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  1. #61
    Quote Originally Posted by Sir Stealth View Post
    Top level talent is going to ebb and flow year to year, but Duke's has ebbed and flowed much less than any other program in the entire country. The loss to Lehigh was very disappointing, but one loss at the end of a year that was largely successful does not come close to an institutional decline in the program. I personally don't think Shane Ryan ever sounds like he knows what he's talking about, and my opinion didn't change with the Grantland article saying that our program was in decline because our recent NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP somehow didn't fully count, or something. I think that he is a poor representative of our fanbase. I wish people would have a little more perspective before they declare our program to be broken.
    One can believe our program has shortcomings or flaws without declaring it to be "broken". Pointing out and/or discussing those flaws doesn't qualify one as an alarmist. In recent years we have struggled to recruit space-eating big men and playmaking PGs. (Kyrie of course was the exception - but the exception doesn't disprove the rule.) K is of course still recruiting at a high level, and our program is performing at a high level. But over the last few years, K has not had as much success putting together complete teams as he has had at times in the past. To some extent that's an unfair comparison, because some past teams were insanely loaded, far beyond what is reasonable to expect - but it does represent a change. It's not unreasonable to point out that change and discuss its causes and/or implications.

  2. #62
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    I have to say thanks to Mudge for taking off the rose colored glasses that a lot of us are wearing and pointing out the honest truth. We are ,unfortunately, in a recruiting lull. Hopefully we will get at least one of the three offers still out . If we continue like we are, losses next year to FSU and N.C. State will bring the situation to a head and we may be referring to this period as the lull before the storm. Thanks to the mods for letting this thread live.

  3. #63
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mudge View Post
    I've said before that there WAS a Golden Era in Duke Basketball recruiting-- it was at the end of the last century, when Duke was fielding Brand, Battier, Langdon, Avery, Maggette, Carrawell, James, etc., and bringing in Boozer, Dunleavy, Williams, Duhon (and as yet, had no expectation of losing any of those players, so hence was expecting to field all or most of those players simultaneously), and then after losing a number of early departures, was fielding Boozer, Dunleavy, Williams, Duhon, plus Jones, Ewing, etc., and had Redick, Williams, Randolph in the offing... but after that period, Duke has started to spread their recruiting gems ever farther apart, and has not had the kind of talent surplus, to compete on even terms regularly (talent-wise) with UNC for some time now-- particularly when it comes to big men. Shelden is the last one who really panned out, and developed into a big-time low-block scorer (and defender, obviously)... K/Duke are trying to do it with smoke and mirrors, if they think they are going to win championships and go to Final Fours with Hairston, Thornton, (and for different reasons, Dawkins, Plumlee, and probably Gbinje, and Cook) playing major minutes... K is good enough at motivating his troops that sometimes it will still work out (as it did once this year, and once in Hansborough's last year), but Duke will always be fighting an uphill battle, unless the current trend in recruiting is reversed to recapture the trend of the late-90's/early 2000's.
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like your problem might not be with our recruiting, but with our evaluation of incoming recruits. In what you describe as the Golden Era of Duke Basketball recruiting, our incoming classes were ranked similarly to our recent incoming classes. Likewise, we're still getting top 5 level recruits on a very consistent basis (Deng, McRoberts, Singler, Austin, and Kyrie) and surrounding them with top 25 level guys (Kelly, Plumlee, Smith, Zoubek, Elliot Williams, Thomas, Zoubek, Paulus and others). The biggest difference isn't that we're failing to sign guys, it's that in the past the guys who stayed developed to meet or exceed their high school rankings, while for whatever reason, some of our recent recruits haven't done so or have transferred. It might have been that we got really lucky in the late '90s/early '00s or really unlucky recently, but in either case, I don't see it as a problem with Coach K ability to sign recruits (but it could hint at an issue identifying who to recruit).

