Not sure what they ate before the game. It was the humble pie they had to eat afterwards that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Our training table was fine until someone broke out the Jabari Bars . . . .
No no no. Dillo is nutritional gold from 11am-7pm. Cosmic Cantina is the answer from 1am to closing. Torero's is never the answer.
I think the OP is on to something. I recommend we only feed the kids nuts, grains, and low-calorie Gatorade. No more fats, sugars, or anything half decent. Hell, cancel the video games, the late night socializing, and the partying. Even better, let's give em the UNC treatment: no classes! Only basketball, basketball, and more basketball. Remove the "student" from "student-athlete". Come on, Duke! You can do it!
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
President of the "Nolan Smith Should Have His Jersey in The Rafters" Club
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."
Makes perfect sense Bob. Now it's all coming together.
Methinks someone we know should mosey over to Duke Blue Planet and check out the videos where they show the cooking staff that prepares numerous meal types for our guys 3 times daily for breakfast, lunch, and supper. They get multiple choices of great healthy food at all 3 meals, and each of them have a nutritional plan tailored specifically for each individual player based on each player's unique requirements.
Look no further than one Kyle Singler who changed his body each of his 4 seasons to get the correct body build for the role and position he was going to be asked to play each of his 4 seasons.
This thread is absurd and ranks up there as one of the all time great threads in the wrong category... Sigh...Makes for great humor though...
Carry on...
I'm sure you could point at any minor defect8 the players' personal lives and point at it as part of the reason we just but in reality Mercer just brought out our weaknesses and bearT us.
I think it's premature to attribute the Mercer loss to dietary issues until the study is complete.
The OP needs stool samples of all the Duke players, naturally.
But we'll also need stool samples of all the Mercer players too. Who knows that our players' diets were any worse than theirs?
And we'll need a control group sample. Maybe from BaMa? Or ToPeka State? Or the Southern Highlands Institute of Technology?
I'll sit here and read my National Geographic while the samples are collected and the results digested.
It all comes down to do they eat enough protein to allow their muscles to recover after tough workouts. I saw a lot of fatigue in that final loss to Mercer.
I saw a lot of defensive incompetence. I saw a lack of leadership. I saw our two best players have off-games.
Duke Basketball, with a ridiculous budget, has nutritionists on payroll and additional nutritionists on speed dial. To think that diet played a MAJOR factor is, IMO, premature.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
President of the "Nolan Smith Should Have His Jersey in The Rafters" Club
Finally, someone gets it!
You're trying to raise what you believe to be a serious issue, and we are all giving you a lot of grief. But, trying to respond seriously, As Flying Dutch Devil points out, the Duke basketball program has a gi-normous budget and nutritionists on staff.
When I was a kid--many more years ago than I care to mention--I was on a summer swim team. It was a very low-key, not very good, hang-around-the-country-club-pool kind of summer swim team. In a typical meet, each swimmer would race one length of freestyle in a 100-foot pool, and a few of the best swimmers would swim another length in a relay. Our coaches were teenage lifeguards. And yet--we received frequent reminders about proper nutrition, especially before meets.
If people were focused on nutrition at that seat-of-the-pants level of athletic competition, it's frankly inconceivable that the Duke basketball program is not paying very close attention to the issue. If they are not implementing state of the art dietary guidelines I would be beyond deeply disappointed in the program.
Can you prove the defensive incompetence, lack of leadership and two best players having off games weren't all due to the lack of protein in Jabari bars? Checkmate. OP wins all arguments about the reasons for Duke's losses or poor play until we have proof the team drinks 4 protein shakes a day in between tuna omelettes with Greek yogurt for dessert and we figure out what the optimum level of protein is for each player to ensure they recover from tough workouts so they don't have fatigue, tired legs and mental and emotional exhaustion. I am pretty sure the team ate all steak, rib and chicken dinners before the Syracuse games, except for Rodney, who passed on the last chicken wing and therefore didn't quite have the lift at the end to finish his last dunk. I wish I, and, more importantly, the coaching staff, had known this earlier.
“Those two kids, they’re champions,” Krzyzewski said of his senior leaders. “They’re trying to teach the other kids how to become that, and it’s a long road to become that.”