Duke is Just Weird this year

[gumbomoop]

Me? Snarky? Never ... ;)

J, I do believe you have confused yourself. I'm confident that you meant to say: "Me, irascibly snarky? Regularly. Cuddly? Almost never."

Having, I trust, gotten you straightened out on that, I move on to the more general snarkiness issue, which I tend to think of as friendly fire. It does sometimes seem that one needs to warn folks to "Duck!" even more when we win than when we lose. This is unsettling, to me at least

I'm pondering why this is [the friendly fire, not my unsettled reaction]. Various hypotheses come to mind:

1. We really like - are universally passionately committed to - our Devils, but Internet anonymity allows us to snark each other, snarkily and regularly, when our fellow posters fail to see the bball genius that most of us are certain we possess. [Starting, I admit, with me.]
2. Recent frustrating finishes in NCAAT have left all of us, the Duke Entitled Ones, pretty snarky. But do check out I[diot]C, if you have a month or 2 free, if you want to see some uber-snarkiness. Are we sure we even want to inhabit the same Snarkiness Cosmos as those Idiots? Talk about friendly fire.
3. And most interesting to me [Note that I have just congratulated myself on announcing an interesting idea.....], this year's Devils are kinda weirdly assembled, thus encouraging all manner of analyses re what's good, bad, what works, doesn't/never will.
4. That is, this team maybe has some unusual characteristics that fairly beg to be dissected to death: (a) 3-S, sometimes real close [tonight!] to our total O; (b) 2 other seniors finally, finally contributing meaningfully, but (c) a bit awkwardly, so that even their obvious [LT] and welcome rising up [Z,Z,Z] is countered by blatant irritants, such as (d) bad footwork, maddening bringing ball down, flailing leg movement; (e) very, very young bench players who have exhibited, very intermittently, wonderful signs of promise, but rather more regularly, dismaying signs of lostness, which, quite naturally, (f) feeds into the K's-short-rotation debate, which circles back to #2 above, along with related (g) 3-S exhaustion debate, itself (h) weird, in that this year we got 3 guys, not just 1 or 2, playing mega-mega-minutes.
5. This is a weird team. I think I'm serious. This team seems a good bit more of an outlier than we can easily come to terms with. They're driving us nuts. They fairly invite us to maul each other verbally. They gotta lot of explaining to do if they fail to win, and maybe even if they fail to win by doing what we want them to do. They gotta win somewhat more normal-like. Or we're gonna kill each other.
6. Most posters are a bit weird [I'd wager a few Significant Others have gingerly noted this], and, like the aforementioned Jumbo [remember him?], inclined to be a tad irascible and not so cuddly when, weirdly, our very happiness seems to depend upon our Entitledness being satisfied, and real soon.


7. Have a nice day.
8. And "Duck!"

[gumbomoop]

Wait. I forgot some obvious weirdness:

9. We got a PG who isn't, can't be, but is among leading PGs in nation.
10. We're "amazingly unathletic," especially the aformentioned PG, who is so unathletic that he makes plays he cannot make. I'm desperately trying to remember the opponent, the recent game, Md, I think, when at the 7:21 mark of 2d half [the exact second I can remember, so amazed was I, yet the opponent..... who cares], JS made an absolutely amazing right-to-left-45-degree-drive, put the ball up to board, from slightly under the plane of the rim, with right hand, but with reverse spin, so that the ball spun with absolutely brilliant English, hung, reverse-spinning, for just a half-second, and dropped through. A brilliant shot, but done at "normal" rather than "athletic blur" speed, so it looked, well, almost pedestrian, rather than what it was: breathtaking hand-eye-athleticism. JS is an amazing, but significantly different, weird, one might say, athletic guy.
11. Our only perimeter sub is a post-grad-high school senior.

[-jk]

This seems an interesting take from the VT post game thread, and I wanted more people to see it.

-jk

[DukieInBrasil]

add on to the weirdness that we had several unexpected, dare I say, weird things happen in the off-season that shook up our expectations and caused the weirdness to descend to new depths (heights?).
A) our #1 back-court reserve (E-Will), whom we all were expecting to have a fine season in Royal Blue, suddenly left Duke on a special (weird?) transfer rule for family reasons. This left us discombobulated and worried that the season would be "lost".
B) suddenly, out of nowhere, a sharp-shooting guard recruited to play next year (Andre) figures out a way to graduate early and come to Duke a year ahead of schedule, once again, weird. This alleviated some of our back-court depth worries and gave us a New Hope. Said early-graduating-backcourt-"savior" bolts out of the gates draining 3s at an unheard of rate garnering lavish praise and over-hyped-expectations-for-a-totally-un-hyped player. Said player then begins playing a bit more like a Fr., and then suffers an unbelievably difficult mid-season tragedy. He has yet to return to his early season play, quite unweirdly understandable.
C) Our most-hyped recruit for the year (Mason) breaks his wrist milliseconds before the season officially starts, weird, and misses roughly the first month. He misses lots of experience-gaining PT against generally lesser competition and is still getting the hang of NCAA ball, causing rather erratic play.

I would add that some of the perceived weirdness of the team is that alongside the generally steady play of Knolon Shmingler the other 6 scholarship players have been quite erratic, either in terms of PT or productivity. We've seen some stellar games from LT, Z Miles and Andre. And then we've seen them have some real stinkers. Mason has had several high-quality games and, again, some stinkers. Ryan has done a decent job in the opportunities that his role has provided him, but has also had games of 0 productivity.

