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  1. #601
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    Jul 2009
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    Baltimore
    Quote Originally Posted by Boozer View Post
    FWIW I totally agree with you. Looking back (and factoring in KenPom) I think the best team did win. 3 Prolific scorers combined with 4 bigs, who as a team excelled at both offensive and defensive efficiency, superior rebounding, and ice cold veins in the clutch led to the best team in the land.

    They won every title put in front of them. The only thing they did not do was beat a Kansas, Kentucky, or Syracuse, to which I say: SO??

    People assume one of those 3 teams would have knocked our guys out. I am not at all convinced of that. Ask WVU how tough Duke was compared to Kentucky, and ask Butler how tough Duke was compared to Syracuse, and given how Kansas bowed out, don't even get me started on them...

    I am reminded of a question posed to NC State center Cozell McQueen at the 1983 Final Four. The reporter asked Cozell how he felt he rated against the other centers in the ACC that year (Bear in mind unc had Sam Perkins, and UVA had Ralph Sampson, and State beat both in their 10 game run, slaying UVA in both the ACC Final and Regional Final).

    Cozell's classic answer: "Well, big Ralph is in a league by himself, but as for the rest of those guys, all I have to say is I am the only one still playing".

    2 nights later he climbed on top of the rim and stood as the lone ACC Center that year with a National Title...
    And another thing casual fans and spectators overlook is that we were a different team when we played, for example, Georgetown from when we played WVU in the tourney. Think about if we had played WVU in an exhibition right after the Georgetown game??

    The key to our season and the legacy of this team came when Zoubs stepped into the limelight. His transformation made the team into something great... into what I say was the best team in the nation.

    Syracuse and Kansas, for what its worth, could be described as going backwards in there development and execution as a team. They simply weren't as good at the end as they were mid-season.

    As far as KY, nobody doubts there talent... but I was never sold on them as one of the elite teams this year. Too many close calls in a weak SEC conference. It just took one game that required Cal to actually coach that exposed him for the poor in-game coach that he is.

  2. #602
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Allawah, NSW Australia (near Sydney)
    Quote Originally Posted by DevilHorns View Post
    And another thing casual fans and spectators overlook is that we were a different team when we played, for example, Georgetown from when we played WVU in the tourney. Think about if we had played WVU in an exhibition right after the Georgetown game??

    The key to our season and the legacy of this team came when Zoubs stepped into the limelight. His transformation made the team into something great... into what I say was the best team in the nation.

    Syracuse and Kansas, for what its worth, could be described as going backwards in there development and execution as a team. They simply weren't as good at the end as they were mid-season.

    As far as KY, nobody doubts there talent... but I was never sold on them as one of the elite teams this year. Too many close calls in a weak SEC conference. It just took one game that required Cal to actually coach that exposed him for the poor in-game coach that he is.
    I don't know what happened with Kansas but Syracuse I followed closely. That team really went backwards only because it lost its inside force when Arinze Onuaku went down with an injury. In a sense, they were the opposite of Duke. Even without their big man, the Orange still routed their first two tourney opponents and barely lost to Butler, the national runner-up. It's all speculation, of course but I think there was a very good chance the Blue Devils would've lined up against Syracuse that Monday night, instead of Butler, had Boeheim's group stayed free of injury. They most certainly did not deteriorate in execution or team development.

  3. #603
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
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    San Francisco
    Quote Originally Posted by Boozer View Post

    People assume one of those 3 teams would have knocked our guys out. I am not at all convinced of that. Ask WVU how tough Duke was compared to Kentucky, and ask Butler how tough Duke was compared to Syracuse, and given how Kansas bowed out, don't even get me started on them...

    I am reminded of a question posed to NC State center Cozell McQueen at the 1983 Final Four. The reporter asked Cozell how he felt he rated against the other centers in the ACC that year (Bear in mind unc had Sam Perkins, and UVA had Ralph Sampson, and State beat both in their 10 game run, slaying UVA in both the ACC Final and Regional Final).

    Cozell's classic answer: "Well, big Ralph is in a league by himself, but as for the rest of those guys, all I have to say is I am the only one still playing".

    2 nights later he climbed on top of the rim and stood as the lone ACC Center that year with a National Title...
    Great anecdote, by the way. Great story. Zoubs could easily have said the same thing if someone had compared him to Davis, Alabi, Favors/Lawal, or even Aldrich, Pittman, Cousins, etc.