    Another possibility is that our perceptions are skewed by what's happened in Chapel Hill recently. While we've been consistent year-to-year with our recruiting, team success, and early departures, Roy's only been consistent in his recruiting. As a result, he's underperformed with more talented teams, and in turn (as well as a Ty Lawson DUI) he's managed to get multiple years from guys who would have been lottery picks - probably not a strategy he's done intentionally. One the other hand we've been getting similarly ranked recruits each year with potential one and domes who have succeeded individually as a part of the team, but we're only getting a year from them. Maybe if they hadn't played as well as freshmen, we'd get them as sophomores, but I'd rather get the most out of what we have every year. I mean would you trade an incredibly disappointing NIT year with last year's team to possibly add Kyrie to this year's team? Personally, I wouldn't.

  4. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kedsy View Post
    Wow, more condescension. You said you couldn't imagine Lance as an NBA player. Now it matters whether he plays on a winner or not? And you expect people to take your arguments seriously?



    Of course he tries. Everyone tries. But just because he's missed two years out of seven doesn't mean we're in a recruiting "lull."



    We haven't been able to compete on even terms with UNC for some time now? Head-to-head we've won 5 of the last 7 games with them, and we've had significantly better teams than UNC two of the last three years.
    If I'm an NBA GM, and I watched Lance Thomas in college, I don't think I want him playing regular minutes for my NBA squad-- not if I expect to be a good team-- just as I don't think Duke can expect to compete for a Final Four or National Championship with our current starting point guard (unless maybe he is surrounded by 4 reputed NBA lottery picks, as Stillman White is alleged to have nearly been)... so yes, I anticipate this argument, that has virtually nothing to do with whether Lance Thomas enjoys a short stint in the NBA, to be taken seriously-- obviously, it has been, given the number of other posters on this thread who have taken it seriously by posting variations of their agreement with some or all of the points I raised here, despite the reflexive gainsaying posture that you can be counted on for.

    You are entitled to your opinion, and I to mine-- I don't think a team that features certain current players playing anything more than spot duty can realistically contend for the national championship-- any more than I thought a team that started Greg Paulus at PG could do so. If you don't think Duke is in a recruiting lull, rest content in your conviction; meanwhile, I will not relish the thought of playing teams like this year's Final Four teams (next year) with several of this year's players playing big minutes... one of those players had his moment of glory vs. Kansas this year-- don't expect lightning to strike twice in the same place. I don't care what the numerical rankings of the recruiting classes say beforehand-- I know what my eyes are showing me, and Duke has had more than its share of highly-ranked recruits recently who apparently are not living up to their advance billing.

    As for UNC, most people felt that they had significantly more talent than Duke in 2007, 2008, 2009, and was at least equal in 2011; 2010 favored Duke, as Duke benefitted from UNC's early departures, more than UNC did from Duke's. Duke has won 5 of 7-- which is a credit to K's coaching, but does not mean that Duke was competing with equal talent in all those games, which is what I actually claimed earlier. This year, UNC had more talent, but Duke managed a split, against the odds, by stealing one at UNC, when UNC got complacent at the end-- otherwise, UNC would have swept, and probably (if Kelly doesn't get hurt) would have met and beaten Duke a third time in the ACC tournament. In 2011, the talent was roughly equal, but Duke got 2 of 3-- again, credit to K getting more out of his talent than Williams. In 2010, Duke had a big talent advantage (the one big aberration in the recent trend), and made it stand up for a sweep. To me, it was clear that UNC had more talent in 2008 and 2009, and probably in 2007-- and for Duke to steal a win off UNC in those years was another coaching coup for K-- not a sign that the talent was equal. At no time, in the last 6 years (since Shelden graduated) have I felt that Duke had anywhere near the big-man talent that UNC has had, which is in fact a key point in the Grantland article referenced in this thread. If you are keeping score on talent, that's four out of the last six years that UNC was playing with a talent advantage, one year that was about even, and one that favored Duke-- I call that a talent lull, compared to Duke's Golden Era of the turn of the Millenium.