Don't get me wrong, I love this team, they're showing lots of fight, determination and heart. Which is great, because they also have lots of talent and (gasp!) athleticism.

[slower]

Thanks for highlighting this post and giving it its own thread.

[Andre Buckner Fan]

I am shocked, shocked, to see Duke fans described as entitled! :D

[DukeGirl4ever]

add on to the weirdness that we had several unexpected, dare I say, weird things happen in the off-season that shook up our expectations and caused the weirdness to descend to new depths (heights?).
A) our #1 back-court reserve (E-Will), whom we all were expecting to have a fine season in Royal Blue, suddenly left Duke on a special (weird?) transfer rule for family reasons. This left us discombobulated and worried that the season would be "lost".
B) suddenly, out of nowhere, a sharp-shooting guard recruited to play next year (Andre) figures out a way to graduate early and come to Duke a year ahead of schedule, once again, weird. This alleviated some of our back-court depth worries and gave us a New Hope. Said early-graduating-backcourt-"savior" bolts out of the gates draining 3s at an unheard of rate garnering lavish praise and over-hyped-expectations-for-a-totally-un-hyped player. Said player then begins playing a bit more like a Fr., and then suffers an unbelievably difficult mid-season tragedy. He has yet to return to his early season play, quite unweirdly understandable.
C) Our most-hyped recruit for the year (Mason) breaks his wrist milliseconds before the season officially starts, weird, and misses roughly the first month. He misses lots of experience-gaining PT against generally lesser competition and is still getting the hang of NCAA ball, causing rather erratic play.

I would add that some of the perceived weirdness of the team is that alongside the generally steady play of Knolon Shmingler the other 6 scholarship players have been quite erratic, either in terms of PT or productivity. We've seen some stellar games from LT, Z Miles and Andre. And then we've seen them have some real stinkers. Mason has had several high-quality games and, again, some stinkers. Ryan has done a decent job in the opportunities that his role has provided him, but has also had games of 0 productivity.

Don't get me wrong, I love this team, they're showing lots of fight, determination and heart. Which is great, because they also have lots of talent and (gasp!) athleticism.

GREAT Analysis of the off-season. I know WE ALL knew it was coming and yes it is one of those DUH comments, but you could throw in there Hendy's loss as an off-season "weirdness" that shook things up. I know it's no use dawning on the past, but, MAN, WHAT IF??? Ok, I went there for a second, and I'm done.

Love the name Knolon Shmingler....may have to use that on my Facebook status OR create a group...:D

[Kedsy]

I think the weirdness makes Duke a tough matchup and hard to prepare for. I also think the weirdness is a reason to disregard the recent past when trying to predict the future. So when fans and commentators say, this is the same old Duke, watch for the collapse in the tourney, their logic is just wrong.

However, in my opinion the snarkiness comes from a completely different place. There seems to be a school of thought around here which is both entitled and pessimistic, and a little bit bitter; and another school of thought which is hopeful and optimistic, and a little bit defensive. The two groups don't have a great deal of respect for each other's opinions.

I am admittedly in the second group. It bothers me when people say needlessly negative things about our players and put this year's team down based on past history, and I might get a little snarky about it. I imagine the first group thinks views like mine are somewhat pollyanna-ish and see themselves as realists, so they get a little sarcastic themselves.

So I don't see an easy solution to the snarkiness issue.

[CDu]

I think the weirdness makes Duke a tough matchup and hard to prepare for. I also think the weirdness is a reason to disregard the recent past when trying to predict the future. So when fans and commentators say, this is the same old Duke, watch for the collapse in the tourney, their logic is just wrong.

I agree. We're so very different from just about any Duke team in previous years. We're bigger than any team I can remember in the last 20 years. We're less quick than we've been in many seasons (quicker at some positions though). So it's not really realistic to base our expectations on past team's outcomes.


However, in my opinion the snarkiness comes from a completely different place. There seems to be a school of thought around here which is both entitled and pessimistic, and a little bit bitter; and another school of thought which is hopeful and optimistic, and a little bit defensive. The two groups don't have a great deal of respect for each other's opinions.

I am admittedly in the second group. It bothers me when people say needlessly negative things about our players and put this year's team down based on past history, and I might get a little snarky about it. I imagine the first group thinks views like mine are somewhat pollyanna-ish and see themselves as realists, so they get a little sarcastic themselves.

So I don't see an easy solution to the snarkiness issue.

I think the snarkiness is a function of the internet/message board age. There's some personal dissociation through this medium, and because of that people don't feel the need to show as much respect to others. You'd rarely see someone say to someone else's face some of the things that many posters say on these boards - even among people who disagree. And these boards are fairly tame compared to the typical message boards.

I agree that there's not an easy solution. Ideally, everyone would try to clean it up. But it just seems like it only takes one or two bad posts to inflame others and bring the snarkiness back. I think it's sadly the way of the world. Unless you have people editing every post for content before allowing it to be posted (which is not remotely feasible), you're going to have snark these days.

I will say that I am happy with the general lack of snark compared to other boards I've seen.

[A-Tex Devil]

While I agree this is a "different" Duke team (all scoring on perimeter, all depth on front line), and I am more than pleasantly surprised by the ACC record this year, at the end of the day, this is no different than the last 3 years. It's likely a 2-3 seed (I realize we were a 6 or 7 in 2007, but hear me out) in the tourney that should win its first round game (and be embarrassed if it doesn't), should win its second round game, but will be at risk to a bad matchup/hot player, and will play a very even matchup (and potentially be an underdog) in its sweet 16 game.

