Strange "regressions" this year

[MCFinARL]

You're right; that is a very telling quote. More than our team's alleged shortcomings at any particular position, I suspect the stated lack of team cohesiveness was the root of the problem. This team has some superb parts, and the whole was only rarely greater than the sum of the parts.

Maybe the real problem is that we as fans are feeding the notion that team players aren't as valuable to our team as the glue guys.

I agree that many of us have been quick to question a lot of the players, and perhaps especially the ones you (correctly as far as I can tell) identify as the team players, and I agree that this has been unfair and probably wrongheaded. But maybe I don't understand the term "glue guys"--because when I think of glue guys I think of players like Lance Thomas or Kyle Singler--ones who did whatever needed to be done, be it hardnosed defense, going up against someone bigger for a rebound, scrambling for loose balls, sensing when to look for the open man and when to try to make something happen on their own, giving every last bit of energy while also being a team leader on the court (in Lance's case, more vocally; in Kyle's more by example). So on this team I guess I'd say the closest thing we have had to glue guys are also the team players--Miles, Tyler, Josh--who have brought energy and hustle always, even if they couldn't always avoid errors or make the biggest plays.

But maybe it doesn't work to be both unless you are also among the most talented players on the floor, or among the most complete players on the floor (which Kyle was generally and Lance was defensively). Austin has the skills and spirit to be both a team leader and a glue guy, and if he comes back maybe he will be, but after spending all of high school carrying a team on his back, he lacked the experience to bring a team together around his leadership as a freshman (which is always a challenge anyway).

With this years team I rarely saw that Synergy. Players didn't fit well together at times, some of them seemed emotionally out of it too often, there wasn't a frequent natural flow and easy anticipation of where the other guy would be, etc. Only occasionally was there beautiful music and joy on the faces of some of the players. Some games it looked like the corner had been turned, but then the fist would slowly unfold back into the fingers . . .

In the end, maybe it really is chemistry--you can't will the pheromones to be there for the person you "ought to" love, and you can't will getting to that place as a team where you just understand each other and feel great playing together, no matter how hard you work at it. Granted, you have to do all the hard work to give the chemistry a chance to happen, but doing the work doesn't guarantee it will. Often this season it seemed the players were thinking on the court rather than naturally responding to the flow of the game. If you have to think about what to do next, the moment will be gone before you can seize it.

[Kedsy]

Except we didn't get worse in the last third of the year. Duke played 34 games this year. Over our final 11 games, Duke went 8-3. Over our middle 11 games, Duke went... 8-3. The finishing third saw us win at Carolina and at Florida State. It's true UNC blitzed us at home, but a similarly talented Ohio State team pummeled Duke even worse earlier in the season. The other two late losses were in the ACC and NCAA tournaments. For my part, a hard-fought close defeat to FSU sans Kelly is nothing to be ashamed of. Lehigh is a different matter, but I don't think that loss should define the season. Losing Kelly hurt. It just did.

I agree with everything you say here. Going into our last home game, I doubt anybody thought our team or our players had regressed. Then we lost to a team everyone said pre-season was near-unbeatable, went 1-1 in the ACC tournament without Ryan, and got upset in the NCAAT, also without Ryan. It wasn't a fun four game stretch to end the season, but I just don't think you can fairly characterize it as a "regression."

About wins/losses versus watching the team grow... the thing is, I don't think most people were upset over losses because they were losses. It seemed to be more *how* we were losing. Our losses seemed to come as the team played progressively worse basketball, and I think people were frustrated by the losses more because it seemed that the team was losing its way (not passing in to the bigs, not balancing three point shooting with driving, losing focus on D, etc).

Well, obviously I'm not inside other people's heads, but this has not been my impression. Especially since the losses didn't in any way seem to come as the team played progressively worse basketball. The Ohio State loss came immediately after we played great in Maui. The Temple loss came out of the blue. The FSU and Miami losses (along with the lackluster home win against St. John's) all came in our typical doldrums period of late January and early February -- and the board was pretty close to meltdown mode, despite the fact that the two losses in that period came on a last second shot and in OT. Add in some more losses before, in, or after that period, and DBR would have had to shut down a couple times more.

Then we won 7 games in a row until the final four game stretch. If we'd gone 5-2 or 4-3 in that time (hypothetically due to letting the end of our bench see more time), and finished third, or maybe even tied for fourth in the ACC, you think everyone would have been OK with that? Moreover, you think we would have been more prepared to win our first game (with a more seasoned Michael and Quinn) as a 5 seed than as a 2 seed?