  5. #65
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    Quote Originally Posted by 60's Devil View Post
    I have to say thanks to Mudge for taking off the rose colored glasses that a lot of us are wearing and pointing out the honest truth. We are ,unfortunately, in a recruiting lull. Hopefully we will get at least one of the three offers still out . If we continue like we are, losses next year to FSU and N.C. State will bring the situation to a head and we may be referring to this period as the lull before the storm. Thanks to the mods for letting this thread live.
    I'm not sure I agree that we're in a lull. We're still landing top-20 players every year (usually multiple of them) and getting top 5-10 players almost every year. We're not getting the tall, athletic wings as often as we used to, but we're not in a recruiting lull.

    And with regard to the predictions for next year, I don't think you've paid much attention to whom FSU is losing. They'll lose all of their bigs and two of their guards. Basically, they'll have Snaer, White, Miller, Shannon, and a bunch of freshmen/transfers. They won't be nearly as intimidating inside as they were this year, and they won't be nearly as experienced on the perimeter.

  6. #66
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    Feb 2007
    Quote Originally Posted by Matches View Post
    One can believe our program has shortcomings or flaws without declaring it to be "broken". Pointing out and/or discussing those flaws doesn't qualify one as an alarmist. In recent years we have struggled to recruit space-eating big men and playmaking PGs. (Kyrie of course was the exception - but the exception doesn't disprove the rule.) K is of course still recruiting at a high level, and our program is performing at a high level. But over the last few years, K has not had as much success putting together complete teams as he has had at times in the past. To some extent that's an unfair comparison, because some past teams were insanely loaded, far beyond what is reasonable to expect - but it does represent a change. It's not unreasonable to point out that change and discuss its causes and/or implications.
    Very well stated. I concur with this.

  7. #67
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    Jan 2008
    Quote Originally Posted by dcdevil2009 View Post
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like your problem might not be with our recruiting, but with our evaluation of incoming recruits. In what you describe as the Golden Era of Duke Basketball recruiting, our incoming classes were ranked similarly to our recent incoming classes. Likewise, we're still getting top 5 level recruits on a very consistent basis (Deng, McRoberts, Singler, Austin, and Kyrie) and surrounding them with top 25 level guys (Kelly, Plumlee, Smith, Zoubek, Elliot Williams, Thomas, Zoubek, Paulus and others). The biggest difference isn't that we're failing to sign guys, it's that in the past the guys who stayed developed to meet or exceed their high school rankings, while for whatever reason, some of our recent recruits haven't done so or have transferred. It might have been that we got really lucky in the late '90s/early '00s or really unlucky recently, but in either case, I don't see it as a problem with Coach K ability to sign recruits (but it could hint at an issue identifying who to recruit).

    Another possibility is that our perceptions are skewed by what's happened in Chapel Hill recently. While we've been consistent year-to-year with our recruiting, team success, and early departures, Roy's only been consistent in his recruiting. As a result, he's underperformed with more talented teams, and in turn (as well as a Ty Lawson DUI) he's managed to get multiple years from guys who would have been lottery picks - probably not a strategy he's done intentionally. One the other hand we've been getting similarly ranked recruits each year with potential one and domes who have succeeded individually as a part of the team, but we're only getting a year from them. Maybe if they hadn't played as well as freshmen, we'd get them as sophomores, but I'd rather get the most out of what we have every year. I mean would you trade an incredibly disappointing NIT year with last year's team to possibly add Kyrie to this year's team? Personally, I wouldn't.
    This could be a valid point-- maybe it is more about how recruits turned out, than how highly they were acclaimed coming in (the Paulus phenomenon)-- we had a lull in the mid-2000's where players did not live up to the reputations that preceded them, and perhaps that is all that is happening now...

    But I guess I would ask: Why was Duke able to stockpile so much more talent in that 1998-2006 era, so that when a player like Burgess or Randolph didn't pan out, it didn't matter very much? Or possibly, more to the point: Why was Duke having a much higher success rate in converting highly-rated recruits into high performing players in that era-- the miscalculations or the failed-to-develop/progress rate seemed to be much lower than now, if we are to believe that the current crop is/was every bit as highly recruited (coming in) as the players of that era.