But this is not different than any other teams ranked 5-16 in the country. It will be a disappointment (or worse) if we lose in the first 2 rounds. It will anger me if we lose in the sweet 16 in a passive, white-flag waving kind of way that we did last year. But anything can happen in the tourney, and so long as we play hard, a close loss to a good team in the sweet 16 shouldn't make for a disappointing season considering the offseason Duke had. And the really cool thing is that we can go even further than that. *WE* can be Villanova from last year. Can't wait for March.

[elvis14]

"Weird" is a good description of not just the team but also of the ebb and flow of this season. I agree that our weirdness makes us a tough match up for many teams. There's so much to love about this team:



The all around play of Knolon Shmingler
Lance's hustle and defense
Z's emergence
Dawkins early commitment
Ryan's ability to make an entry pass
The competitiveness of MP1 and MP2


There's also so much to get frustrated with or worried about at times (both with the team and DBR):



The number of minutes we play Knolon Shmingler (please please don't restart that debate here...I mentioned it because valid or not it is a concern for some people)
The disappearance of MP1 and MP2 of late
Dawkins' shooting (we respectively have given him a pass but we'd love it if he got hot again)
Lance's inability to put the ball in the hoop or to throw a prompt outlet pass
Playing time for Ryan and Dawkins
Getting scoring from someone other than Knolon Shmingler
I could list others but I don't want to bash or change the focus...

My main point is that the nature of this team has really created a fun roller coaster of a season and has spurred lots of debate here on DBR. We do seem to be a bit snarkier (is that a word?) than in years past but the weirdness of this team seems to polarize people on some of the points above and others.

I just hope we just keep finding ways to win. It would be fun to make a run in this years NCAA tournament.

[DukeUsul]

I think the weirdness makes Duke a tough matchup and hard to prepare for. I also think the weirdness is a reason to disregard the recent past when trying to predict the future. So when fans and commentators say, this is the same old Duke, watch for the collapse in the tourney, their logic is just wrong.

However, in my opinion the snarkiness comes from a completely different place. There seems to be a school of thought around here which is both entitled and pessimistic, and a little bit bitter; and another school of thought which is hopeful and optimistic, and a little bit defensive. The two groups don't have a great deal of respect for each other's opinions.

I am admittedly in the second group. It bothers me when people say needlessly negative things about our players and put this year's team down based on past history, and I might get a little snarky about it. I imagine the first group thinks views like mine are somewhat pollyanna-ish and see themselves as realists, so they get a little sarcastic themselves.

So I don't see an easy solution to the snarkiness issue.
I think the solution is to split the board into two: the positivity board and the negativity board. On the negativity board, everyone can complain after each win that our freshmen bench players didn't get more playing time, how we're not satisfied with X player's peformance and make predictions about how we're going to get blown out in the 2nd round.

On the positivity board, we'll all talk about how X substitute is just about to "start getting it", how Nick Horvath was draining threes in summer ball and is gonna dominate this year, and how having 90% of your scoring from three guys is a good thing.

There you go. No more snarkiness! :p:p

[bird]

I
However, in my opinion the snarkiness comes from a completely different place. There seems to be a school of thought around here which is both entitled and pessimistic, and a little bit bitter; and another school of thought which is hopeful and optimistic, and a little bit defensive. The two groups don't have a great deal of respect for each other's opinions.



Exactly! My wife is very much in the former camp (she lived through the Buckey Waters years, and never recovered), while I am in the latter group. I can barely stand to watch games with her, and the reverse is true, I am sure.

[roywhite]

Important thing to remember:

Previous seasons were played in the Pre-Zoubazoic Period, when mere mortals roamed the paint for the Blue Devils.

We're in a new Era.

[VanDuk]

the Pre-Zoubazoic Period


We need one of those pre-historic to modern man charts.. to get a visual on this.

[Rich]

I think the solution is to split the board into two: the positivity board and the negativity board.

I don't think DBR will bring back the Public Policy Board. :eek:

[MarkD83]

So....

Take time to appreciate what this team has already done or is poised to do before we jump to March.

11-2 in the ACC with a win against Md or a Md loss at VT away from a regular season championship.

A win at UNC.

A preseason NIT championship with a convincing win against UConn.

No Feb. swoon like in past years. (Duke is 6-0 in Feb and since the NCSU loss is 8-1. Georgetown is ancient history.)

Multiple wins against teams that have tried to "out-tough" Duke (Ga T, Wake, VT, UConn...the fact that the wins are at Duke is irrelevant in my Blue colored glasses.)

[blueprofessor]

http://kenpom.com/rate.php

Through last night's games (Feb. 21), Duke is ranked #1 overall, 1st in adj. offense and 12th in adj. defense.

We are getting weirder and weirderer:D! Cannot wait for weirderer to become weirdest!:D

Best--Blueprofessor:)

[Durhamrocks68]

1. Undefeated home record
2. 6-2 conference road record
3. ACC regular season championship
4. ACC Tournament Championship
5. #1 seed in NCAAs
6. Sweet 16 appearance
7. Regional Final appearance
8. FF
9. NCAA Championship

Obviously, the further you go down this list, the harder it will be to achieve. But, they are all currently still possible. After G and EWill left, I would have found it hard to put any of the above on a possible achievement list. This is a strong TEAM. They are finding ways to win when things aren't going smoothly and that's important in the NCAAs. A lot of things will have to line-up correctly for a FF visit, but it's possible and I'm happy with that. Go Duke!