    The first part of your post reminds me how Duke is always treated in a unique way by the media. In past seasons, Duke was "exposed" by "athletic" teams like LSU, WVU, and Nova. This season, when the top seeds lost and Duke kept on winning, the media didn't claim that Kansas and 'Cuse were exposed as weak teams. Rather, they complained that Duke got an easy bracket and, due to upsets, an easy path to the title. This being the case even though Duke beat perhaps the most "athletic" team in the tournament in Baylor in a virtual home game for them, demolished the WVU team that was supposedly a better fit as a number 1 seed than Duke, and then defeated a Butler team in another virtual true road game for Duke. Any champion needs a bit of luck to hoist the trophy. However, whether or not Duke was the "best" team on paper going into the tourney doesn't matter. What they went through to finally bring home the ultimate banner proves that they were the best team.

  4. #604
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
    Location
    Cary, NC
    Excellent points, COYS. I agree that not enough was made of the fact that Duke had to play Baylor in Houston and Butler in Indianapolis. Imagine if the championship game had been played in, say, Greensboro - we wouldn't have heard the end it regarding how the NCAA conspired to "give" Duke the championship. And people say we got lucky by playing Purdue without Hummel, but that injury happened well before the tournament, and was already factored into the seeding. Not like Butler getting to play MSU without their point guard, or Syracuse without THEIR point guard.

    So yeah, the media has their inherent biases, but winning sure does cure all!

  5. #605
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Steamboat Springs, CO

    Jayhawk Loss Was Lack of Effort

    Quote Originally Posted by devildownunder View Post
    I don't know what happened with Kansas but Syracuse I followed closely.
    The problem with Kansas against UNI is simple: the team didn't show up until there were only about 6-7 minutes left, and it was ten points behind. Bill Self lauded the team in the post-game conference for "fighting all the way to the end." What a diplomat! What he really, really meant was that the players didn't start fighting until the game was lost.

    I swear they were so lackadaisical it could have been last year's Tarheels team.

    I also saw the away loss to Oklahoma State, and it was similar. Earlier in the year I thought the Jayhawks were the best team in the country.

    sagegrouse
    'Every team has a bad game or two during the season, but you gotta show up for the tournament'

  6. #606
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Allawah, NSW Australia (near Sydney)
    Quote Originally Posted by COYS View Post
    Great anecdote, by the way. Great story. Zoubs could easily have said the same thing if someone had compared him to Davis, Alabi, Favors/Lawal, or even Aldrich, Pittman, Cousins, etc.

    The first part of your post reminds me how Duke is always treated in a unique way by the media. In past seasons, Duke was "exposed" by "athletic" teams like LSU, WVU, and Nova. This season, when the top seeds lost and Duke kept on winning, the media didn't claim that Kansas and 'Cuse were exposed as weak teams. Rather, they complained that Duke got an easy bracket and, due to upsets, an easy path to the title. This being the case even though Duke beat perhaps the most "athletic" team in the tournament in Baylor in a virtual home game for them, demolished the WVU team that was supposedly a better fit as a number 1 seed than Duke, and then defeated a Butler team in another virtual true road game for Duke. Any champion needs a bit of luck to hoist the trophy. However, whether or not Duke was the "best" team on paper going into the tourney doesn't matter. What they went through to finally bring home the ultimate banner proves that they were the best team.
    Right after the title game, some columnist wrote that Duke was catching an especially large dose of venom from the punditry this time around not because the Blue Devils were the "evil empire" stomping on lovable little guy Butler, but because of the far more egregious sin of making a whole lot of sports writers look wrong. And I think that's an accurate claim. Duke was written off mid-season, just as in recent years past, but this time Z's emergence gave the team another gear made all the sports writers looks especially stupid. As a group, they never forgive that.

  7. #607
    Quote Originally Posted by devildownunder View Post
    Right after the title game, some columnist wrote that Duke was catching an especially large dose of venom from the punditry this time around not because the Blue Devils were the "evil empire" stomping on lovable little guy Butler, but because of the far more egregious sin of making a whole lot of sports writers look wrong. And I think that's an accurate claim. Duke was written off mid-season, just as in recent years past, but this time Z's emergence gave the team another gear made all the sports writers looks especially stupid. As a group, they never forgive that.
    I don't understand that bolded portion. In my experience most sports writers need no one to make them look especially stupid.

  8. #608
    Quote Originally Posted by sagegrouse View Post
    The problem with Kansas against UNI is simple: the team didn't show up until there were only about 6-7 minutes left, and it was ten points behind. Bill Self lauded the team in the post-game conference for "fighting all the way to the end." What a diplomat! What he really, really meant was that the players didn't start fighting until the game was lost.

