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BlueintheFace
12-06-2008, 09:22 PM
Does anybody have stats on how often a player on the opposing team logs a career high in pts against us? Sims did it tonight, but I feel as though this happens quite often... perhaps more often against us than other teams. Am I the only one who feels this way? If you agree with me, do you have a logical explanation as to why this would be true (coaching, adrenaline, etc...)?

NOTE: This is NOT a thread to complain about our team's loss today. Please save that commentary for the post-game thread.

CameronCrazy'11
12-06-2008, 09:25 PM
Teams get up for games like Duke. Duke is often playing against a team having its best night of the year (think Wake last year, Belmont, Rhode Island this year).

Ders24
12-06-2008, 09:38 PM
Teams get up for games like Duke. Duke is often playing against a team having its best night of the year (think Wake last year, Belmont, Rhode Island this year).

In addition to that, because many teams are such extreme under dogs (or they perceive themselves that way), they are able to play with no pressure. A loss doesn't mean anything significant, whereas a win (or even a close game a la Rhode Island) is huge.

LetItBD08
12-06-2008, 09:53 PM
Does anybody have stats on how often a player on the opposing team logs a career high in pts against us?

I guess another logical question would be how often does a player on the opposing team score a career low against us? Stephen Curry his freshman year (before that game last week) comes to mind.

It does seem like a lot of players do score career highs against us. I think, however, we do a very good job of shutting down some excellent players as well.

xenic
12-06-2008, 10:13 PM
I think this is an interesting question. If anyone is going to go look it up, keep in mind that players tend to have many career high games, as each time they do better than the previous high it is a new career high...
Say ballpark a player will have an average of 2 career highs per year (probably a bit skewed by the fact that when they start as freshmen their career high is 0). Suppose most teams play 7 players that have legitimate playing time (and thus chances for scoring a career high). That's 14 career highs per team per year, or about one every other game played.
If anyone has more time and interest in looking into this more, I think there might be interesting results, but I've got to go back to working on my take-home stats final right now.

Lord Ash
12-07-2008, 12:10 AM
We see a TON of career high games... it feels like maybe every third game or so. I've been noticing this for YEARS... of course, along with those career highs also come losses, so...

I would love to know if there was a way to check this.

xenic
12-07-2008, 12:23 AM
We see a TON of career high games... it feels like maybe every third game or so. I've been noticing this for YEARS... of course, along with those career highs also come losses, so...

I would love to know if there was a way to check this.

Um, I know that my ballpark guesstimate above was just that, but if it is correct, then seeing a career high every 3rd game would be less than expected.

Lord Ash
12-07-2008, 10:14 AM
I am simply guessing:) You figure there are some teams we totally shut down. But for each of those you get that career high... we've seen I think three this season so far?

But yeah,it seems to happen a LOT... guys get all fired up and play out of their skulls against us!

Philadukie
12-07-2008, 10:27 AM
I'm so glad someone else asked this question. :) I've been thinking this for quite a while. Perhaps my perception is skewed because I watch Duke the most, but I swear it seems like more players have career highs against Duke than any other team. And it always seems to be some guy who is not the team's leading scorer or otherwise "go-to" guy.

But then I ponder this further and, because of the sheer number of teams and players, think that this can't possibly be true. Everyone has a career high (even if it's only two points), and there are a lot of games to spread those carreer highs around.

But then again, statistically, there has to be teams that have had more career highs against them than others. Presumably then, all of the Div. I teams fall into a frequency distribution for this stat, just like any other stat. Am I thinking about that correctly? It'd be nice if someone could figure this out.

In any case, even if this were true, I don't think it says much more than the fact that other teams typically give Duke their "best shot," which we already knew.

Truth
12-07-2008, 04:12 PM
I'm so glad someone else asked this question. :) I've been thinking this for quite a while. Perhaps my perception is skewed because I watch Duke the most, but I swear it seems like more players have career highs against Duke than any other team. And it always seems to be some guy who is not the team's leading scorer or otherwise "go-to" guy.

But then I ponder this further and, because of the sheer number of teams and players, think that this can't possibly be true. Everyone has a career high (even if it's only two points), and there are a lot of games to spread those carreer highs around.

But then again, statistically, there has to be teams that have had more career highs against them than others. Presumably then, all of the Div. I teams fall into a frequency distribution for this stat, just like any other stat. Am I thinking about that correctly? It'd be nice if someone could figure this out.

