, insightful book, "To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever." Surely had the UNC game been tonight, there'd have been more posts on this [Duke-B C]thread last eve and today. But not necessarily more than at some point after a UNC debacle, for their pain, in a bad loss, affords us more guilty pleasure than our joy in an expected Devil triumph.
4. In short, Duke's win was much less "remarkable," than UNC's loss; so there were fewer remarks on it.

[Duke4life92]

Props to the ref for the worst technical foul call I have seen in some time and the way he glared at Kyle in giving the tech was, to use one of Jumbo's words "infantile" in my opinion. Ridiculous..

Amen,could'nt believe that was called when i saw it live from section 10 but was confirmed how bad a call that was when i got home to watch it again on dvr---un frkn real....I think that particular official seemed to have an agenda against duke for some reason(jmo),did you see him glare at nolan (turned and watched him intently) all the way across half court when nolan was called for that foul as he thought he had guessed right but was called for the reach in by the ref.Ref looked like he was just wanting to "T" up Nolan as he sprinted across half court amazed at the call.Otherwise i enjoyed the game,just could do without seeing that particular ref at anymore games.

[Kedsy]

Zoubs had a very good game, but I have to take two rebounds away from his line - he rebounded two of his own misses!

Hey, Moses Malone made a Hall of Fame career out of that play.

[94duke]

Can someone explain how BC's Flex is different than Maryland's Flex?

Its run much closer to the lane with repeated "entry passes" to get closer and closer to the hoop. Maryland runs a similar series of cuts, but they use the width of the court. They also just let Vasquez do whatever he wants.

Thanks, Chris.

[brumby041]

I'm a little late to the comment party. but:

Props to the poster in another thread (too lazy to figure out who it was) that suggested getting Kyle starting by having him run a curl off a few screens to get an easy basket. IIRC, that is exactly the way KS got his first basket- and it certainly seemed to get him going...

Nice to see him have a better offensive game.

[Neals384]

I felt exactly the opposite, every time Andre played the 3 BC would ran a play to post somebody much bigger than him and score.

Now that the +/- is posted, we can answer this question

Scheyer-Smith-Dawkins
with Singler and one big was 12-9, +3
with two bigs, no SIngler, was 9-11, -2