Can the offense be fixed in time for the NCAAs?

[hq2]

Folks, I think it's become clear in the last couple of games (VT especially, but also FSU) that there are a lot of things wrong with
the offense right now, and not much time to fix it. Basically, the way it looks to me is that no one besides Miles and Austin
is stepping up, and even they haven't been playing all that well. Player by player, here's how it looks to me.

Austin - playing a lot of one on one again, forcing drives and ignoring teammates, like he did at the beginning of the year

Mason - jump hook has disappeared, making fouls and turnovers with regularity. Did he really play Thomas Robinson and
Jared Sullinger even early in the year? Boy, does that seem like a long time ago!

Miles- pretty decent by his standards, but still makes stupid turnovers and misses a lot of shots around the basket.

Seth - very guardable from 3 point range. Goes long periods without doing anything, then throws up an area-code 3.

Dre - completely disappeared. Not even getting the ball when he's open, and missing his shots or even getting swatted.

Tyler - still not good enough to be shooting unless the clock's winding down; so why did he take 14 shots against VT?

Kelly - injured, and won't be 100% when he comes back. However, even before he was hurt, he was fading , and his
rebounding and defense lately have not been good enough.

Hairston- has a decent jumper, but doesn't have the P.T. or confidence to use it.

Cook and Silent G - not good shooters.


Overall, we move the ball well, but in the end, no one seems to be open. We usually either throw the ball inside to the
Plumlees (high chance of a turnover on the inlet pass, since no one delivers off the dribble), Austin forces a drive, or
Seth or Tyler heave up a 3 with the clock winding down. Folks, it doesn't look good, and there isn't much time to fix it.
Any suggestions? Anyone think K can fix this mess in time?

[uh_no]

I think you're discounting the affect that losing ryan has had on the offense. He is a huge matchup problem...a 6'10 guy who often plays in the perimeter. Whether he scores a lot of points or not is irrelevent as he's a contant threat and teams have to draw their 4 out of the paint to cover him (as you don't have to do with either of the plumlees....and with hairston you can put a smaller guy on him...and he's just to as effective in general). This leaves one guy on the plumlee and he can't hedge on drives because there is no backup to rotate over since kelly could be out in nowheresville, drawing his man with him. this gives the driver a little more room, and if kelly's defender came in to help, kelly is open on the perimeter where he is a legit threat to shoot.

So pretty much any criticism of the offense these two days is irrelevant if kelly is cleared to play monday. If he's not, then we have a week to tweak things instead of what, 2 days?

[COYS]

I think you're discounting the affect that losing ryan has had on the offense. He is a huge matchup problem...a 6'10 guy who often plays in the perimeter. Whether he scores a lot of points or not is irrelevent as he's a contant threat and teams have to draw their 4 out of the paint to cover him (as you don't have to do with either of the plumlees....and with hairston you can put a smaller guy on him...and he's just to as effective in general). This leaves one guy on the plumlee and he can't hedge on drives because there is no backup to rotate over since kelly could be out in nowheresville, drawing his man with him. this gives the driver a little more room, and if kelly's defender came in to help, kelly is open on the perimeter where he is a legit threat to shoot.

So pretty much any criticism of the offense these two days is irrelevant if kelly is cleared to play monday. If he's not, then we have a week to tweak things instead of what, 2 days?

Perhaps, but I have noticed a little less variety in the offense over the past few games. We've seen a lot less of the pick n' pop with Ryan and a guard (usually Seth) even before he got injured. I like that play because it allows our guard to make a pass to the wing instead of a tougher entry pass to a rolling big in the post. Also, the opposing big who hedges when screened usually follows their instinct to hustle back to the post and takes a second to recognize that Kelly is actually spotting up at the three point line. But to a certain extent, I agree with your point even though I do think we should perhaps be a little concerned about what our offense is going to look like the rest of the way out. Not having Kelly on the court makes spacing much harder. I think Andre bore the brunt of it, actually. With Josh and Tyler on the court at the same time as Andre at times, it was near impossible for him to get open no matter how many screens we set for him. Now, a pump-fake would help (I think he'd lead the NCAA's in fouls drawn from behind the arc if he used it regularly), but I actually thought we tried to get him open virtually ever second he was on the court. Same is true with Seth. Part of this is FSU's length and VaTech's physicality, but we'll likely be facing teams like that in every round of the NCAA's except the first round. Also, Mason's game has flipped a bit. Earlier in the season he had the jump hook going and was passing well out of the post but he couldn't hit a FT. Now, he's having a harder time getting to his hook shot and seeing double teams, although his free throw shooting has been great.