[CDu]

Obviously, the further you go down this list, the harder it will be to achieve. But, they are all currently still possible. After G and EWill left, I would have found it hard to put any of the above on a possible achievement list. This is a strong TEAM. They are finding ways to win when things aren't going smoothly and that's important in the NCAAs. A lot of things will have to line-up correctly for a FF visit, but it's possible and I'm happy with that. Go Duke!

Agreed. Especially if you'd told me that Dawkins would have as much difficulty as he's had and basically been a non-factor for most of the season, and that the Plumlee brothers would be so inconsistent.

It's really impressive what this team has done in spite of the hurdles that have been put in front of them. Hopefully they continue for a long time further this year.

[A-Tex Devil]

Check this blog post (http://marchtomarch.fantake.com/2010/02/15/bedeviling-without-a-point-guard/) out (from last week) which is another "weird" thing about this Duke team. We don't have a true point, but the 3 S's all combine to provide all the necessary skills of an elite point guard.

I've been enjoying this new blog "March to March" because it eschews the normal anti-Duke lean you get from The Dagger, Deadspin or The Big Lead. Plus they've been doing a lot of write ups on Duke games, and I enjoy reading objective analysis of our games (which is often hard to find).

[MChambers]

What's really weird to me is that this team doesn't play extended pressure defense and turn the other team over. I still can't used to that.

[Durhamrocks68]

CDu,
Yeah, which means the upper class-men have really stepped up. Specifically Zoubs and LT (I expected Triple-S to play well and lead us). I have been very critical of their play up to this year, but they both deserve a lot of credit for this team's success. They are giving everything they have and showing strong leadership. Now, if M1, M2 and Dre get going at all in the next few weeks, Duke becomes very dangerous to the field.

[ReformedAggie]

Ok maybe I'm in my mommy nurturing mood, but do we have to have threads that bash our players or comments in winning threads that point out only the things players do wrong? I'm pretty sure each young man out there is doing his best. This team has great heart, some faults, and much to learn, but I fail to see how stressing the negative helps anyone. Now, I'm going to have a cup of nice tea and knit a sweater.:)

[Jderf]

Yea, I would agree there are definitely too many posts on the board that are overly critical or purely negative in nature. Anybody who claims that any of our players aren't giving their best are probably not watching the game.

But at the same time, I think there are a lot of posts that point at problems/weaknesses/mistakes of certain players that are perfectly valid and well thought-out. These posts often get labelled as bashing, even though they are not.

I would point out the recent thread on Mason's tendency to reach in. A lot of the material there definitely dangles on the lines between criticism and bashing, and sometimes it's hard to even tell the difference. But that doesn't change the fact that there are some good points made.

[DukeGirl4ever]

Ok maybe I'm in my mommy nurturing mood, but do we have to have threads that bash our players or comments in winning threads that point out only the things players do wrong? I'm pretty sure each young man out there is doing his best. This team has great heart, some faults, and much to learn, but I fail to see how stressing the negative helps anyone. Now, I'm going to have a cup of nice tea and knit a sweater.:)

Having played Division 1 basketball (at a low-D1 school), I do know SOME of what it takes to play college ball. These guys give it their all night in and night out and for most schools it's like having 2 full-time jobs. Knowing this, I would NEVER put down a college athlete with all of the hardships they go through.

On the other hand, some of us are critical of the mistakes these players are making because they know a lot about the game of basketball and some of us are former coaches and players. I recently got out of coaching because I couldn't find the balance between parenthood and being a full-time teacher. That being said, I haven't lost my passion for the game, and therefore my need to analyze all things that involve basketball. In that sense, I do feel the need to critique the game and players' areas of weaknesses all the while knowing they give it their all. I will NEVER criticize their hustle, desire, and effort.

Take Kyle, for example, he struggled BIG time earlier in the season. I have some friends who said, "Man, Singler just sucks!" I pointed out to them that while he was adjusting to his new position and therefore struggling a bit on offense, I never once saw that kid hang is head, not go after a rebound, or quit playing defense.

It's a fine line between bashing a kid and being a critic. Even though I'm new, I have felt that most people here aren't trying to bash these guys in a negative sense.

[gumbomoop]

http://kenpom.com/rate.php

Through last night's games (Feb. 21), Duke is ranked #1 overall, 1st in adj. offense and 12th in adj. defense.

We are getting weirder and weirderer:D! Cannot wait for weirderer to become weirdest!:D

Best--Blueprofessor:)

Glad to be reminded periodically to look at KenPom. I'll have to find time to find the thread a month or so back [?], where several posters were translating KenPom for us uninitiated.

KenPom aficionados, help me here: Is Duke's SOS OppD/Rank [#1] the most/a significant factor in Duke's AdjO/Rank [also #1]? But that doesn't seem to make sense, as Kansas has an AdjO/Rank of 2, but an OppD/Rank of only 49. I know I'm missing KenPom's boat somehow, but I want to figure it out [a little], because (a) KenPom's system likes us, and, in my uninformed ignorance, (b) KenPom seems weird. A match made in some proverbial heaven.

[MChambers]

KenPom aficionados, help me here: Is Duke's SOS OppD/Rank [#1] the most/a significant factor in Duke's AdjO/Rank [also #1]?