  8. #68
    Quote Originally Posted by Mudge View Post
    This could be a valid point-- maybe it is more about how recruits turned out, than how highly they were acclaimed coming in (the Paulus phenomenon)-- we had a lull in the mid-2000's where players did not live up to the reputations that preceded them, and perhaps that is all that is happening now...

    But I guess I would ask: Why was Duke able to stockpile so much more talent in that 1998-2006 era, so that when a player like Burgess or Randolph didn't pan out, it didn't matter very much? Or possibly, more to the point: Why was Duke having a much higher success rate in converting highly-rated recruits into high performing players in that era-- the miscalculations or the failed-to-develop/progress rate seemed to be much lower than now, if we are to believe that the current crop is/was every bit as highly recruited (coming in) as the players of that era.
    UNC was down. UNC has historically recruited better than Duke when they are winning. Carolina was the team getting high school all-americans left and right when Coach K took over from Coach Foster. Certainly Duke got highly touted players as well but not to the degree that UNC did when Coach Smith was there.

  9. #69
    Quote Originally Posted by Mudge View Post
    But I guess I would ask: Why was Duke able to stockpile so much more talent in that 1998-2006 era, so that when a player like Burgess or Randolph didn't pan out, it didn't matter very much? Or possibly, more to the point: Why was Duke having a much higher success rate in converting highly-rated recruits into high performing players in that era-- the miscalculations or the failed-to-develop/progress rate seemed to be much lower than now, if we are to believe that the current crop is/was every bit as highly recruited (coming in) as the players of that era.
    Part of it is that K managed to bring in two absolutely loaded classes in a three-year period. We got three legit stars the classes of '97 (Brand, Battier, Avery) and '99 (J-Will, Dunleavy, Boozer). We haven't had a class since then that gave us three legit stars (and other than the Dawkins class I don't recall us having one prior to that). K was able to supplement those star-laden classes with smaller ones (Maggette in '98, Duhon in '00, Ewing in '01) without necessarily needing to bring in multiple impact players each year.

    UNC's best years have included those types of classes as well (Felton, May, McCants in '02; Lawson, Ellington, Wright in '06). Roy also landed several two-star classes (Hanstravel/ Green in '05, Marshall/ Barnes in '10, Davis/ Zeller in '08).

    It really doesn't take all that much talent for a college bball team to be "loaded" - our '01 and '04 teams both had elite talent but not 9-10 guy "abundance of riches" rotations. One or two home runs really go a long way.

  10. #70
    Quote Originally Posted by Mudge View Post
    As for UNC, most people felt that they had significantly more talent than Duke in 2007, 2008, 2009, and was at least equal in 2011; 2010 favored Duke, as Duke benefitted from UNC's early departures, more than UNC did from Duke's.
    You and a handful of people in Chapel Hill were the only people who thought UNC was "at least equal" to Duke in 2011. Your suggestion that even if we beat them we're not "compet[ing] on an even basis with UNC's talent" makes no sense.

  11. #71
    Quote Originally Posted by Kedsy View Post
    You and a handful of people in Chapel Hill were the only people who thought UNC was "at least equal" to Duke in 2011.
    I think it was pretty close after Irving's injury. Pre-injury Duke was clearly superior.