Personally, I'd like to see a healthy Kelly ready to fire away from three off of pick n' pops and drive and kicks. I'd like to see us figure out a better way to get Seth and Andre open off of screens. I'd like to see Mason score a few more buckets in the post and continue his free throw shooting. I'd also like to see Tyler get hot ('cause he's going to be open, for sure). Otherwise, I think we just need a little more attention to detail. We had sloppy turnovers in the first half against FSU that prevented some easy buckets. We've also missed quite a few open looks from three, which we will hopefully not do quite as frequently in the coming games. Finally, sometimes we need to make one more pass. I feel as though our ball movement has stagnated a bit.

On the bright side, our defense has been much better!

[aav2aav2]

There was a beautiful play FSU ran at some point where they ran a screen for Snaer; he caught it at top of key; he looked like he was going to pop a 3, but then drove and found a big man wide open.

I'd like us to do this with Curry. Run some more active screens for him; Curry catches ball of screen; fakes a 3 or a long jump shot, then starts dribbling into the lane. His man is likely to be behind him and therefore he'll have an open 15 foot jumper (which he is good at), or someone will have to help. I see Curry try to create too much, I thinnk he needs to become more catch and shoot; or catch, shoot, dribble twice and take quick action.

[SCMatt33]

I don't think anything we saw this weekend was anything other than what we had already, plus the effects of losing Ryan. The Plumlees have been very limited all year against teams with size. It's remarkable that when you look at all of their best games, chances are that the front line that they went up against was undersized. They just can't score consistently when guarded by guys as big as they are. On the outside, Duke for years has used great spacing to help spread the D and get guys open. This year, that has worked particularly well when Duke regularly has 4 guys on the floor who the defense has to worry about. Without Ryan though, it's easier to press up on the shooters. Teams will now switch on everything because they aren't particularly worried about our guards blowing by them, so screens aren't getting guys open. With that happening, Duke's letting Thornton play big minutes. There's no point in playing a guy like Andre if he can't get open. He brings absolutely nothing else to the team. He's a mediocre defender, a pretty bad driver, and doesn't really distribute. He's the only guy on the team who will have games with over 20 points where every single one of them come off of three's or being fouled on threes.

This isn't like other years where guys go into a shooting slump. Our shooting is way down because guys can't get open. If Ryan doesn't come back, and come back as effective as he was before, Duke will really struggle to ever reach 70 against a team with size. The good new is that not everyone has size. There's no real way to know exactly who will end up in 7-10 games, so it's tough to speculate, but the 3 seeds have pretty well established themselves. Out of them, Marquette and Michigan have very little size, and Georgetown is smaller than most Georgetown teams. The only one with real size is Baylor. It's certainly not out of the question for Duke to get the right matchups, but they will struggle with a bad matchup whether its a really talented team or a not so talented team.

[UrinalCake]

Well a positive way of looking at things might be to say that whatever teams we face in the NCAAT won't have the same degree of familiarity with us as VT and FSU (and UNC, for that matter). I think they've figured out how to defend us from playing us three times. Plus, they're pretty good defensive teams to begin with. I do agree however that our offense has stagnated recently, whether it be from defenses figuring us out, players getting complacent, or just plain missing shots.

Mason's problem - which I've been saying all year - is that he just takes to long to do anything with the ball. He catches it outside the lane, stands there for several seconds, dribbles 7 or 8 times, then starts his move toward the basket. By that point there's just nothing there and his teammates have fallen asleep. He still hasn't developed any real post moves close to the basket and instead relies on alley-oops and put-backs to get his points.

Austin's play has been fine, I think he was tired after playing 40 minutes on friday. He needs to trust his teammates and I'm not sure he does right now.

Other than these two and Seth, everyone else on our team is essentially a role player. A team can thrive with three superstars and a bunch of guys who know their roles, but we've just seemed out of sync lately. Still, I think we might have one more good stretch of play left in us.

[Chris Randolph]

The ACC tourney seems to usually be a defensive slugfest. If you look back the last few years there have been multiple games where we struggled offensively. Teams know each other so well. Difference then was we had STUDS (Singler, Smith, Scheyer, Henderson) and just better overall teams.

Not too worried about the offense. Been efficient all year

[Kedsy]

Folks, it doesn't look good, and there isn't much time to fix it.
Any suggestions? Anyone think K can fix this mess in time?

