Duke MBB vs. E. Kentucky Post-Game Thread

[JBDuke]

Post your post-game thoughts here.

[Lord Ash]

Please can someone give a REAL good summary, player by player, of the game? A lot of us Dukies missed it. Thanks!

[mgtr]

Except for Duke's run at the end of the first half and Taylor King's shooting, it was a pretty boring game. We have to be more "up" for the games against Wisconsin and Davidson or we will be in trouble. Of course, more time will have passed since our return from Maui -- I am sure that long trip following some tough games took a lot out of the starters.

[JBDuke]

Please can someone give a REAL good summary, player by player, of the game? A lot of us Dukies missed it. Thanks!

You should have joined us in chat!

[Indoor66]

Veni, vidi, vici

[DavidBenAkiva]

Being a statistician (or something close to one at least), I looked at the in-game stats. Scoring was not balanced. Taylor King had 27, and I think that Demarcus and Gerald were the other two in double figures with 12 and 10 points. Way to go Taylor!

Looking at just the shooting percentages, it didn't seem like anybody shot poorly or hoisted up a lot of poor shots - King was 6-11 from behind the arc, which is great. From those that were able to watch the game, did it seem at any time like anybody was forcing shots? Also, I didn't get numbers on assists. How was Duke doing passing the ball?

Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a banana

[grossbus]

any status on marty? geez, that kid cannot catch a good break.

[RelativeWays]

It was a great defensive perfomance. Duke played real aggressive man to man and got a lot of turnovers.

Offensively, not the best, King was a monster and DMark and G were solid as well, everyone else seemed to be tentative and afraid to try to collapse the defense. FTs were terrible, like a last year game. Hopefully they'll shake that off. Zoubek played pretty poorly, which was disappointing because I thought he was excellent in the Maui Invitational. There is still work to be done.

[mgtr]

Being a statistician (or something close to one at least), I looked at the in-game stats. Scoring was not balanced. Taylor King had 27, and I think that Demarcus and Gerald were the other two in double figures with 12 and 10 points. Way to go Taylor!

Looking at just the shooting percentages, it didn't seem like anybody shot poorly or hoisted up a lot of poor shots - King was 6-11 from behind the arc, which is great. From those that were able to watch the game, did it seem at any time like anybody was forcing shots? Also, I didn't get numbers on assists. How was Duke doing passing the ball

If anything, we were overpassing the ball. We spent a lot of time passing around the perimeter (much as we did last year). EKU did a pretty good job clogging up the middle, so you didn't see Nelson or Henderson driving into the middle for easy shots. I don't know how many assists we had (of course, people passed the ball to King for his 3s), but we sure had a bunch of turnovers (although many less than EKU). This seemed like a game where Zoubek could clean up, but we didn't get the ball inside too much, and then he looked more like last year. Shelden Williams would have cleaned up! Scheyer probably ended up with the most minutes, including playing point for probably 4-5 minutes.

[delfrio]

Listening to the radio broadcast, it seemed like offensively we were a bit lazy, with a ton of turnovers. Seemed like Gerald didn't play that well, but made enough good defensive plays to cancel out his offensive problems. I expected more out of Zoubek, but wasn't to be.

Overall, we appeared to play great defensively. Got a lot of players in the game. Demarcus and Scheyer played around 30min, but everyone else was at ~20 or under.

[RelativeWays]

Oh, one positive, Dave McClure was in for a good bit of the second half and seemed to move well with the ball. He may be up to full speed after this week.

[CDu]

Just a fairly disjointed game. There seemed to be lots of turnovers committed by both teams (many more by EKU than Duke). When we did get a shot off, it usually went in. Duke's defense was very solid against a clearly inferior team. There was lots of pressure applied on the perimeter, and everyone seemed to be doing a good job of challenging the passing lanes whenever someone picked up their dribble up top.

Offensively, the half court offense never looked very crisp with regard to attacking the lane. That said, we hit a LOT of outside shots. King had a great shooting game, and took advantage of being left alone several times in the first half. In the second half, EKU paid a bit more attention, but King just stepped further out.

Duke led comfortably for almost the entire game, and EKU never really threatened in any way. Therefore, it's hard to really gauge much. It was nice to see the defense maintain their aggressiveness for 40 minutes.

King did what you can expect offensively when his shot is falling. He shot it quickly and often. He also hustled defensively and forced a few turnovers. He had a great game, due in large part to the fact that he got a lot of open looks and his shot was falling.

The rest of the team can be generally summed up by the assessment of "solid defensively, unimpressive offensively." Paulus had a less than stellar performance. He was solid defensively, but offensively he committed a few turnovers and really didn't generate a lot of offense. Thomas had a few nice moments, including a nice pump fake and baseline drive for a reverse layup. Henderson, Scheyer, and Nelson were all very solid defensively but didn't stand out offensively. Henderson did miss a breakaway dunk were he seemed to stumble on takeoff and failed to get enough lift to finish.

Sorry to not be able to provide more, but the game just was such an oddly nondescript display offensively. We forced a ton of turnovers, but those turnovers didn't translate to an offensive explosion (aside from King).