  12. #72
    Quote Originally Posted by Matches View Post
    One can believe our program has shortcomings or flaws without declaring it to be "broken". Pointing out and/or discussing those flaws doesn't qualify one as an alarmist. In recent years we have struggled to recruit space-eating big men and playmaking PGs. (Kyrie of course was the exception - but the exception doesn't disprove the rule.) K is of course still recruiting at a high level, and our program is performing at a high level. But over the last few years, K has not had as much success putting together complete teams as he has had at times in the past. To some extent that's an unfair comparison, because some past teams were insanely loaded, far beyond what is reasonable to expect - but it does represent a change. It's not unreasonable to point out that change and discuss its causes and/or implications.
    I'd say it's splitting hairs to make a distinction between shortcomings, flaws, or being "broken." A lot of people making comments seem to feel that there has been a meaningful decline that must be corrected. My opinion would be that Kyrie absolutely does disprove your rule, considering that we are presumably talking about a relatively short period of time and he is looking, as the overwhelming favorite for ROY at age 19, like he could be the best example of a playmaking pg in the last decade or so. You can't ignore that or discount the fact that these conversations would likely all seem even more ludicrous, despite no changes in our recruiting whatsoever, had Kyrie not suffered a freak toe injury. I also would like to see us land more physical big men, I do personally believe that it is unreasonable to say that K has not had success putting together complete teams in the past few years when we won the national championship in 2010.

  13. #73
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    Western Maryland
    I don't buy the argument that we lost because Ryan was a key player. Our players didn't play well, I don't think the coaches did a great job of getting our guys to play well. We'd been having that problem a lot lately, it isn't the lack of Ryan that did it. And I think if we played Lehigh 10 times we'd win 8 even spotting them this win. We did underperform in our last game. But we had some high points this season too. Every team has it's ups and downs, sucks, but we'll be back.

  14. #74
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    New York

    No.

    Quote Originally Posted by Matches View Post
    I think it was pretty close after Irving's injury. Pre-injury Duke was clearly superior.
    I don't know why Duke would get points off for an in-season injury, but even without Irving Duke was clearly the better team. They beat Carolina two out of three head-to-head, and while Carolina took the regular season ACC crown, Duke's margin of victory over the course of conference play was significantly better than UNC's. At no point that season was UNC ranked higher than Duke, either in the polls or kenpom numbers. And, again, Duke was minus the #1 pick in the draft for all of that.

  15. #75
    Quote Originally Posted by Des Esseintes View Post
    I don't know why Duke would get points off for an in-season injury, but even without Irving Duke was clearly the better team. They beat Carolina two out of three head-to-head, and while Carolina took the regular season ACC crown, Duke's margin of victory over the course of conference play was significantly better than UNC's. At no point that season was UNC ranked higher than Duke, either in the polls or kenpom numbers. And, again, Duke was minus the #1 pick in the draft for all of that.
    UNC did win the regular season, and blew us out pretty convincingly in the game in CH. We of course blew them out the next week in the ACCT but the game in Durham came down to the last few seconds. Both teams were really good by the end of the year - I tend to agree we were better but the margin was thin.

    It's not really about taking points-off - the Kyrie-less team was the one we fielded for most of the season.

  16. #76
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matches View Post
    UNC did win the regular season, and blew us out pretty convincingly in the game in CH. We of course blew them out the next week in the ACCT but the game in Durham came down to the last few seconds. Both teams were really good by the end of the year - I tend to agree we were better but the margin was thin.

    It's not really about taking points-off - the Kyrie-less team was the one we fielded for most of the season.
    Sure, but in state-of-the-program terms, Irving's injury should be a non-issue. It was a freak accident. It speaks to Duke's superiority over UNC that year that the team K assembled was still better than Carolina even after losing him. The margin was narrower, obviously, but we remained better. It's an absurdity--of Mudge's, not yours--to say that Carolina was "at least the equal" of Duke that season.

  17. #77
    Quote Originally Posted by Matches View Post
    It's not really about taking points-off - the Kyrie-less team was the one we fielded for most of the season.
    Except that this whole discussion was generated based on the idea that we haven't been bringing in the talent to match UNC in recent years, based on our recruiting, not on our ability to keep recruited players healthy. So the fact that we didn't have the number 1 player in the draft when facing UNC matters a great deal, as does the fact that we still beat them 2 out of 3 even without him, and decisively in the final rubber match on a neutral court.

  18. #78
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mudge View Post
    This could be a valid point-- maybe it is more about how recruits turned out, than how highly they were acclaimed coming in (the Paulus phenomenon)-- we had a lull in the mid-2000's where players did not live up to the reputations that preceded them, and perhaps that is all that is happening now...