Mason had a good season by all accounts, yes. But he seemed inconsistent... scoring 6 pts in one big game against FSU, 7 in another, and 1 point in another. He had other games where he scored single digits. And I couldn't help but feel that he made mistakes that I would have thought a junior would be beyond. When you look at how much potential he has, I just feel like Mason "should" bring more than 11 points a game to the table, with some games where he disappears. Maybe my expectations are too high.

Well, Mason scored in single digits in three of our first six games, so the fact that he also occasionally did so late in the season, to me, doesn't seem like a regression. Perhaps it was a sign of a lack of progression, but I don't think that's the same thing. Plus, he did progress in some areas, especially free throw shooting.

Seth feels sort of the same way. Yes, he was our second leading scorer (which by itself doesn't necessarily mean much; EVERY team has a second leading scorer...) But Seth again felt a touch out-of-sorts this year... having seen how so many uber-talented Duke guards have stepped up in the past, and thinking that I saw that capability in Seth, I still have this feeling like 13 points a game and possibly questionable D just wasn't enough. When you add in that in a third of the games this year he scored in single digits, and that in the last four games of the year he shot 23, 33, 31, and 11 percent... well, again, expected a bit more, and I don't think that is an unreasonable expectation.

Seth has a problem when he's being guarded by a bigger player. He's had that problem all season. So, again IMO, this is not a function of regressing so much as it is an issue with our personnel. With Tyler and/or Quinn playing PG, we forced Seth to be guarded in general with a much bigger SG, at least after we got into the conference schedule.

Dre was very inconsistent. He may not have gotten a lot of time every game, but that was Coach Ks call, and I am sure he made it for a reason. Having four scoreless games in the last six is surprising... you hope players turn it up at the end. Dre has all the physical tools... I am not quite sure why he didn't quite get them together this year.

I agree he was inconsistent, and in the last several games he seemed to have lost confidence. On the other hand, I watched him as much as I could against Lehigh and he was trying really hard to get open. And he did get open, many times, for a split second, which is about all you can ask for in high level Division I. If his teammates had been looking for Andre and had given him the ball at the right moment (and he had the confidence to shoot it) he would have taken and made a lot more shots. That's what happened in the games like Michigan State and the 2nd Florida State game; his teammates were watching for him to get open and hit him the moment he did, and he delivered. A couple times against Lehigh, his teammates noticed him a second too late. Sometimes they even gave him the ball, but by that time the defender had closed on him. The fact that he doesn't have as much blow-by ability as we would like isn't really regression, though, is it?

Ryan did have a good year. But again, he seems to have faded a bit down the stretch... with games of 2, 6, 6, 5, 8 and 8 points in his last 9 games. That is surprising for a junior with his skills in such an important stretch of games. And he seemed to have lost a touch on D, maybe spending too much time working on taking charges and not enough time using those surprisingly quick and capable hands to alter and block shots... he went 5 games out of 8 at the end without a block. For a near seven footer with such good IQ and hands, and who had been an effective shot blocker, that was unexpected.

He still averaged 0.75 blocks per game in that last eight game stretch. And he went 4 of his first 8 games of the season without a block, averaging 0.86 blocks per game in that stretch. So, again, I don't see this as regression. Also, our team defense was much stronger in Ryan's last eight games (2nd UNC game aside) than it had been before, so maybe whatever Ryan was doing to help the D necessitated fewer block opportunities?

I understand Quinn was coming off an injury, but in his first few games at Duke when he actually got a chance to play he did well. Starting with OSU, he had a stretch of good PG games, including ones with 8 and 9 assists. He seemed able to penetrate and dish, as well as hitting a few circus shots. But near the end it didn't seem like Quinn was penetrating nearly as much, and he starting missing the circus shots. He also started taking shots when maybe they were not the best shots we could have gotten, and missing them... Quinn taking that 3 near the end of the Lehigh game while Austin was next to him calling for the ball left me shaking my head.

Quinn's big early season performances came against Western Michigan and Penn (although he also did have decent games against Ohio State and Georgia Tech). He had always been taking shots that were not the best shots, but he made more of them early against lesser competition. He's a freshman who makes freshman mistakes (like the three against Lehigh). That's generally not something you grow out of by playing a few more minutes a game.