[wisteria]

Taylor King-- What a great shooter! quick release and sick range! That steal, behind the back dribble, and slam was super sweet too. I think he got a little too excited after one of his many 3s, and committed a foul immediately blocking the way of the EKU guard. Well, I can understand that. He even laughed at himself a bit, I think. Still a kid.

Lance Thomas--Like most of you, I like the progress he is making. Keep up the good work, Lance!

Zoubek--Just when we started to appreciate his improvement, he slipped right back where he was in the beginning. Sigh...

We need to at least knock down those free throws!!!

Anyway, we win, and the defense was pretty solid as always. I won't read too much into this game. First, EKU was just sooooo bad themselves. Second, our players might be dealing with the long trip and jet lag and issues like that...A sloppy game. We will have to step up against UW.

[DukeCO2009]

A couple of notes:

1. Great defensive game. I loved that we started pressing--that seemed to be missing a lot of the time in Maui. Great ball pressure from just about everyone, and DMark did an especially good job hitting the defensive glass (not sure if the stats confirm this, but he looked awesome in person). I know the zone has treated us fairly well so far this year and I like using it in spurts, but this team has the depth to press for 35ish minutes a game--fatigue should be a non-factor when you can play 9-11 guys..

2. Holy freakin' Taylor King! Hopefully K realizes that, although the kid's got great range, he can't shoot from the bench. He gave us a huge spark at the end of the first half when our offense was stagnating, and I really think he was the difference in the game. Without him, things would have been a bit more interesting--too interesting.

3. I really hope Marty is OK. Say what you will about him playing erratically and whatnot, but the kid hustles his tail off every second he's on the court. K was over there with him for a good amount of time while he was down, which was nice to see--you can tell Coach really appreciates Marty's fire. Here's hoping the ankle heals up quickly.

4. D-Mark is a great rebounder and can drive well when he keeps his head up, but he makes me nervous when he handles the ball. Several times this afternoon, most notably in the first half, he left his feet with absolutely no plan regarding what to do with the rock. Our offensive set for the first 10 minutes seemed to always flow through D-Mark, and I'm not sure that's a great idea against a team that puts a lot of ball pressure on the wings. Not saying he was the only one to screw up, but he appeared to turn it over more than others in the early going.

5. I like how we opened things up in the second half. We didn't hesitate as much on shots, we took it to the basket more, and we got out in transition faster. We seemed a bit perplexed by their defense in the first half, and K evidently solved the problem in the lockerroom. Good coaching, and good job by the players to execute and make K's adjustments work.

[Devilsfan]

his not playing in Mauii and having the freshest legs?

[Jumbo]

his not playing in Mauii and having the freshest legs?

There are all sorts of possible explanations:

1) Fresh legs.
2) Fired up by not playing much/playing poorly in Maui.
3) Had a good practice/film session.
4) Played against a weak opponent.
5) Something just "clicked."

[SilverHammer]

One of the reasons we had so many problems on offense, especially in the the first half, was Eastern Kentucky played darned good defense. It was a weird zone/man mix that took away the drives to the basket that generally feed both DeMarcus and Gerald. They had clearly watched the game tapes from Hawaii. We had 20 or so turnovers for the game and many came when we tried to drive into the teeth of that congested zone middle. Once we figured out how to drive and then kick out (especially to Taylor King), things changed. I felt that we moved the ball around the outside so much early because it took us a while to figure out how to attack their defense.

On the other hand, our D was great, causing over 30 turnovers. Interestingly, one of our 2 best defenders today was Taylor King. He really hustled, caused a lot of turnovers, and perhaps had as good a game on defense as he did on offense. The other defender who had a really good game was Lance Thomas, who shut down the guy on EKU who was the point forward hub of their offense. He held him to no assists and four turnovers. A nice day for Lance.

[captmojo]

The team looked like, offensively, they started this game biologically at 10AM.

[Highlander]

2. Holy freakin' Taylor King! Hopefully K realizes that, although the kid's got great range, he can't shoot from the bench. He gave us a huge spark at the end of the first half when our offense was stagnating, and I really think he was the difference in the game. Without him, things would have been a bit more interesting--too interesting.

Well, Coach K did start King in the second half over Singler, recognizing he was the hot hand. King earned that, and had a lot of good minutes in both halves to boot. I do think this was a matchup that favored Taylor, since EKU was content to zone us and no one else was a threat from the outside tonight, but he definitely made the most of it.

Any way you slice it, King had a monster game.

[DukeUsul]

I'll echo a lot of what other posters have said:

EKU's zone "with mntmn principles" (TM Billy Raftery) really gave us fits (I think it was either a 2-1-2 or 2-3). There are two ways to attack a zone - shoot over it, or cut into the high post for a jumper. We chose the first. EKU was really pretty impressive with their smart help defense in the zone and their hands in the passing lanes. Every time we tried to cut to the hoop, they'd collapse and get their hands on the ball, and we had some trouble passing out of it. Thank goodness we were shooting well! There were a few sets in the early second half where we had 5 guys standing outside the arc playing catch.... seriously. It made me nervous (relying on the three is a good strategy against the zone, as long as you're making them - and thankfully we were).

Our defense was excellent, although one reason we didn't seem to get too many fast breaks off of it was EKU's ability to get back on D. I was really surprised we had fewer fast break points, considering the turnovers (I haven't seen the stats, but it really seemed like we didn't have many).