    I swear they were so lackadaisical it could have been last year's Tarheels team.

    I also saw the away loss to Oklahoma State, and it was similar. Earlier in the year I thought the Jayhawks were the best team in the country.

    sagegrouse
    'Every team has a bad game or two during the season, but you gotta show up for the tournament'
    KU played a lot of the season like this. They would let the other team hang around and figure they (KU) could turn it on at will at the end of the game and win. See the Cornell at KU game for an example. They did that a lot - this time it caught up with them.

  9. #609
    Join Date
    Jul 2009
    Location
    Baltimore
    Watching Sportscenter right now... and still no Duke basketball on the championship highlight reel.

    They did manage to add Kobe and the Lakers though... just weeks after their win.

    We've been waiting 3 months.

  10. #610
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    raleigh
    everyone on espn pretty much wrote duke off for the title....they don't like being wrong....nor having it pointed out over and over and over again...

  11. #611
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    Jul 2009
    Location
    Baltimore

  12. #612
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    raleigh
    ok..it's VERY tough for me to watch the last shot knowing that Kyle got flattened on the moving block...we were so fortunate that the shot missed, cause i don't think they woulda called the block...

    i just won't watch it anymore...

  13. #613

    Off Topic

    This is pretty much off topic, but I couldn't find a thread to post it in, plus this thread had found its way on page 3.

    Has anyone with a Duke Blue Planet Magazine subscription received the double issue championship edition yet? I signed up for the magazine several months ago and have yet to receive it. I'm just getting a little nervous that somehow I was left off the list, but it very well might not have been sent out yet.

    So did anyone get it yet?

    Thanks!

  14. #614
    Join Date
    Apr 2010
    Location
    Columbus, OH
    Quote Originally Posted by should_be_working View Post
    This is pretty much off topic, but I couldn't find a thread to post it in, plus this thread had found its way on page 3.

    Has anyone with a Duke Blue Planet Magazine subscription received the double issue championship edition yet? I signed up for the magazine several months ago and have yet to receive it. I'm just getting a little nervous that somehow I was left off the list, but it very well might not have been sent out yet.

    So did anyone get it yet?

    Thanks!
    I haven't received a new issue since the March issue with the 17-0 shield on it. It is still listed as the newest issue on the dukeblueplanet website so I guess we just have to be patient. Can't wait to receive it.

  15. #615
    Quote Originally Posted by 1 24 90 View Post
    I haven't received a new issue since the March issue with the 17-0 shield on it. It is still listed as the newest issue on the dukeblueplanet website so I guess we just have to be patient. Can't wait to receive it.
    Ah, thanks. Good to know its not just me.

  16. #616
    [Bumping this to the front page, in order to continue a discussion from another thread re Duke and UK in NCAAT...]

    CDu, are you there? First, I agree with your central point, re not judging Calipari's coaching by one bad night. Re one-dones, well, we know he's got a great frosh class coming in, with probably 2, maybe 3 one-dones; and he's already working on #1 class of '11 seniors. It's a striking development, a real phenomenon. It strikes me that he'll get them to FF, maybe even NC, if he gets some players to hang around for a second-third year, to build some stability to go with super-frosh.

    But the real reason I shifted away from the other thread [which we had taken off-track anyhow] is to think more about your other point: that because "Duke was such a matchup team that any number of outcomes could have resulted."

    Here's my disagreement. It goes back, sort of, to my post #598 in this thread, re "just how good Duke actually was." It was only toward the end of last season that I began to wonder about whether Duke's NCAAT chances were matchup-dependent. It does seem to make sense, and I guess even more where UK is concerned.

    But I resist the full implications of this, as you explained it on that other thread: foul trouble, different styles of play, etc. I can't deny that it's possible that UK might have gotten things going so well, with Duke's bigs in foul trouble, with Wall at super-speed, etc.

    But not at all probable. Because.... well, I can't seem to explain it, other than to say Duke was much more likely - by late season, certainly not at the Georgetown-moment - to force opponents to play at Duke's pace. That means a half-court game, ball-possession efficiency, defensively intense, rebounding a/the key. By these 4 criteria, Duke was "better" than UK in 3 of the 4. I grant, perhaps too easily, a slight edge to UK in rebounding.

    To say that Duke "controlled" its opponents wouldn't quite be accurate, if that suggests "dominated." But, a la KenPom [I think??], Duke was much more likely to "control" any particular game than be playing control-catch-up.