    But I guess I would ask: Why was Duke able to stockpile so much more talent in that 1998-2006 era, so that when a player like Burgess or Randolph didn't pan out, it didn't matter very much? Or possibly, more to the point: Why was Duke having a much higher success rate in converting highly-rated recruits into high performing players in that era-- the miscalculations or the failed-to-develop/progress rate seemed to be much lower than now, if we are to believe that the current crop is/was every bit as highly recruited (coming in) as the players of that era.
    I think there are a couple reasons for it, starting with the one and done rule. The players who were NBA ready (and some of the ones who weren't) could go straight of high school could go if they wanted. When a projected lottery pick went to school instead of the NBA, it showed how much he really wanted to be in school, even if only for a short time (Melo, for example). The guys who passed on the NBA out of high school seemed to be more likely to make that decision again. Jason Williams, for example chose college over the NBA once, and Duke over the NBA three times. Shaun Livingston chose Duke over any other college, but the NBA over Duke. I think this has hurt Duke on two fronts. First we're not getting as many of the players who would have gone straight out of high school because many of them view college as something of an obligation before they can get where they want. I don't mean to disparage Kentucky as an institution, but if I had little to no interest in college and was trying to go pro as soon as possible, it's more appealing than a school like Duke or Syracuse or even Georgetown. If you think you're a top-5 pick regardless of where you go to school, then you're probably less interested in the stuff Duke has to offer (academics, great coaching, etc.). Second, and this applies to everyone, when a player doesn't have a choice about going to college, I think it can cause problems in the way that players buy into the team concept. For a school like Duke, where the idea of "team" is so important, (and this might be a stretch) I can see it hurting the confidence and development of other players (Andre comes to mind) because the you're never going to be "the man" as an upperclassman if these one and done guys are always going to play ahead of you (the idea of "just be you" might lose some luster if "you" means backing up superstar recruit X).

    For the top 25 level recruits and not living up to expectations, a possible reason for the perceived lack of development might be that our expectations now are different than our expectations pre-2006. For the top 5-10 level guys, they might have been not been developing in the NBA pre-2005 instead of not developing in college today. When a recruit isn't working out in college, he doesn't work out for four years and it's tough to get past it. Renardo Sidney comes to mind at Mississippi St. To a lesser extent, I think Josh McRoberts might have been that way for us. But back to the top 25 level guys, I think we're quicker to label players as busts today than we were pre-2006. With more impact players having to spend a year in college, the talent distribution has shifted from upperclassmen to freshmen and sophomores, meaning that there's more pressure on players to develop immediately. As a team that has relied so heavily on having a vocal leader and an extension of Coach K on the floor, we've sometimes sacrificed a more skilled point guard's minutes to get that leader out there. The downside is that without a good point guard to make everyone else better, it looks like no one has developed around him. In the Paulus years, I feel like Greg's leadership more than his basketball ability kept him on the floor, at least until someone was able to step up and fill that role. This year, I feel like the plan going in was to have Seth be that guy, but he was too quiet, and while Quinn was a better point guard than Tyler at the end of the year, Tyler's leadership earned him the job.

    And finally, I think there's also a certain degree of luck associated with which recruits pan out. When you're trying to project what will happen with a bunch of high school kids, albeit very talented ones, it's amazing that Burgess and Randolph were the only major and semi-major miscalculations from that '98 to '05 timespan.

  19. #79

    Duke downward trend IS completely absurd to consider

    Quote Originally Posted by Sir Stealth View Post
    I wish this board would just have one single "wailing and gnashing of teeth because we had a bad loss" thread. Saying that Duke has been on a downward trend is completely absurd. We won the national championship in 2010. It is 2012. Our 2011 team was a loaded team that, had it's best player stayed healthy, could have easily been a once-in-a-generation type dominant squad. Even without it's best player, it was an ACC Championship team. It faced a difficult situation with reintegrating a key injured player right as the NCAA tournament started, but absolutely nothing about that team suggested that the program was on a downward trend.