Short answer is no, but sort of. That is, you could have the best offensive efficiency without playing tough defensive teams.

Pomeroy takes a team's raw offensive efficiency and adjusts it by the strength of the defenses it has played. Kansas's unadjusted offensive efficiency is almost certainly better than Duke's, but after adjusting for strength of opponents, Duke's is better. From Ken's site:

"The inputs into the pythagorean equation are the team’s adjusted offensive and defensive efficiencies. Any time you see something “adjusted” on this site, it refers to how a team would perform against average competition at a neutral site. For instance, a team’s offensive efficiency (points scored per 100 possessions) is adjusted for the strength of the opposing defenses played. I compute an adjusted offensive efficiency for each game by multiplying the team’s raw offensive efficiency by the national average efficiency and dividing by the opponent’s adjusted defensive efficiency. The adjusted game efficiencies are then averaged (with more weighting to recent games) to produce the final adjusted offensive efficiency."

Got that?

[gumbomoop]

Short answer is no, but sort of. That is, you could have the best offensive efficiency without playing tough defensive teams.

Pomeroy takes a team's raw offensive efficiency and adjusts it by the strength of the defenses it has played. Kansas's unadjusted offensive efficiency is almost certainly better than Duke's, but after adjusting for strength of opponents, Duke's is better. From Ken's site:

"The inputs into the pythagorean equation are the team’s adjusted offensive and defensive efficiencies. Any time you see something “adjusted” on this site, it refers to how a team would perform against average competition at a neutral site. For instance, a team’s offensive efficiency (points scored per 100 possessions) is adjusted for the strength of the opposing defenses played. I compute an adjusted offensive efficiency for each game by multiplying the team’s raw offensive efficiency by the national average efficiency and dividing by the opponent’s adjusted defensive efficiency. The adjusted game efficiencies are then averaged (with more weighting to recent games) to produce the final adjusted offensive efficiency."

Got that?

I appreciate the help. [That's the sole serious sentence in this post.]

Short answer is no, but sort of.

But I cannot tell you how pleased I am to give a slightly fuller, if more daft, answer to the question, "Got that?" As a preface to said answer, allow me to say that one of the great, great pleasures of this truly weird board is the extra, non-bball allusions one encounters willy-nilly. Along with informed, intelligent commentary, and unlike I[diot]C, you get good stuff aplenty: recipes, courtship/marital advice, literary and cinematic references, clever repartee, witticisms beyond imagining. Good stuff.

Ok, so back to the question, "Got that?" As the great comedic actor, David Kelly ["Waking Ned Devine"] said, [playing the incompetent slacker O'Reilly in the episode of Fawlty Towers called "The Builders"], in response to Basil's mostly rhetorical question, "Do you realize my wife will kill us?" - O'Reilly replies, "Piece of cake, Bob's your uncle, give us a biscuit."

So, though the honest truth is, no, but maybe just barely sort of, it's more pleasing to pretend that KenPom's pythagorean system is a piece of cake.

P.S. - I find on review that there was a second serious, well, not sentence, but phrase: I[diot]C.

[Greg_Newton]

The reason for the increasing snark and cynicism is almost entirely due to Duke's recent tourney performance. No matter how faithful you are, you can't help but hear the chirping about how Duke always wins enough games to get a high seed and then folds when push comes to shove in the tourney... and it SUCKS to hear people saying that about the character of your beloved team. Furthermore given that we haven't defended our seed since 2004 - two 1-seed S16 exits, a 6-seed first round exit, a 2-seed second round exit, and a 2-seed S16 manhandling - it's getting harder to just dismiss such criticisms as ridiculous and without basis.

This creates some conflict, which creates some displaced frustration, which we tend to take out on posters who we deem to either be a) irrationally dismissive and unsupportive when it's obvious things are different this year, or b) irrationally dismissive and optimistic when it's obvious nothing has really changed this year.

IMHO, all it will take is one solid tourney run to change the tone and ease all of our worried souls... :rolleyes:

[Classof06]

@ Greg Newton: Agreed. Great, great post. Duke has built its reputation on winning in March; they have not done much of that the past 4-5 years. It is what it is.

That said, anyone who says Duke's players aren't playing hard is just flat-out not watching the games. Duke's squads have had shortcomings over the past four years, but the one thing you can never question about a Mike Krzyzewski team is whether or not they're playing hard. To assert otherwise is simply wrong.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I would say the weirdest thing about Duke this year is that we're #5 in the country, 22-4/11-2, yet we've rarely (vs. Gonzaga, vs. Maryland) played anything resembling our best basketball this season. Yes, Scheyer and Smith have been wonderful. But Singler was widely considered our best player in the preseason and though he's been good, he is just now starting to play great. Zoubek has also emerged as well, of late.


Duke is going to be a #2 seed at worst, but how many times have you watched a Duke game this year and walked away thinking we could not have played any better? That we played our best?

[Chitowndevil]

Here's a fun game. Are you a glass half full or half empty Duke fan?

Half Full (quoted):
Duke is going to be a #2 seed at worst, but how many times have you watched a Duke game this year and walked away thinking we could not have played any better?

Half Empty:
How many times have you watched a Duke game this year and thought, "if we play like that in a Sweet 16, or maybe even second round game in the NCAAs, we are toast"?

Half Full:
Duke has won in spite of limited contributions from the Plumlees and Dawkins. If they can contribute in March we are Final Four contenders.