In any case, even if this were true, I don't think it says much more than the fact that other teams typically give Duke their "best shot," which we already knew.

Without doing any research for this, I can offer an explanation. Duke makes it a point to take away an opponents primary weapon (reference the above reflexive posts about players having career lows against us as well). If the primary scorer/s on a team are effectively shut down, someone has to score points for the other team, and when this happens, you increase your chance of players setting new careers highs as they step into a lead scoring role for the night.

Simply put, the downside of the "force someone else to beat you" defensive strategy is that occasionally someone else beats you...

(Note I'm not specifically referencing the Michigan game, just talking in generalities here. I am a big fan of the "force someone else to beat you" and I believe it works far, far more often than it does not.)

hurleyfor3
12-07-2008, 04:44 PM
This phenomenon occurs often enough that it has a name. It's called the Bootsy, after Bootsy Thornton of St. John's, who dropped I think 40 on us in Madison Square Garden in 1999. (We won the game in overtime.) It can either be nouned ("He got the Bootsy") or verbed ("He Bootsied us").

Tappan Zee Devil
12-07-2008, 05:33 PM
Career High's Against Duke

highs NOT high's

Sorry to be so anal but the use of a gratuitous apostrophe when making a plural (not a possessive) is one of my pet peeves. I don't know how this started, but it is now endemic.

Jim (defending the English language)

Lord Ash
12-07-2008, 05:33 PM
Didn't Marco Killingsworth get a career high on us two or three times, or did it just FEEL that way?

shadowfax336
12-07-2008, 08:01 PM
Actually Killingsworth only played us once...
But he did get his career high in that game

_Gary
12-07-2008, 08:55 PM
This phenomenon occurs often enough that it has a name. It's called the Bootsy, after Bootsy Thornton of St. John's, who dropped I think 40 on us in Madison Square Garden in 1999. (We won the game in overtime.) It can either be nouned ("He got the Bootsy") or verbed ("He Bootsied us").

Glad you said that. I was going to post on that very thing if no one else did by Sunday night. In fact I was telling my daughter that Sims might be going all "Bootsy on us" as we watched the game. Gave me a chance to explain the phenomenon to her.

DeepBlue70
12-07-2008, 10:12 PM
Just for the record...I doubt that many of us care about someone who gets a career high of, say, 15 against us, even if technically that is their career high. We are mostly interested on how many have gone Bootsy on us. Where do we set the cut-off? Is it 25+? Anyone else remember Len Bias going nuts in Cameron? That's the one that sticks out in my mind. I also remember we won.

DukeWarhead
12-08-2008, 07:40 AM
Yeah, like when Marcus Hatten from St. John's went all Bootsy on us and poured in 29 pts, most of them in the the last ten minutes at MSG in 2003. One of the most disappointing Duke losses in recent memory.
I guess the career highs don't hurt as much if Duke wins, but when they lose, man, those career highs stick in your craw.

jv001
12-08-2008, 05:39 PM
This phenomenon occurs often enough that it has a name. It's called the Bootsy, after Bootsy Thornton of St. John's, who dropped I think 40 on us in Madison Square Garden in 1999. (We won the game in overtime.) It can either be nouned ("He got the Bootsy") or verbed ("He Bootsied us").

Remember Goose Givens of Kentucky who almost single handly beat us in the NCAA's in 1978. Banks, Dennard, G-man and company. So I guess we could say they "goosed" us.

dukemath
12-08-2008, 09:16 PM
Didn't Marco Killingsworth get a career high on us two or three times, or did it just FEEL that way?

I seem to remember a quote like
"Marco scored a Killingsworth against us."

I guess the term never caught on because we won that game.

Lulu
12-09-2008, 03:29 AM
What about CAREER LOWS?
When you shut down the best 2 players and their #4 guy has his best game ever... maybe not so bad.

trinity92
12-09-2008, 12:07 PM
We may not have the market cornered on this, but our job on Temple's supposedly unstoppable Mark Macon (6-29) and on future #1 pick Glen Robinson in the 1994 regional final (6-22) stick out to me as great examples of holding the opponents' star player down. As we all know, Mark Macon never recovered . . .

arnie
12-09-2008, 02:17 PM
Walter Berry (also with St, johns) buried us in a preseason NIT, except I think we may have won that game!