    It can make a person dizzy reading criticisms that say that we aren't recruiting well on the one hand and then say that we underperformed the most given our talent on the other. I would say that the latter is much more fair for this season given the Lehigh loss, but ONLY for that one loss, because the team had a largely successful season with wins over many of the good teams that we supposedly don't have the talent to compete with now. It is absurd to say that Duke has an institutional talent gap. The year after losing the number 1 overall pick, another first rounder who was 1st team All-American, and an all-time great within the program who was a top 10 recruit coming out of high school, we still were absolutely loaded with McDonalds All-Americans relative to other teams. We will lose two more first round picks after this year and still have 4 McDonald's AAs on the roster next year, with an additional 3 players (Dawkins, Gbinije, and Murphy) who probably would have been had they progressed through high school in the standard time, and that doesn't even count Seth Curry and his pedigree.

    Top level talent is going to ebb and flow year to year, but Duke's has ebbed and flowed much less than any other program in the entire country. The loss to Lehigh was very disappointing, but one loss at the end of a year that was largely successful does not come close to an institutional decline in the program. I personally don't think Shane Ryan ever sounds like he knows what he's talking about, and my opinion didn't change with the Grantland article saying that our program was in decline because our recent NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP somehow didn't fully count, or something. I think that he is a poor representative of our fanbase. I wish people would have a little more perspective before they declare our program to be broken.
    Not sure what to add to your solid post, and agree that people need to take a step back and have perspective on the entire picture.

    This year's ending was a disappointment, but the entire season was by no means disappointing and honestly, Duke did better than I'd expected given the players we'd lost and question marks as you correctly point out. Regarding 2011, we should only be disappointed because we didn't get to see what COULD HAVE BEEN had Kyrie played all year -- and, even then, what guarantee is there that Duke would've again made the Final Four, let alone won the title (the two most disappointing losses in Duke basketball history:1986-Louisville, NCAA title game, and 1999-UConn, NCAA title game), because you just never know what can happen in the tournament, and the best team doesn't always win even when it gets to the final game (see also, 1983, NCSU v. Houston, 1985-Georgetown v. Villanova, and many other more recent examples).

    Duke is one of the most recent winners of the NCAA tournament -- rare air that we breathe, we Duke fans. Look at a school with a great tradition like Indiana that had to go through their recent coaching debacle and sink to the bottom of their league -- Duke hasn't had anything close to this happen during Coach K's tenure. It may be another 3, 4 or 5 years before Duke even gets to the Final Four again -- but, there is probably a close to 100% chance that during the decade of the 2010's Duke will continue to have consecutive 20+ game winning teams and top 3 ACC finishes...and certainly several ACC regular season and tournament champions. There is no reason why can't and won't Duke have another team like 92, 99 or 01, or what would probably have been in 2011...it might not be next year, but it probably won't be too long before Duke is again an odds-on favorite to win it all again.

  20. #80
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mudge View Post
    Lance Thomas is an NBA player? I must have missed his promotion, as last I heard he was roaming the D-League somewhere... I can't imagine that he is playing any meaningful minutes for even the lower echelon teams in the NBA.

    You don't see my point? OK, explicitly, many close observers of college basketball (including analysts of far more insight than the dunces cited above, people like Bilas and Hubert Davis) were not that impressed with Duke this year-- Duke was not awe-inspiring or fear-inducing as a team this year-- to Florida State, NC State, Virginia Tech, Temple, or even Lehigh-- those teams all looked forward to playing Duke this year, because they knew that Duke was vulnerable, and they wanted to get a famous scalp, when the getting was good-- nobody was afraid of playing Duke; they relished the opportunity-- is that clear enough?
    Lance Thomas is an NBA and he will be the best NBA player from the 2010 team. He started the last game for the Hornets and he has been giving them great minutes as an athletic defender.

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