Half Empty:
Players not named Singler, Scheyer, and Smith scored a combined 4 points and had 1 made field goal in 11 shots against VT. If anything, Dawkins and the Plumlee brothers have regressed from their early and mid-season play. And if one of the big 3 gets in early foul trouble...

Half Full:
Brian Zoubek has emerged as a force in the post over the last several games, averaging 9.7 points and 12.7 rebounds in 3 games as a starter.

Half Empty:
Brian Zoubek also continues to lead the team with a ridiculous 8.7 fouls committed per 40 minutes. NCAA Tourney games are well known for being tightly officiated - can we count on even 20 mpg from Zoubek in the tournament?

And finally...

Half Empty:
Duke hasn't been to the Final Four in five years, its longest drought since Krzyzewski's first five years at the school.

Half Full:
Duke hasn't been to the Final Four in five years, its longest drought since Krzyzewski's first five years at the school.

[airowe]

My glass looks like this:

http://themiddleoffice.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/glass_half_full1.jpg

What do you think it looks like? ;)

[Jim3k]

My glass looks like this:

http://themiddleoffice.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/glass_half_full1.jpg

What do you think it looks like? ;)

Vodka, using the bathroom glass.

At least you could go to the kitchen and get a better glass. :D

[-jk]

Wait - is that vodka or water?

-jk

[MarkD83]

My glass looks like this:

http://themiddleoffice.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/glass_half_full1.jpg

What do you think it looks like? ;)

That is a poorly designed glass.

[airowe]

Vodka, using the bathroom glass. :D

You're good.

[ArtVandelay]

However, in my opinion the snarkiness comes from a completely different place. There seems to be a school of thought around here which is both entitled and pessimistic, and a little bit bitter; and another school of thought which is hopeful and optimistic, and a little bit defensive. The two groups don't have a great deal of respect for each other's opinions.

I can guarantee you that the former school of thought is by no means unique to Duke fans. I happen to also spend a fair amount of time on Yankees message boards (incidentally, being a Yankees and Duke fan makes you just about the most hated sports fan in America). As you can probably imagine, most Yanks fans are at least a little bit entitled, but prior to last year's World Series win, the tone on some of the boards was almost overwhelmingly negative (we'll see if things are different this year). To fans of, say, the Marlins, that almost certainly seems absurd, seeing as how it seems like the Yankees always win. But it had been a while since the Yanks won a World Series, and they (prior to last season) kept finding ways to blow it in the post-season. When you're accustomed to winning, losing in the first round of the playoffs hurts. And it starts to make you defensive, which can (in certain personality types) cause you develop a certain level of snarky negativity as a defense mechanism.

I think a similar phenomenon exists among Duke fans. It's only because Duke is consistently good that makes it seem a bit ridiculous to consistently negative. Not to mention that thinking that your team sucks, or that every player on the teams sucks, is not even close to a unique phenomenon in sports (see, e.g., Philly pro sports fans). If we were fans of a lower profile program, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

[Jumbo]

J, I do believe you have confused yourself. I'm confident that you meant to say: "Me, irascibly snarky? Regularly. Cuddly? Almost never."

Having, I trust, gotten you straightened out on that, I move on to the more general snarkiness issue, which I tend to think of as friendly fire. It does sometimes seem that one needs to warn folks to "Duck!" even more when we win than when we lose. This is unsettling, to me at least

I'm pondering why this is [the friendly fire, not my unsettled reaction]. Various hypotheses come to mind:

1. We really like - are universally passionately committed to - our Devils, but Internet anonymity allows us to snark each other, snarkily and regularly, when our fellow posters fail to see the bball genius that most of us are certain we possess. [Starting, I admit, with me.]
2. Recent frustrating finishes in NCAAT have left all of us, the Duke Entitled Ones, pretty snarky. But do check out I[diot]C, if you have a month or 2 free, if you want to see some uber-snarkiness. Are we sure we even want to inhabit the same Snarkiness Cosmos as those Idiots? Talk about friendly fire.

Briefly on the "snark issue," I think you hit on most of the key points. I happen to have a high tolerance for snark. I also tend to have a low tolerance for ignorance, and an even lower tolerance for poor self-awareness of ignorance. There are people here who, frankly, just don't know a tremendous amount about basketball. Or who are quite young. Or both. But with the Internet culture being what it is today, everyone feels that he/she has the right, if not obligation, to say exactly what he/she thinks, regardless of his/her knowledge base. I'd never venture onto, say, a quantum phyiscs message board and start taking apart theories and telling everyone else why they were wrong because I'd taken a couple of physics classes. But there are a lot of people who feel like attending a few games in Cameron or following the sport here and there on TV qualifies them to make declaritive statements on everything from coaching to player development to recruiting to predictive analysis. It's annoying. And when the same people ignore reasonable arguments to the contrary, it's even more annoying.

I also think the entitlement issues is an enormous one, as is overvaluing recent events. People are dwelling on Duke's relative struggles in the past few tournaments and not looking at the particular circumstances that surrounded those teams. Conveniently, they are also ignoring the previous 15-20 years of Duke's tourney history, when Duke was known mostly for rising up in March. In particular, people are treating every NCAA loss as one and the same. Just to contrast two teams, look at 2002 vs. 2005. Both teams lost in the Sweet 16 as No. 1 seeds to a Big 10 team. But the 2005 team overachieved through much of the year to get there. Reggie Love was playing serious frontcourt minutes. There was nothing resembling a true point guard. Shav was always in foul trouble. Instead of crediting Duke for earning an incredibly unlikely No. 1 seed, it's looked at as another collapse, instead of a really solid season that ended poorly because Duke got outplayed in the final couple of minutes of a tight game. Meanwhile, the 2002 team was supremely talented, absolutely had the ability to win a national title and just blew it against an inferior Indiana team. The only thing those two losses have in common is the following: Neither is a proxy for this seaon. Neither says anything about how well this team should do.

