1. Mason was great - probably his best floor game of the year. The most important stat - 38 minutes. Which means he was being effective on both ends of the floor, and he wasn't committing one or two silly fouls that force him to the bench. This was especially key because Jordan Williams is really good - and had a good game. Mason's passing was excellent, and Cory Alexander focused immediately on Mason's heads up call of the timeout during Kyle's scrum on the floor.
2. Seth took over when Nolan went down - that was an excellent show of leadership. And, I've noticed in the past few games that Seth has good on-court repoire with both Mason and Andre - getting them the ball where they can get good shots.
3. Miles and Ryan gave us important minutes on both ends of the floor - which helped mitigate the MD defense that was set up to and did an effective job containing Nolan.
Towards the end of the game, there appeared to be some jawing between Duke and MD players. I think Kyle and Seth both said something to them, but Seth seemed to be a bit more reluctant to let it go. I loved the way Mason hooked his arm around Seth's neck and dragged him into the middle of their Duke huddle to prevent him from saying or doing anything stupid. It may be small, but I thought Mason's move to rein Seth in showed a lot of maturity and leadership.
I feel bad for criticizing Ryan since this was such a solid win, but I imagine one reason that K didn't play him in the second half as much was not only Miles' rebounding prowess, but the fact that Miles was playing better defense.
Several times in the first half, Ryan would overplay on screens -- not a problem, except through lack of communication, lack of quickness, or whatever, he never rotated back to his man (Dino Gregory I think?), leaving him consistently wide open on jumpers near the top of the key. I literally balled my hands into fists whenever Kelly was screened during the first half because of this. Perhaps, of course, it was K's intention to leave that shot for Gregory, but it seems unlikely to me.
Regardless, this isn't to take away from Miles, whose aggressive demeanor in the second half was a welcome sight. I would imagine that we'll see another dose of double Plumlee to start the VT game.
Great line.
Great to hear. I am very much looking forward to Kyle continuing to shoot the open 3s and to start hitting like I know he can.
I agree with most that the team's offensive movement looked really good and it was great to get solid contributions from everyone. I would agree that our interior defense was generally pretty good on Williams. He rebounded very well, but seemed to have to make some difficult shots for his field goals. I didn't feel like this was overall one of the team's better defensive efforts, however. I could be imagining things but, until the team went on the run when Nolan went out, I didn't feel like the team was consistently stopping a not particularly strong Maryland offense, or making them take difficult shots. I am, of course, very pleased with the win and the offensive contributions and team play, but hope the team can improve the defense a bit.
I didn't notice this and this may be part of the reason I didn't feel the team's D was that great. I usually find that Ryan positions himself quite well defensively, but perhaps he wasn't last night and that is one of the reasons (Miles' continued strong player being an even bigger one) he didn't see the floor a lot in spite of great shooting.
I didn't get to watch the game, but was following the stats on my phone. I was rooting for one more Miles rebound in the game, for what I was hoping would be a "double Plumlee double-double". Alas, it was not to be.