Silent G got a few minutes earlier in the season, but by the end never got off the bench. I suppose I do hope that the #28 overall recruit will at least play, especially as he seems to offer some attributes no other player on our roster does. The guys on either side of him in the rankings on Scout averaged 6 points/7 rebounds/2 assists and 9 points/3 rebounds/2 assists this year. I know they are all in different positions as far as depth and all of that, but 9 minutes in the last 16 games is just not much.

This happens a lot at Duke. Ryan Kelly hardly played once the ACC season began in his freshman year. Same with Miles Plumlee and Josh Hairston, and lots of Duke players over the years. What someone did at Mississippi State and Alabama isn't really very comparable. This is what Coach K does.

Ked, I think the thing is that this regression cannot easily be measured by stats (at least not without a lot of averaging over stretches of games). I know there are times when stats don't match up with what one sees in sports, and I feel like a lot of the stats this year belie what one could actually see... and while I do think stats are very important I feel like they don't quite tell the tale this year.

I suppose it might just be different expectations... but I don't think mine were unfair... and I was sad that our play seemed to get worse in the last third of the year, when you really hope it will sharpen.

I'm not trying to just be contrary here. But as I said in the beginning of this post, I don't think we regressed in the last third of the year. I think we got our butts handed to us in the last four games, three of which were played without one of our most important players. I apologize if I said or implied your expectations were unfair, but I do think perhaps your perceptions of the whole season are colored by how it ended.

[ArkieDukie]

I agree that many of us have been quick to question a lot of the players, and perhaps especially the ones you (correctly as far as I can tell) identify as the team players, and I agree that this has been unfair and probably wrongheaded. But maybe I don't understand the term "glue guys"--because when I think of glue guys I think of players like Lance Thomas or Kyle Singler--ones who did whatever needed to be done, be it hardnosed defense, going up against someone bigger for a rebound, scrambling for loose balls, sensing when to look for the open man and when to try to make something happen on their own, giving every last bit of energy while also being a team leader on the court (in Lance's case, more vocally; in Kyle's more by example). So on this team I guess I'd say the closest thing we have had to glue guys are also the team players--Miles, Tyler, Josh--who have brought energy and hustle always, even if they couldn't always avoid errors or make the biggest plays.

But maybe it doesn't work to be both unless you are also among the most talented players on the floor, or among the most complete players on the floor (which Kyle was generally and Lance was defensively). Austin has the skills and spirit to be both a team leader and a glue guy, and if he comes back maybe he will be, but after spending all of high school carrying a team on his back, he lacked the experience to bring a team together around his leadership as a freshman (which is always a challenge anyway).



In the end, maybe it really is chemistry--you can't will the pheromones to be there for the person you "ought to" love, and you can't will getting to that place as a team where you just understand each other and feel great playing together, no matter how hard you work at it. Granted, you have to do all the hard work to give the chemistry a chance to happen, but doing the work doesn't guarantee it will. Often this season it seemed the players were thinking on the court rather than naturally responding to the flow of the game. If you have to think about what to do next, the moment will be gone before you can seize it.

Excellent post! I realized in reading it that I said the wrong thing. I meant to say that we seem to value star power, measured in offense, over guys whose mere presence on the floor makes their teammates better. Both are important. When they're one and the same, times are golden. On the flip side, the road to the NCAA championship is littered with teams that have a roster full of stars who can't play together as a team.

[Kedsy]

Ked, I think the thing is that this regression cannot easily be measured by stats (at least not without a lot of averaging over stretches of games). I know there are times when stats don't match up with what one sees in sports, and I feel like a lot of the stats this year belie what one could actually see... and while I do think stats are very important I feel like they don't quite tell the tale this year.

I want to add that I agree stats don't always tell the whole story. But in this case, if you block our last four games from your memory our team actually progressed quite nicely in February. Starting with the 2nd half against Miami on February 5, where we had a wonderful comeback that put the game into OT, our team defense began to gel -- over the next 7 games we advanced 40 or 50 spots in Pomeroy's defensive rankings. Our offense kept clicking too; at one point in the last week of the regular season we actually rose all the way up to the top offensive efficiency ranking in the nation. These stats don't say everything, of course, but they certainly don't paint a picture of a team in regression, do they?

Of course, then the end happened. We got clobbered by UNC and Ryan got hurt and the rest is now history. A sad tale, perhaps, but to me it wasn't a story of regression.