And that leads well into this ...


3. And most interesting to me [Note that I have just congratulated myself on announcing an interesting idea.....], this year's Devils are kinda weirdly assembled, thus encouraging all manner of analyses re what's good, bad, what works, doesn't/never will.
4. That is, this team maybe has some unusual characteristics that fairly beg to be dissected to death: (a) 3-S, sometimes real close [tonight!] to our total O; (b) 2 other seniors finally, finally contributing meaningfully, but (c) a bit awkwardly, so that even their obvious [LT] and welcome rising up [Z,Z,Z] is countered by blatant irritants, such as (d) bad footwork, maddening bringing ball down, flailing leg movement; (e) very, very young bench players who have exhibited, very intermittently, wonderful signs of promise, but rather more regularly, dismaying signs of lostness, which, quite naturally, (f) feeds into the K's-short-rotation debate, which circles back to #2 above, along with related (g) 3-S exhaustion debate, itself (h) weird, in that this year we got 3 guys, not just 1 or 2, playing mega-mega-minutes.
5. This is a weird team. I think I'm serious. This team seems a good bit more of an outlier than we can easily come to terms with. They're driving us nuts. They fairly invite us to maul each other verbally. They gotta lot of explaining to do if they fail to win, and maybe even if they fail to win by doing what we want them to do. They gotta win somewhat more normal-like. Or we're gonna kill each other.
6. Most posters are a bit weird [I'd wager a few Significant Others have gingerly noted this], and, like the aforementioned Jumbo [remember him?], inclined to be a tad irascible and not so cuddly when, weirdly, our very happiness seems to depend upon our Entitledness being satisfied, and real soon.


7. Have a nice day.
8. And "Duck!"

That's a wonderful post, particularly the part about this being a "weird" Duke team, which was actually something I'd been pondering recently. I think fans are still attempting to recalibrate what they should fear and what they should expect, what kind of teams could give Duke trouble and what kind of teams Duke should handle. But even deeper than that, I think this team is causing everyone, including me, to reevaluate how basketball is "supposed to be played."

Let's take one case in particular -- the reliance on three guys for virtually all of Duke's offense. Although it's a bit apples/oranges, it's not totally different from people who've said you can't win in football without a good running game, only to watch teams like the Arizona Cardinals make the Super Bowl or pass-heavy spread attacks dominate in college football. Conventional wisdom changes in some sports. And in other sports, we have no problem with centralized scoring. Hardly anyone would flinch at the fact that Wayne Rooney has a third of Manchester United's goals, for instance. He is a finisher. That's his job. Other guys do other important jobs on the pitch, and Rooney puts the ball in the net.

And that brings me back to Duke. What if everyone in basketball doesn't have to be a finisher? What if a successful possession really is just getting your best shooter an open shot? (Or, if you have three guys, one of those three.) Then consider this: Duke is a superior offensive rebounding team, the likes of which we just haven't seen (even though we were darn good last year, too), grabbing the offensive board on 41.7% of our misses, which is 7th in the nation. A lot of those rebounds, too, are longer boards, since we shoot a fair number of jump shots. Go back and watch the Virginia Tech game and see how often by the time Zoubek finally grabbed the ball, he was 6-8 feet away from the basket. And how each time, because the defense collapsed, he was able to kick the ball out to one of those wide-open finishers for a great look. Coach K mentioned that in the press conference after the game -- those are the plays you want, the shots you want.

So then you start to think of Zoubek and Thomas as a pair of grinding defensemen that keep the other team's top line in check, maintain possession well and set up a high-scoring top line in hockey. Or maybe a pair of holding midfielders in soccer that set up chance after chance for someone like Rooney. Maybe by doing things so differently, we're actually doing them right.

I don't actually believe everything I wrote. I believe a bit more balance is a good thing. A layup here, a 15-footer there for someone other than Scheyer, Singler and Smith relieves pressure, spreads the burden, provides alternatives. But it really is an interesting thought exercise to ponder what truly efficient offensive basketball really is, and particularly what it should be on a team with the ability to generate so many second shots. And part of the reason Duke is able to get so many second shots is because Zoubek is free from scoring responsibilities -- he can read and react to shots and position himself in the best spot to go get the ball back. And then we start all over again.

One final thing about the weirdness of this team. A lot of people are talking about the struggling trio of Miles, Mason and Andre and comparing this team to previous versions that had a short bench or few scoring options. Others are hoping for "light-bulb moments" at some point in the next couple of weeks. But what's interesting is that what everyone agrees upon is the fact that it would help Duke greatly if one of those guys could step up on a given night. And here's the thing: Each of them has already. Whether it was Miles' huge night against Wake Forest, Mason's big second half at UNC, Andre's shooting spree against Wisconsin or several other games, they have performed at a high leve this season. So, in that respect, we're not hoping for any of them to do something they've never done before. We're just hoping for a repeat of performances that have been rare. And there really is a difference there.

But yeah, this team is weird. It does almost everything differently from a typical Duke team. Heck, this team even seems to have better chemistry -- the guys noticeably LIKE one another on the court compared to some other recent teams. But there's one constant that connects it to other Duke teams -- it plays hard every single night.