    Does this make sense? Is it badly flawed? Help.

  17. #617
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    20 Minutes From The Heaven That Is Cameron Indoor
    I wanted to respond to FlyingDutchDevil in the Pro-AM thread as well, but it too was off topic. It does not really fit this thread either but since we moved the conversation here... I'll give it a shot.

    The media has done an excellent job of spinning this myth that Calipari is like the worlds greatest at preparing PG's for the NBA. It is unreal how many people have bought into that.

    I do feel Cal is an excellent recruiter as well as an excellent coach. Even with the scandals, and likely rules violations, you do not have the success he has had at places like UMASS and Memphis without being an excellent coach.

    But this idea that he is the best at preparing PG's for the NBA is a crock. All of the guys listed as proof were great PG's when they arrived on campus and would have been top 5 draft picks had they been allowed to go straight to the NBA.

    Pick any college in any division and had Rose, Evans, and Wall played their 1 year at that college, they would have still entered the NBA the next year as top 5 picks. To give extra credit to Cal for that is a joke imo. If anything, television did as much for those 3 guys as anything Cal taught them did.

    If a kid comes into college, stays 3 or 4 years and actually develops into a much better player than he was when he got there, then credit the coach and his staff for a job well done.

    Otherwise, it is nothing more than media spin that a lot of people are soaking in like a fine wine.

  18. #618
    Join Date
    Jul 2009
    Location
    Baltimore
    Quote Originally Posted by Boozer View Post

    I do feel Cal is an excellent recruiter as well as an excellent coach. Even with the scandals, and likely rules violations, you do not have the success he has had at places like UMASS and Memphis without being an excellent coach.
    I agree that he is an excellent out-of-this-world extraordinary recruiter. But, I think he is an average coach at best. With the talent discrepancy that he had at Memphis and UMass (relative to the other conference teams) it is easy to see how he could win many many games every year comfortably. Now, he does get all the credit (or perhaps worldwidewes does?) for bringing those kids there.

    This year is an excellent example of how average of a coach he is. Watching a team that had 5 top-20 first round picks not make the Final Four last year is too simple a way to look at it. The hallmark of a good coach relies on the ability to take a team that would normally lose by the natural dynamic of the game, and change it, by orchestrating a design for that particular game that maximizes optimal offensive and defensive strategy. If the design is failing, then you call a time out, shift gears. Cal did none of that. I was in the boat who wanted to play a UK team in the tourney all year long b/c I knew that a good coach like K or Huggins could expose him more chances than not.

    As for the WVU game, I have no idea why any coach would design a gameplan to hunk up so many 3s when that is clearly not the team's strong suit (perhaps he didn't design that plan, but he didn't address changing it and perhaps feeding the ball down low to matchup nightmares like Patterson while Orton is on the floor). And watching the dynamic between Orton and Cal on the bench just does it for me. They weren't down by that many points. If only he could control the personalities of his one-and-done's.

    Cal is a system coach, selling the whole ''dribble-drive'' offensive scheme. And thats that. Don't count on him on out-coaching any teams to win. He can win only on talent discrepancy alone.

    And with that, he may actually capture a few titles in the future.

  19. #619
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Location
    raleigh
    negative...


    cal will continue to recruit star talent with star glasses....these guys will not come together as a "team"....they will fly, and jam, and dazzle us with their array of talents, but they will not play team ball when they think they're late to collect their paychecks in the league...

    if they couldn't even get to the 4 with wall, PP, orton and cousins, you think they're gonna have a better set of guys all on one team?

    even if they HAD gotten to the 4, duke would have trashed them

  20. #620
    Join Date
    Jul 2009
    Location
    Baltimore
    Quote Originally Posted by moonpie23 View Post
    negative...


    cal will continue to recruit star talent with star glasses....these guys will not come together as a "team"....they will fly, and jam, and dazzle us with their array of talents, but they will not play team ball when they think they're late to collect their paychecks in the league...

    if they couldn't even get to the 4 with wall, PP, orton and cousins, you think they're gonna have a better set of guys all on one team?

    even if they HAD gotten to the 4, duke would have trashed them
    I think he has a decent chance at winning a title or two. He took Memphis to the brink. I think he will set something similar up at UK where he won't rely on as many one-and-done's but more of a mix of 2-3 year players. He's had one year at UK. I don't expect him to win it all next year. But if he gets a few people to stick around, he may get pretty far on talent discrepancy alone in the coming years. You don't have to be an unbelievable in-game coach to win it all, ie, see Roy Williams.

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