[MCFinARL]

Excellent post! I realized in reading it that I said the wrong thing. I meant to say that we seem to value star power, measured in offense, over guys whose mere presence on the floor makes their teammates better. Both are important. When they're one and the same, times are golden. On the flip side, the road to the NCAA championship is littered with teams that have a roster full of stars who can't play together as a team.

Thanks! And I agree completely with your point the way you state it here.

[Greg_Newton]

Seth was our second leading scorer, and did a little bit of everything.

I think it's hard to argue that Seth wasn't a disappointment relative to expectations this year, or that he really even improved at all. Consider:

-His FG% and FT rate decreased slightly.
-His 3P% decreased by 5%.
-His AST/minute remained identical while his TOs/minute increased by 76%.
-His steals per minute decreased by 25%.

He did increase his rebounding and FT% slightly, and blocked 7 shots rather than 5, but other that, I think he pretty clearly regressed, in terms of effectiveness. Plus, even aside from the offensive numbers, I think it's pretty clear from the eye test that he was a liability when it came to preventing penetration or rotation/rebounding down low for his position, with a few exceptions when he really came to play.

Basically, we increased his usage from 2011 to 2012, but I think you could argue that wasn't a positive development for our team.

[Acymetric]

I agree with everything you say here. Going into our last home game, I doubt anybody thought our team or our players had regressed. Then we lost to a team everyone said pre-season was near-unbeatable, went 1-1 in the ACC tournament without Ryan, and got upset in the NCAAT, also without Ryan. It wasn't a fun four game stretch to end the season, but I just don't think you can fairly characterize it as a "regression."

Really? I had that very conversation with several friends and my dad in the weeks leading up to the ACCT, and I doubt we were the only ones talking about it. Regression isn't measured in wins and losses alone, you can see it in the play on the court when you watch a game whether the team pulls out the win or not.

[Kedsy]

Really? I had that very conversation with several friends and my dad in the weeks leading up to the ACCT, and I doubt we were the only ones talking about it. Regression isn't measured in wins and losses alone, you can see it in the play on the court when you watch a game whether the team pulls out the win or not.

In the weeks leading up to the ACCT our Pomeroy defensive efficiency got better by 40 or so spots and our Pomeroy offensive efficiency shot up to first in the nation, in addition to winning 7 games in a row. I don't know that what you see watching the game with your friends and your dad is an effective way to measure regression.

[Bay Area Duke Fan]

In the end, maybe it really is chemistry--you can't will the pheromones to be there for the person you "ought to" love, and you can't will getting to that place as a team where you just understand each other and feel great playing together, no matter how hard you work at it. Granted, you have to do all the hard work to give the chemistry a chance to happen, but doing the work doesn't guarantee it will. Often this season it seemed the players were thinking on the court rather than naturally responding to the flow of the game. If you have to think about what to do next, the moment will be gone before you can seize it.

What about the role of the coaching staff? Isn't the greatness of Coach K based on his proven ability to recruit, shape and prepare a winning team?

[MCFinARL]

What about the role of the coaching staff? Isn't the greatness of Coach K based on his proven ability to recruit, shape and prepare a winning team?

Sure, that is part of it. I didn't consider recruiting because I was focused on why this particular team didn't perform as well at the end of the season as people might have hoped or expected, so existing personnel seemed most relevant. Obviously, though, the coaching staff bears some responsibility if the various parts of the team don't work together that well.

In the end, though, I expect coaches can't create chemistry, and can't always perfectly predict it when recruiting. What they can do is choose players they think will fit into the system, which I think the Duke staff clearly does; create the conditions to permit chemistry to happen through well-designed training and practices, which the Duke staff clearly has often done, and I think it's likely they did this year, though I have no direct knowledge and can't say for sure; and find the right ways to motivate players individually and as a group, which, again, the Duke staff clearly has usually done--though some of Coach K's comments after tough games this year suggest even he is not sure this aspect of things was a complete success this year, as he couldn't always explain why the team played inconsistently.

Bottom line, I'd say in most cases both coaches and players bear some responsibility when a team describes itself as feeling "disjointed" in an important win-or-go-home game, and that is probably true here, given that we aren't talking about any players who are obviously uncoachable or are likely locker room cancers, nor are we talking about untalented or uncaring coaches. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise by talking about chemistry.

[Duke76]

In the weeks leading up to the ACCT our Pomeroy defensive efficiency got better by 40 or so spots and our Pomeroy offensive efficiency shot up to first in the nation, in addition to winning 7 games in a row. I don't know that what you see watching the game with your friends and your dad is an effective way to measure regression.