Going into this afternoon's game, our offense was ranked 6th in the nation, according to Pomeroy. Our raw efficiency today was 93.7, which isn't so good, but since FSU's defensive efficiency for the season is 88.4, I doubt it will hurt our adjusted efficiency number so much.

So, assuming Ryan comes back, we've got at worst a top 10 offense. I wouldn't describe that as a "mess."

[davekay1971]

I'm with Kedsy on this one. Our offense is far from a mess. Here's the deficiencies:

1) Kelly, who is a major matchup problem for most teams and tends to spread defenses by forcing the opponent's 4 out to guard the perimeter, was out. Hopefully he'll be back and able to play by Friday.

2) Both Curry and Dawkins have been off lately. If I knew how to break a shooter out of a slump, and lord knows if I knew how to make 'Dre a consistent scorer, I'd be sitting next to K in a nice suit right now. Hope one or both get their shot going, because we're better when those guys are hitting bombs.

I don't look at Mason or Miles as a problem, because while individually they are pretty erratic game to game, as a pair they tend to combine for a reasonably good low post production. Austin isn't a problem, as long as guys don't fall into the trap of standing and watching him.

Basically we're an offense, as we have been all season, with five primary scorers: Austin, Seth, Dre (every 2nd to 3rd game), Kelly, and the Plumlee (pick one or combine 2 for extra flavor). If RK can play and Seth is hitting, we're back to a top 5 offense. If RK can play and Seth and Andre are BOTH hitting, we're the best offense in the nation. I'll pray to the ortho gods for Kelly and someone else do a Vulcan mind meld to put Redick's motor into Andre, and we'll pop champagne in 3 weeks.

[dukeofcalabash]

Folks, I think it's become clear in the last couple of games (VT especially, but also FSU) that there are a lot of things wrong with
the offense right now, and not much time to fix it. Basically, the way it looks to me is that no one besides Miles and Austin
is stepping up, and even they haven't been playing all that well. Player by player, here's how it looks to me.

Austin - playing a lot of one on one again, forcing drives and ignoring teammates, like he did at the beginning of the year

Mason - jump hook has disappeared, making fouls and turnovers with regularity. Did he really play Thomas Robinson and
Jared Sullinger even early in the year? Boy, does that seem like a long time ago!

Miles- pretty decent by his standards, but still makes stupid turnovers and misses a lot of shots around the basket.

Seth - very guardable from 3 point range. Goes long periods without doing anything, then throws up an area-code 3.

Dre - completely disappeared. Not even getting the ball when he's open, and missing his shots or even getting swatted.

Tyler - still not good enough to be shooting unless the clock's winding down; so why did he take 14 shots against VT?

Kelly - injured, and won't be 100% when he comes back. However, even before he was hurt, he was fading , and his
rebounding and defense lately have not been good enough.

Hairston- has a decent jumper, but doesn't have the P.T. or confidence to use it.

Cook and Silent G - not good shooters.


Overall, we move the ball well, but in the end, no one seems to be open. We usually either throw the ball inside to the
Plumlees (high chance of a turnover on the inlet pass, since no one delivers off the dribble), Austin forces a drive, or
Seth or Tyler heave up a 3 with the clock winding down. Folks, it doesn't look good, and there isn't much time to fix it.
Any suggestions? Anyone think K can fix this mess in time?

When Coach has had all year to "get it straightened out" and hasn't, there is no getting it straightened out! The problem is just as you described it, there is not one player with a complete game to build this team on, not one.

[NYC Duke Fan]

Isn't it just possible that we just aren't as good as we think we are and the rankings say we are ? Coach K has done an outstanding job with this team all year and probably has gotten as much out of them as possible.

We just don't have the players as we did in past years...no senior or that matter no junior leadership on the team.

In answer to the question posed by this thread, the answer is NO, Coach K cannot fix the problem in time for the tournament mainly because he does not have the players to do it.

[Matches]

The offense being in a slump isn't the same thing as the offense being fundamentally broken. We're dealing with the former, not the latter. Our guys just need to see some shots go down (and get Ryan back healthy) - both of those things seem do-able to me. Momentum is a fickle mistress.

[wilko]

Coach K has done an outstanding job with this team all year and probably has gotten as much out of them as possible. In answer to the question posed by this thread, the answer is NO, Coach K cannot fix the problem in time for the tournament mainly because he does not have the players to do it.

In all fairness, the players have to execute when given the opportunities.
Josh accounted for himself reasonably well while filling in. No complaints.

