Here is mine. Duke will lose again this year, maybe Wednesday at Maryland, maybe at Chapel Hill or some other game in the regular season. And when they do lose I realistically expect to read a bunch of chicken little posts after each loss.
To me, what matters is if Duke in the top four at the end of the season and Duke is playing solid, consistent basketball at the end of the season. If getting wrecked by St. John's is a learning experience that leads to those two goals, then I think a realistic expectation is going deep into the tournament and hopefully winning the championship.
Here is mine. Duke will lose again this year, maybe Wednesday at Maryland, maybe at Chapel Hill or some other game in the regular season. And when they do lose I realistically expect to read a bunch of chicken little posts after each loss.
This is a great point and deserves more discussion.
When we have a game that exposes us (pick a year) Villanova, Georgetown and now St. Johns, the formula seems strikingly similar.
An athletic veteran team with guards that can dribble by our guards who are good at dropping it off to the open big when our bigs rotate to stop penetration (like Kyrie did and unlike Nolan does). This does not happen often because not that many teams have guards that are quick enough with the ball to get by our perimeter and good enough passers to find the open big when we rotate. When a team does have that it exposes our defensive philosophy (All philosophies have some weaknesses imo).
The answer of course is A.) to work harder at preventing penetration from the gaurds (effort and execution) or to B.) sag and allow a few more less contested threes to prevent penetration (tactics).
I believe that if we were in a tournament with this team K would have switched to B.) in the second half at least (and called more timeouts in the 1st as things were getting away from us).
I believe these games happen mid-season and out of conference not entirely by coincidence. It's not that K does not want to win, but if he sees the team is flat and is not giving 100% on defense, he allows them to work through it on their own (and when they can't they flail). If they pull it together it is a great mental boost, and if they don't he gets to SHOW them what happens when dribble penetration is allowed and the bigs don't rotate with an eye to protecting the basket as well as some hedging to prevent to easy drop off to the open big.
He gets a great teaching point and the OOC loss mid-season is easier to swallow. Again, I don't think he wants a loss, but he seems to interfere less and provide less energy to the team in these types of games to see how they react. I think we was disappointed in their fight last night for this reason. Kyle fought from the opening tip. Nolan fought in the second half. Tyler fought (but fouled too much) when he was in. Everyone else was back on their heels. The team is going to see a lot of this on tape and they aren't going to like what they see...
My thoughts anyway.
I think we will be better for this game, and I think our guards are better defensively than we showed today which will make the bigs look much better, so the potential is still there. I still have hope for a strong post-season even w/o Ky.
Absolutely agree. I can't think of any situation, at any age, in any activity or discipline, in which being left to your own devices – either by necessity or by someone else's decision – doesn't produce the most significant learning.
A ton of people have pointed at game prep or X's and O's after yesterday's loss. I frankly don't think that had anything to do with it. We played horribly. K obviously recognized that there was little he could do to save that sinking ship, so he stepped back and let the guys deal with the situation they created with their horrid play.
I'm confident that K would have intervened more if he truly believed that what was happening was his fault or his staff's fault. But it wasn't. On this day the team seemed unable to execute the coaches' gameplan at all, so there was no use in massive in-game adjustments.
K's message was simple: Play better.
Since it's a given that the Selection Committee will pave our way to the title game and that the referees will give us all the calls, I'd say we have a realistic chance at the title.
Anyone think that the reason that Coach K hasn't slowed down the offense and pulled back the defense more is that he actually does think Kyrie will be back this season? It would make more sense to keep the team playing a style that will more naturally integrate Kyrie back into the game flow than to have to switch playing styles multiple times during the season.
Granted, I'm probably reaching with this theory...
I understand your point, but there are two other aspects to consider. First if you are a player, or coach (or maybe even a fan at Cameron), you need to believe you can win it all and even to have the confidence to expect to win, in order to succeed at a high level. Teams that take the floor believing they only have a 12% chance to win it all don't realistically go too far.
And second, even with an unaligned outside evaluation of a team that just has a "realistic chance" of winning a title, you still have to have an expectation, reasonable or not, that this chance will in fact come in, or no one would ever place a bet and far fewer would travel and buy tickets to see a game. You can argue that this isnt really a reasonable expectation to you, but then you would be missing out on the entertainment of being into the game as a bettor or a fan, not to mention the fun if a title chance comes home. Besides, sometimes an unexpected championship can be more gratifying than one that was a given.
Last edited by tele; 01-31-2011 at 01:28 PM.
Hmmm...this year's team better than last years...without Kyrie...hmmm I just can't say that. I know what you're going to say "we didn't have Kyrie last year" but we had Jon Schyer, Lance & Zoubs. SENIOR LEADERSHIP! Our bigs have got to step-up & play hard.
My opinion of the future of this team will be the first 5 minutes of Wednesday's game. If we start off slow again the crowd at Comcast will cream us.
Last edited by PADukeMom; 01-31-2011 at 02:06 PM. Reason: What I typed sounded accidently a bit X rated
As we've all seen many times before, the great thing about the NCAA tournament is all the upsets. So much of a team's success in the tourney is dependent on seeding, matchups, other top seeds falling, etc. We may never have won last year if we had to face Kentucky or Mich. St. or had a different makeup to our region.
And it's too simplistic to just base predictions on rankings because we could easily be a tough matchup for a team ranked higher than us or have a horrible mathcup against a team ranked lower than us.
Let's just hope that we can finish the season strong and get a high seed. If the cards fall just right again, maybe we won't even have to face Ohio St. or Pitt in the tourney.
And I still have faith in coach K and Kyrie's comeback. The toe will heal!
Last edited by devil84; 01-31-2011 at 03:16 PM. Reason: Fix quote tag
I mis-spoke with what I wrote earlier. Did I really say we lack senior leadership???? Really??? I'm the one who can't wait to buy a Nolan Smith jersey! SMH! Call it my I-AM-SICK-OF-SNOW moment.
Nolan & Kyle are as good as it gets but I want to see some good old court smacking fire & passion from this team. That's what I meant.
Looks like I am going to be stuck at home with my youngest son for the next 2 days dealing with snow & ice.
This is irrelevant. The coaches and players shouldn't ever look at the odds of winning it all, because it's not important. You can only win one game at a time in the tournament. So the coaches' jobs are to get the players ready for each individual game, so as to maximize the probability that the team wins that game.
Discussion of the probability of winning it all is simply message board/media/statistician fodder.
No, when you bet, you take odds. If the payout for a win (relative to what you put in) is greater than the odds that your team will win, you probably take the bet. In this case, the expectation isn't that you'll win. There is just the expectation that the payout (based on the probability of winning) is higher than the expected cost to play (or you don't take the bet).
If the expectation was that the team would win, you'd be willing to take even odds. Since the expectation is that the team is not likely to win, you take better than even odds.
Or, it could be that the bettor just doesn't understand probabilities and just likes to gamble on his/her favorite team. This person might simply take the bet regardless.
I'm a bit offended by this statement. Having a basic understanding of the probability of winning a championship doesn't mean I miss out on the entertainment/happiness of actually winning it. If anything, I think it makes me more accepting of certain types of losses (and the potential for those losses). I don't think I have enjoyed our 2010 championship any less than anyone else here.
And as I said above, you can bet without the reasonable expectation that the team will win. In fact, having the expectation that the team will win will likely just lead you into bad betting habits (which is ultimately not fun).
Again - there's a difference between having a reasonable chance to win (i.e., the team can win it) and a reasonable expectation that the team will win it.