I'd say this article from the Durham Morning Sun today, in the players own words pretty much ends the argument about regression and team chemistry.

http://www.herald-sun.com/view/full_...n-with-a-thud?

[Kedsy]

I'd say this article from the Durham Morning Sun today, in the players own words pretty much ends the argument about regression and team chemistry.

http://www.herald-sun.com/view/full_...n-with-a-thud?

I'd say that article doesn't say anything at all about the argument. All the quotes were talking about the last three games. We've been talking about the last third of the season. In my opinion, going into a three (really four) game funk, especially when you lose one of your top players for three of the four games, can hardly be described as "regression." This article doesn't address that issue at all.

[Duke76]

I'd say that article doesn't say anything at all about the argument. All the quotes were talking about the last three games. We've been talking about the last third of the season. In my opinion, going into a three (really four) game funk, especially when you lose one of your top players for three of the four games, can hardly be described as "regression." This article doesn't address that issue at all.

excuse me,

But Duke didn’t end well, a fact that won’t sit well with Krzyzewski.

After winning 74-66 at Florida State on Feb. 23, the Blue Devils didn’t put together a great effort the rest of the season.

There was a 75-70 overtime win over a Virginia Tech team that failed to make the postseason. The Blue Devils rolled to a big lead at sub-.500 Wake Forest but, despite posting a 79-71 win, let the struggling Demon Deacons outplay them in the second half.

Read more: The Herald-Sun - Out of sync Blue Devils end promising season with a thud

“We’re not this, we’re not, we’re not a juggernaut or anything like that,” Krzyzewski said. “We have known that throughout the whole season. You have to do it pretty precise, and we just didn’t play well offensively the last few weeks of the season. Actually we got better defensively, but offensively we just weren’t there.”

team chemistry?

In the post-game locker room, some Duke players mentioned that the team didn’t have the proper unity on offense.

“We needed to use each other on offense and not be so individual,” junior guard Andre Dawkins said.

Junior center Mason Plumlee regretted that the team didn’t handle things better, and paid a big price for not doing so.

“We should have addressed it,” Mason Plumlee said. “We should have gotten on one another. But for whatever reason, we couldn’t get in sync offensively in particular. It’s just not good when you aren’t working together and you aren’t in sync.”

How did the rank assist wise in the nation?
In relation to past Duke teams?

[Kfanarmy]

I'd say that article doesn't say anything at all about the argument. All the quotes were talking about the last three games. We've been talking about the last third of the season. In my opinion, going into a three (really four) game funk, especially when you lose one of your top players for three of the four games, can hardly be described as "regression." This article doesn't address that issue at all.

The team hadn't played well for the last month of the season. They started it seemed slowly in every game in the second half of the season. Cameron scared the collective crap out of them...something was off and...goodness everyone knew it. Duke's last good game of the season was the 1st game against Carolina, and that win took some really fortunate bounces for Duke to win, still the players didn't pull together...I really don't think they played well for a full game since then. Why argue that they didn't regress. Even in the wins, there was something missing and the players all knew it.

[Des Esseintes]

The team hadn't played well for the last month of the season. They started it seemed slowly in every game in the second half of the season. Cameron scared the collective crap out of them...something was off and...goodness everyone knew it. Duke's last good game of the season was the 1st game against Carolina, and that win took some really fortunate bounces for Duke to win, still the players didn't pull together...I really don't think they played well for a full game since then. Why argue that they didn't regress. Even in the wins, there was something missing and the players all knew it.

What about the second Florida State game? I don't know how you judge wins, but beating the ACC champion on its home court counts for me. Moreover, it isn't as if Duke was straight-up murdering people early in the season. We won some big games, but they were all pretty close affairs. That didn't change as the season wore on. We also had a seven game win streak between Carolina Glory and Carolina Debacle. Then Kelly got hurt. "Goodness."

[cspan37421]

How did the rank assist wise in the nation?
In relation to past Duke teams?

EOY National rank in assists per game (season record, NCAA tournament result)

2001: #005 (35-4, National Champs)
2002: #006 (31-4, Sweet 16)
2003: #170 (26-7, Sweet 16)
2004: #105 (31-6, Final 4)
2005: #214 (27-6, Sweet 16)
2006: #073 (32-4, Sweet 16)
2007: #199 (22-11, Round of 64)
2008: #087 (28-6, Round of 32)
2009: #136 (30-7, Sweet 16)
2010: #100 (35-5, National Champs)
2011: #071 (32-5, Sweet 16)
2012: #206 (27-7, Round of 64)

per statsheet.com (and wikipedia)

If my overtired-past-midnight analysis is right, there was a -0.77 correlation between apg ranking and win% for us, last 12 yrs (i.e., bigger number in the ranking, lower win%). Correl with our tournament wins was -0.53.