When a Big sets a high screen and the D re-sets to the ball. I'd like to see the big cut to the basket for a give and go more often. So why don't we do that and make the D pay? I think it has something to do with "trust". Miles blows at least 1 dunk a game and the Plumlees have cut down on their fouls by the team not putting them in position to foul in situations like that. If the G's give up the ball in a give'n-go our Bigs have a high probability of a charge or turn over if they have to put the ball on the floor.

Players gotta execute that kinda thing better. Tell 'em and diagram it to high Hades... but they have to do something productive.

[Matches]

When a Big sets a high screen and the D re-sets to the ball. I'd like to see the big cut to the basket for a give and go more often. So why don't we do that and make the D pay? I think it has something to do with "trust". Miles blows at least 1 dunk a game and the Plumlees have cut down on their fouls by the team not putting them in position to foul in situations like that. If the G's give up the ball in a give'n-go our Bigs have a high probability of a charge or turn over if they have to put the ball on the floor.

Players gotta execute that kinda thing better. Tell 'em and diagram it to high Hades... but they have to do something productive.

I think our guards are not particularly good passers. Kind of hard to imagine on a perimeter-oriented team, but often it looks to me like our guards miss their window of opportunity to make that entry pass.

[wilko]

I think our guards are not particularly good passers. Kind of hard to imagine on a perimeter-oriented team, but often it looks to me like our guards miss their window of opportunity to make that entry pass.

huh... I suppose that's very possible. I think would prefer that explanation over a lack of trust... but either way its the same net result on the floor.

[davekay1971]

I think our guards are not particularly good passers. Kind of hard to imagine on a perimeter-oriented team, but often it looks to me like our guards miss their window of opportunity to make that entry pass.

Basically we have one guard who is a true playmaker, and that's Cook. And, between injury, inexperience, and defensive deficiencies, he's not been on the court to be that playmaker. Our other natural point guard is a defensive specialist and a reliable but unspectacular passer (I wouldn't truly call Thornton a playmaker). I find it kind of amazing that we have such a highly ranked offense with no true playmaker. Imagine how this offense would run with Bobby Hurley or (ugh) Kendall Marshall running the point. The other guards are natural scoring guards, while Seth has made a noble effort to become a point guard, with mixed success.

I have high hopes for Cook next season. With some time to recover from injury and work on his injury, I'm hopeful he can be on the court as our primary playmaker. If he can be that guy, our offense could hum at an even higher level next season.

[bob blue devil]

as long as we have austin rivers, i wouldn't count this duke team out. we've seen it time and time again - star players carry their teams in the tourney. austin rivers is a star. fsu is one of the best defensive teams in the country and they barely kept him in check (w/some assistance from the zebras IMO, but that's not relevant here). he is capable of putting this duke team on his back.

[mgtr]

Talk about Debbie Downer! After reading through this thread, I can't figure how we won more than 2-3 games all year.

Seriously, we are a pretty good team. If we are hitting our threes, we are a very good team. We obviously missed Ryan this week, but we have had difficulty at times this year even with him, so that doesn't explain it all. I don't think this team will be magically improved by Friday -- we have what we have. I doubt that coach has any additional magic to get from his magic twanger this year.

No matter what, we are a pretty good team. I will be watching the big dance, and still cheering for Duke.

[bob blue devil]

well i disagree, but i don't think i can disprove your reasoning. i get where you are coming from - carmelo anthony syndrome, right?
a few things to think about:
- his defense is probably the best on the team - and that is our biggest weakness
- his shot numbers aren't extraordinarily high and he doesn't get the ball every possession, so i don't think he's stifling other players in their offensive game
- while he started the year a poor passer, his drive and dish is, IMO, lethal at the moment (and this is where not having kelly hurts us); in the acc tourney it turned into wide open looks for... Tyler Thornton (wawa); thornton needs to be able to convert those - you can't have a point guard shooting in the 20s for wide open 3's; i don't put that on rivers
- he's got fire, he's clearly out there to win the game/beat the other team whatever it takes - these are qualities we admire in thornton and we should likewise value them in rivers
- his rate of improvement has been extremely impressive, so, first, i think he continues to improve (brilliant!); but second, and i correct me if i'm making a wrong assumption, i think it's reflective of him being a very hard worker/dedicated to improvement; having your best player work hard usually rubs off on the rest of the team and is what championship teams are made of

i want rivers back in a bad way; i think he could have a legendary season next year.

[slower]

My impression of Austin is that he'll try to distribute the ball if others are having good games, but he has no problem at all "taking over" if other guys aren't getting it done.

However, Austin Rivers is the best player on the team, NOT the problem.