I'm not much of an analytical thinker when it comes to hoops so the stats don't tell me much. Call it flying by the seat of my pants but I'd rather just evaluate what I see than crunch the numbers. With that in mind I watched the FSU game again to try to get a handle on where the defense broke down and I have to say I'm baffled. It just wasn't really horrible defense. Our guys were definitely competing hard and, in many ways, I thought we defended much better than earlier in the season. We didn't give up a whole lot of uncontested layups or dunks. It seemed more like they were able to get the ball inside frequently either by penetrating or passing and our bigs were consistently a half step slow rotating to defend. Our guards definitely played a soft man to man D on the perimeter and either went under screens or fought through half heartedly. Definitely not trpical Duke D but it appeared to be by design perhaps to compensate for our lack or size and/or speed. So did the bigs rotate too slow or were the unfettered drives and passes the culprit? Beats me.

I don't think it was a bad loss though. In fact if the last second shot didn't fall and Duke pulled it out instead we wouldn't be doing all this hand-wringing anyway. Duke played well enough to win but they just made one more play than us at the end. In regard to the two controversies count me in the Austin was fouled and it should have been called camp. The contact was obvious and it was before the shot and Austin got to the spot first and didn't force the contact. To me that's a foul on the first or last possession of a game. As far Dre's D on the last play I don't think it was bad. If he had move out to cover Saer sooner, Louks would have dribbled past Ryan for a possible layup. Instead Dre hedged, Louks made the pass and Saer drained the shot.

I think Duke is improving gradually and I expect the Defense to continue to get better but unless we can get another year of eligibility for Grant Hill to shut down the perimeter or Sheldon to erase the mistakes I don't think we're going to be a great defensive team this year.