Nice of us to forego that open layup at the buzzer to make it an even 100, haha.
Revenge!
Just be you. You is enough. - K, 4/5/10, 0:13.8 to play, 60-59 Duke.
You're all jealous hypocrites. - Titus on Laettner
You see those guys? Animals. They're animals. - SIU Coach Chris Lowery, on Duke
Nice of us to forego that open layup at the buzzer to make it an even 100, haha.
Good job boys!
Solid win. Quite likely that there will be a rubber match in the semi-finals of the ACC tournament. Hopefully both teams are at full strength by then. Way to go guys!
Just to try to head off the lazy "stall ball" meme in advance...we DID NOT play "stall ball" until the last few minutes. We simply missed shots and played poor defense throughout the half.
tale of 2 halfs really. not sure if the team lost its edge/focus; ran out of gas or just a regression to the mean but we survived the bad defense in the 2nd half to pick up the W.
mason was HUGE all night especially in the 2nd half when the 3s stopped falling.
Let's just call the second half a "regression to the mean." Guys hung tough and got the win. State was impressive though, and will be a tough out if we see them again.
As I said in the in-game thread, we really missed Kelly inside because Howell stepped out and had wide-open jumpers all night long. Mason's gotta start guarding him out there.
This game was Duke's season in a bottle. Duke at its best without Kelly and then Duke at its worst without Kelly. They let the foot off the gas too early and let NCSU shoot nearly 80% in the 2nd half. Awful.
The open looks that went down in the first half rimmed out in the 2nd. Such a sharp contrast...
Some of it was stall ball, some was poor defense, some was from long rebounds leading to transition pints for State. But guess what?
A win's a win.
I am so tired of this argument. Barely scraping by is not something to celebrate. I'd like to think that the talent we have on this team far exceeds having to play hot potato with each other for the final 15 minutes in order to secure a victory over an average N.C. State team, which has now lost five of its last seven games. This is the exact type of play that will usher you to the nearest exit in the NCAA Tournament.
Why exactly we felt that going the Northern Illinois route in the second half was the way to seal the deal tonight is beyond me.
I kind of disagree with the posters in the other thread that Duke played for the last 20 minutes not to lose. What I saw was that every time Duke had a shot, even a Curry 3 pointer, State was there with a foul. Two of their players fouled out. My take, and I am not an expert - just a LONG TIME basketball fan - is that State's defense of fouling anyone shooting the ball led to the less than par shooting performance from Duke in the 2nd half and I am grateful that most of the Duke players can shoot free throws. JMHO.
Agreed. This was more about giving up 48 points in a half. Heck, even more impressive if we did play stall ball as some alleged. I've learned to live with the offense and we actually got in more trouble with the quick shots when they stopped falling. Our team should be good enough to run a set and get good shots in the last 10-15 seconds of a shot clock.
While it probably wasn't truly initiated as early as I stated above, it sure felt like it. We were definitely deliberately taking the air out of the ball and dribbling/passing around out top for the first 20 seconds of the shot clock from the 10-minute mark on of the second half, though.
I agree with the devil. I think we looked fatigued. We took a lot of the same shots in the second half, but not as crisply. And it would be unreasonable to expect an out-of-world performance in the first half to continue. That said, our defense was horrible, and so was our - hate this phrase - "ball security." The second half just wasn't very good basketball by eiither team, really; I don't think our downturn had much to do with "stall ball" or "playing not to lose." It did have something to do with lots of missed shots that went in earlier.
Quel est si drole de la paix, de l'amour, et de la comprehension?
Good win tonight. Mason is a beast Murphy's dunk was nasty!
State shot out of this world in the second half. Howell must have hit 5 15+ foot jumpers. Wood didn't miss much if at all, either. That said, we definitely didn't have the same defensive intensity in the second half, either.
Thankfully, we hit enough 3s early and Mason was just a beast throughout.
Curry had a phenomenal first half, but I think he ran out of gas a bit in the second. Still, 26 is not a bad night, especially on only 15 shots.
Murphy did a solid job backing up Jefferson. For much of that time, we were fortunate that State was playing small (with Warren at the PF spot). But Murphy's first assignment was against Leslie, and he did an adequate job.
The PF spot is still a question mark for us, as none of Jefferson, Murphy, and Hairston have really made a definitive statement with any consistency. But we've seen glimpses (even long glances in the case of Jefferson) of usefulness. Hopefully that carries over when Kelly returns.
Regardless, though it was a sloppy second half, we won by 13, and State never got it to within a 2-possession game after the opening minutes. That's the way to get it done.
So we are missing shots, NC State is on fire, our guards are in foul trouble and we have no answer for Howell, so your answer is to try to outscore them? Yes, it was disappointing and I'm sure K won't be happy with the defensive performance but anytime you score 40 points in a half, that is not stall ball or playing not to lose. The Big Ten has games where the winner is a few points above 40 for the game.
Besides, you play to win the game. Be it pretty or ugly. I don't hear Wisconsin fans complain about how they win. You look at your assets, the other team's assets and do whatever is best to win. Not try to play what other people want.
Another positive - duke wins the rebound battle!
And another positive - we get woeful BC on Saturday!
But why do you think the team will be satisfied with the second half effort. They played a great first half- almost flawless. They need to stay aggressive and do a better job on D but we have seen improvement. Still not there but a big improvement since the first State game