Leadership, not "Who Will Play C", is the real question for 2013-14 season

[CDu]

Agree. That's what I was trying to get at by "re-opening" this thread. Amazing to me how quickly the center/size debate took over again.

I think many agree that our offense is pretty good but our defense is sketchy at best right now. Solving our defensive woes will not come from some magical appearance of a big man (unless Marshall perhaps surprises everyone). So, it will come down to great team defense. And I would argue this is particularly true of our perimeter defense. Which will of course require outstanding communication on a continuous basis. And I will argue one last time that great communication cannot/will not be sustained without a couple guys leading by example and holding their teammates accountable at all times.

I agree that our defense isn't suddenly going to get an infusion of a true big man this year. So any solution is going to involve something else.

I also agree that better communication and commitment to team defense will also be critical to improved defense.

I'd also suggest that the extended perimeter pressure may also need to be relaxed if we're going to limit dribble penetration, as I'm not sure that communication alone will allow us to play high-pressure on-ball defense AND prevent dribble penetration. That's one facet of the new emphasis on calling fouls that are being committed.

So while leadership and communication need to improve, I do think that a slight tweak in our man-to-man strategy may also be necessary (i.e., sagging back a bit once we get into the half-court).

[wk2109]

I agree with everyone who says that K is unlikely to change the team's defensive philosophy too much and that the biggest hope for improved defensive efficiency is better communication and the guys being where they're supposed to be. This will happen through repetition/practice. The 2010 team had the hedging/rotations down to a T -- not coincidentally, the core of that team was juniors and seniors. Hopefully this year's young guys have a steep learning curve.

One question I have about containing dribble penetration is during practice, outside of the starting five, who exactly is going the simulate the type of penetrating guards that Duke is going to face? From what I've seen in games and public practices, Tyler and Andre definitely aren't the type of guy to break you down off the dribble. Matt has shown a little ability, but not to the point where I'd consider him a real penetration threat. It's hard to prepare for something that you can't simulate during practice. I think Quinn or Rasheed could serve as a reasonable facsimile, but ideally you'd want the starting five to practice defense together.

[Saratoga2]

Duke is not a well oiled machine defensively. We don't have a floor leader who has the quickness, savy and toughness to ma

[Indoor66]

This is a young team. Three seniors, one junior, only one of whom starts. The rest are freshmen and sophs who did not play last year. There is an adjustment period - learning each other, learning to communicate, LEARNING to learn.

[NSDukeFan]

...

It starts with our guards getting broken down off the dribble, then, due to lack of communication, and poor rotations with help and recover, the defense totally breaks down. End result is the opponent gets an easy look at the rim or a wide open mid-range jumpshot or 3 point attempt. I still feel it is a copout to blame the new rules. That is a small part of it, but the bigger issue is lack of discipline, lack or moving their feet, and lack of positioning. Add in the fact that guys are hesitant to attempt to take a charge, and they end up not know what to do once they rotate over to help.

The other part is inexperience in Duke's system, and a bunch of new faces trying to learn how to play defense together as a 5 man cohesive unit. K is not going zone, so get it out of your heads. He may do it one or two possessions per half just to change things up, but he is going to play man exclusively. The good news is, because the bulk of the issues are inexperience and learning to play with new teammates, the problems are fixable, and they are fixable this year. They can figure this out. It may take until mid-January, but so what. Most of us agreed that this team would be the opposite of recent teams in that rather than starting out playing their best ball early, they would struggle early (likely losing 2, 3, 4 games, but then get a lot stronger down the stretch. Which is what we want right? Peak at the optimum time vs peaking too early then fading. You can't have it both ways.

... They can get to the place they need to be, but it is going to take a lot of hard work, starting with respecting the opponent and playing every possession of every game as hard as they can play.

It is fixable. They can play much better on defense than they are playing right now. They are just going to have to buckle down in the short term and weather the storm until they get enough practice time to address and correct the issues.

I also expect that with experience the D will improve greatly and that the individual talent level is good enough. The other point that I took from coach K's quotes post-last game was that there was a lack of intensity. I believe that every team has a some games each year where they are just not as ready to perform as they should be and the players may still be trying and hustling, but at this level, if you are not really ready to play, you can get exploited by an inferior opponent such as Vermont. If the team isn't completely focused, they won't communicate as well as they should. Fortunately, over coach K's tenure, Duke underperforms much less than most teams.

Because you have to practice zone to play it, and our limited practice time might be better spent making our bread and butter defense at least adequate.

I would agree that I would much rather the team fine tune the defense they will be using most often, rather than have this inexperienced team take time away from that to practice zone defense.

Bravo. Coach K has said it; others have said it. It's not about effort or size or new rules. It's about focus and playing together. It's a new group and they are adjusting, and so we lapse into a lot of one-on-one (or one-on-five) mindset (not selfishness, which is different). This is a coaching issue and it takes time to work through.

This team has played a couple games like five fingers. Hopefully, by the end of the year it will be a strong fist.