Bottom line shocker: assists matter, and this was our 2nd worst year (relative to the competition) of the last 12. And it may not be any accident that our worst such ranking in the last 12 years led to a very similar season record as this year, and the next worst led to a round of 64 exit.

Granted, apg does not take into account tempo ... but I do think it's a start in terms of understanding what went awry for us this year.

[trinity79]

um, I don't have any statistics to back it up or anything, but that which does not attract tends to repel. So if there's a "chemistry" problem with this team, I believe you will find out about it very shortly. I ain't sayin'; I'm just sayin'. Stay tuned.

[uh_no]

EOY National rank in assists per game (season record, NCAA tournament result)

2001: #005 (35-4, National Champs)
2002: #006 (31-4, Sweet 16)
2003: #170 (26-7, Sweet 16)
2004: #105 (31-6, Final 4)
2005: #214 (27-6, Sweet 16)
2006: #073 (32-4, Sweet 16)
2007: #199 (22-11, Round of 64)
2008: #087 (28-6, Round of 32)
2009: #136 (30-7, Sweet 16)
2010: #100 (35-5, National Champs)
2011: #071 (32-5, Sweet 16)
2012: #206 (27-7, Round of 64)

per statsheet.com (and wikipedia)

If my overtired-past-midnight analysis is right, there was a -0.77 correlation between apg ranking and win% for us, last 12 yrs (i.e., bigger number in the ranking, lower win%). Correl with our tournament wins was -0.53.

Bottom line shocker: assists matter, and this was our 2nd worst year (relative to the competition) of the last 12. And it may not be any accident that our worst such ranking in the last 12 years led to a very similar season record as this year, and the next worst led to a round of 64 exit.

Granted, apg does not take into account tempo ... but I do think it's a start in terms of understanding what went awry for us this year.

Unfortunately those statistics are largely meaningless unless they're tempo based. The 2010 team likely would have a much better ranking since they had so few possesions relative to some of our other teams. Furthermore, using the ranking is not a good idea. It would be much better to use the actual number of assists, as the ranking may not actually be comparable year to year, and a tiny change in assists may have resulted in a huge change in ranking, which is not the result we want.

So the best way to do this would again be total assists/(possesions/game) then correlating it with win percentage, or whatever metric you want to use for success in a given year.

[UrinalCake]

Lots of issues this year and most of them have already been discussed, but I think one of the most important ones is that we never really established a point guard. Coming into the season Coach K talked up Seth as being the leader at point, and even though he played great at the start of the season it seemed like the OSU blowout, combined with some other wins in which we didn't play that well, led Coach K to think he had made a mistake. So he experimented with Tyler and Quin platooning at point, but that didn't really work either. Plus Quin reaggravated his injury, the extent to which we still don't really fully know. For the last third of the season we mostly went with Tyler and Seth starting along with Austin, but you'd be hard-pressed to say who was really in control of the team.

Every successful Duke team has had a point guard who was a natural leader and extension of Coach K on the court. This year didn't. There was a real leadership void and I think all of these other problems we've been discussing have been reflective of that.

[Kedsy]

The team hadn't played well for the last month of the season. They started it seemed slowly in every game in the second half of the season. Cameron scared the collective crap out of them...something was off and...goodness everyone knew it. Duke's last good game of the season was the 1st game against Carolina, and that win took some really fortunate bounces for Duke to win, still the players didn't pull together...I really don't think they played well for a full game since then. Why argue that they didn't regress. Even in the wins, there was something missing and the players all knew it.

Some people need to open a dictionary and re-familiarize themselves with what the word "regress" means. In our first game we beat Belmont by 1 at home. Davidson was beating us at halftime. Unranked Washington scored 54 points against us in the 2nd half. In what way were those performances better than our winning handily in Tallahassee, or coming back from 20 down to beat NC State? You can argue our defense was substandard (for Duke) all year; you can argue we found it difficult to play our best for 40 minutes in any game this season. But nobody in this thread has made anywhere close to a convincing argument that we regressed over the last part of the season. And that's because it's simply not the case.