Nope. This was a pitiful win. Yes, there is such a thing and we just witnessed it. Sure, it's better than an admirable loss, but still pitiful. First ECU, and now Vermont. Frickin' Vermont drops 90 on our floor.
The sky is not falling but this team clearly has not figured out defense yet, and if it does not soon, we can score all we want but will lose quite a few games.
Hard to be too excited after what just happened.
Rebounding was a bright spot tonight. We out rebounded them 30-24. We shot reasonably well both from the field (48%) and the three (37%). We especially shot free throws well tonight, and those free throws down the stretch made the difference in the end.
But OMG that defense. OMG. Vermont didn't play out of their frickin' minds. They played in the paint. Because we let them.
I hope we don't hear from Coach K in his presser what a great basketball game this was against a great well-coached opponent. Malarkey. This was an embarrassingly close win against a 1-4 Vemont team, because Duke failed on the defensive end tonight.
Vermont shot ridiculously well from long distance, but they also had a ridiculous number of uncontested layups. Not sure about the 4 point play call, nor the late foul on Vermont, which sort of killed the game from a neutral perspective. Clearly we have some problems, but Vermont was awesome, so props to them. Also, Jabari saved our buns. Probably not for the last time.
We have a lot of players this year that are liabilities on the defensive end. So many Duke players lose their men on backdoor cuts, fail to switch properly on the picks, make no effort to block out, etc etc. Good news is that these are things that can be learned. But two of the biggest problems on the defensive end are Jabari and Rodney, and K has pretty much handed them the keys. Hopefully they are willing to learn after a performance like this.
Cook plays nice defense from the other baseline to the three point line. THen NO ONE plays any defense from the three point line to our own baseline. Pressure defense is meaningless when you don't put any hands on the ball to make actual turnovers and when some simple dribbling allows you to not only beat it, but beat it so badly that it forces other help to leave their man because now people are wide open.
Kids don't learn defense in high school. This team is young. They will get better.
Interesting that the Vermont coach said he decided to defend with the zone when he saw how much success ECU had with it, even though he normally hates zone. Said the new rules on contact almost require playing some zone. Food for thought for the Duke coaching staff.
Vermont shot 64.8% from the floor. WOW. They missed 7 free throws. A couple more makes, and we might be talking about one of the biggest upsets ever. I expect Coach K to make starting lineup changes next game. Thornton is a lock to start, but unfortunately, he's also averaging like 4.9 fouls per game right now with these new rules. Boy, what's going on with Sulaimon? He has really shot the ball poorly as of late, and his defense has been almost equally bad. That's one guy who we really need to step it up right now. He's capable of playing so much better than this.
Last edited by kAzE; 11-24-2013 at 08:57 PM.
Who cares about rebounding at this point. 90 points to Vermont!?
Defending the layup seems to be the main issue.
They gave up more layups than a 650 yard par 5.
Our scoring is excellent, now we need to make changes that include playing defense and rebounding. I am not as convinced Thornton is helping the team much although he has a lot of supporters at Duke. Anyhow, coach K needs to think of what next. Only a couple of days until we play again so not much time to correct things. Would a bigger player inside have helped? I agree that Vermont scored from mid range and inside more than from the three.
Well, Rodney's had two years of college to learn. How many times did he allow points by not boxing out? And wasn't D supposed to be part of his resume? He's been great overall, and we're certainly lucky to have him, but astonishing to watch Vermont get all those layups and putbacks. I don't get it. Some years we were bad on D because we didn't have the "athletes." Hard to see why we should be so bad now. It's not Greg Paulus being beat off the dribble.