Originally Posted by
Troublemaker
Good points, dukie8.
As others have mentioned, you can't really look at turnovers without looking at assists (and you have to look at things on a per-possession basis to really be accurate since Duke's pace was very slow this year). Teams that have point guards that make plays and create easy baskets for their teammates and for themselves experience so much benefit from the playmaking that they can handle a couple of extra turnovers a game. It's like Peyton Manning in football. He's going to get some balls intercepted because he puts the ball up there, but those 30 TDs he throws more than make up for it. Even with that said, Greg is more like Favre in terms of interceptions than Manning. He picks up his dribble a lot, gets trapped easily and has a difficult time passing out of it.
Unfortunately, it's not like Greg created a bunch of easy baskets for his teammates this year that they didn't finish. While guys like Josh and Markie did have trouble finishing around the basket this year, their opportunities were self-created. Markie would drive to the basket on his own and miss. Josh would make a post move on his own and miss. If you watched the point guards on the top teams that played yesterday (Conley on OSU, Sosa on Lville, Law on TAMU, Lawson on UNC), you notice that those teams enjoy such an advantage with the easy opportunities that their point guards create. Pitino, who is a great coach, basically cleared out for Sosa time and time again. And that's really the rub right there. Duke wants to be a great team. Other great teams enjoy easy opportunities created by their point guard, quickness on defense by their point guard, and excellent ball-handling by their point guard, but Duke does not. So how do you make up that deficit? Hopefully the answer is Kyle Singler. Both Georgetown and Kansas rely on a dominant point-forward (Green and Wright, respectively) instead of a playmaking point guard to be top teams. Hopefully Duke can follow the same formula with Singler.
i completely agree. it's the point guard's main job on offense to set-up everyone else for easy baskets. it puts a lot more stress on everyone else -- particularly when they don't have great 1-on-1 moves -- when they receive the ball 20 feet from the basket versus in the paint or cutting to the basket. typically, a pg will do this by taking his man off the dribble. it then becomes 5 on 4 and the other team either has to rotate someone over or the driving pg will have an easy close-in shot. if the other team does rotate over, then the pg will have a great opportunity to dish it to someone bigger than he for hopefully a dunk or easy shot. we saw very little of this with our offense but we repeatedly saw it on defense. sosa made texas a&m, one of the top defensive teams in the country, look silly yesterday because he time and time again got past his man and either scored or dished. i have no doubt that if we had lawson on our team this year, a lot of our offensive woes would have been erased because mcroberts/nelson/scheyer would have been receiving the ball in much better positions.
I agree with you that he's becoming a great shooter and that will come in handy in the next couple of years.
Unfortunately, even Wojo his senior year couldn't handle the likes of Wayne Turner, Terrell Mcintyre, and Ed Cota all that well on defense. And JJ his senior year was still shutdown by the likes of Garrett Temple and Ginyard and Terry (the difference between the game in Chapel Hill and the game in Cameron last year was Roy wising up and not guarding JJ with Wes Miller). You can improve your quickness but only so much.
I don't think Nolan will start ahead of Paulus, either because Coach K is loyal to his upperclassmen. Paulus will start the next two years. Now, what effect does that have on Duke? From previous conversation, I know that the difference between dukie8's stance on Greg and my stance on Greg is that I believe Duke can still compensate for Greg's shortcomings by being great in other areas (for example, Singler as playmaking point-forward, as mentioned) in order to contend while dukie8 thinks we're in a bind the next couple of years. I've predicted that Duke will be a 3 or 4 seed next year and then a strong championship contender in two years but I don't know for sure that will happen. dukie8 might be right. We've never really made the Final Four with a guy like Greg at the "1" before. The closest was in 94 but that was on the back of a senior Grant Hill, who basically took over playmaking and ball-handling duties. So here's hoping Kyle Singler is the real deal.