Weird or not, though, the team is also good. Fun to watch. It has already accomplished a lot, and I really, really hope people are enjoying what's happened so far. And I also hope that people don't let the fact that they watch Duke more often than other teams fool them into focusing on the types of flaws you only notice in something you love, nor fall into the trap of the grass always looking greener when gazing toward another team at the top of the rankings. This team stacks up quite well nationally. It just does it in its own way, and in a way we're not used to seeing.

[Morris614]

My glass looks like this:

http://themiddleoffice.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/glass_half_full1.jpg

What do you think it looks like? ;)

It looks like the glass is twice as big as it needs to be

[Kedsy]

And that brings me back to Duke. What if everyone in basketball doesn't have to be a finisher? What if a successful possession really is just getting your best shooter an open shot? (Or, if you have three guys, one of those three.)

This is an interesting point. I heard a story about John Wooden once (and it may or may not be apocryphal but I've heard him voice similar sentiments in interviews so whether the actual story is true doesn't really matter for present purposes). His team had pushed the ball to the center (I think Walton) three times in a row, all for scores, and then on the next possession, the PG passed to someone else who put up an outside shot. Wooden called a timeout and asked the PG why he didn't pass it to the center again and the PG said the big guy had gotten the ball three times in a row and he wanted to vary it up. Wooden said, "if something worked three times in a row, why would you go away from it?"

I think this story is relevant to this year's team. The only reason we need players other than the big three to score is if the big three aren't scoring well enough. If we win, especially if we win by double digits, then who cares if the scoring is balanced or not? People are remembering past tournament losses and saying, what if we have a bad shooting night, where is the scoring going to come from? But my answer to that is twofold: (a) just because the front line didn't score against, e.g., VaTech doesn't mean they won't score in a different game; and (b) the real problem in our past tournament losses, as well as our regular season losses this year, has been poor defense, not a lack of balanced scoring.

[mike88]

This is an interesting point. I heard a story about John Wooden once (and it may or may not be apocryphal but I've heard him voice similar sentiments in interviews so whether the actual story is true doesn't really matter for present purposes). His team had pushed the ball to the center (I think Walton) three times in a row, all for scores, and then on the next possession, the PG passed to someone else who put up an outside shot. Wooden called a timeout and asked the PG why he didn't pass it to the center again and the PG said the big guy had gotten the ball three times in a row and he wanted to vary it up. Wooden said, "if something worked three times in a row, why would you go away from it?"

I think this story is relevant to this year's team. The only reason we need players other than the big three to score is if the big three aren't scoring well enough. If we win, especially if we win by double digits, then who cares if the scoring is balanced or not? People are remembering past tournament losses and saying, what if we have a bad shooting night, where is the scoring going to come from? But my answer to that is twofold: (a) just because the front line didn't score against, e.g., VaTech doesn't mean they won't score in a different game; and (b) the real problem in our past tournament losses, as well as our regular season losses this year, has been poor defense, not a lack of balanced scoring.

I made this point yesterday in the "Can we win the national championship?" thread- we have the number one offensive efficiency in the nation over the year so far with teams knowing in advance that we rely mainly on Jon, Nolan, and Kyle for most of our points. What will be different going forward? I don't think we will see better defenses than the average defense we have faced in the last two months until the Elite Eight or Final Four. AT that point, we will need a little luck or unexpected contribution.

I think the real key for this year's team reaching the Elite 8 / Final 4 is rebounding, and that is what makes this team seem different than past years' teams. In the past, if we didn't force 5-10 more turnovers and/or shoot well from 3 point range, we were in trouble. This team can win shooting a low %, as long as we continue to play outstanding positional defense, refrain from turnovers (which negate our positional defense when they lead to fast breaks) and rebound well.

[gumbomoop]

Some comments on Jumbo's post #39 and Kedsy's #41.

I really enjoy your insights. Because several posters have picked up on the "this team is weird" theme, it's led to some cogent different-angle-analysis, much more [I]substantive than my initial offering. I could easily compliment several other posters in this and other threads, but I'd exhaust myself and readers' patience if I handed out multiple citations for intelligent commentary. [Not to mention merit-awards for the glass menagerie mini-series.]

Kedsy's point about lousy defense seems spot on, and generally hopeful, as they're tougher on D, more coherently so, than a month ago. No guarantee of F4, matchup monster could get us, but I've not noticed many posters bemoaning our overall defense, just things like MPs foul-proneness, and a bit with LT and Z, too. And while none of 3-S is lock-down D, all are very solid: KS is fierce, JS crafty, NS committed, LT disruptive, Z late-blooming. I don't know, they look like they're having fun. Good sign.

Kedsy's point about O: also agree with this. As several glass half-full posters, on several threads, have noted, we do need a few points from the non-3-S's, but we seem just to need a few here and there, from whoever cares to score now and then [!]. That is, although I guess it would have been nice to have a "reliable 4th" [!!] scorer, that's not LT's role, it's unlikely to come, reliably, from MP2 or Andre [despite my and others' expectations much earlier], and it's not Z's likely role, either. But, glass-half-full analysis insists that 3-S are potent combo; tough for opponents to stop more than 1 of them any given night, and not so frequently even that.

Jumbo - I like the ref to "how bball is supposed to be played." And several of the other-sport analogies, esp to futbol and Man U's Rooney.

Your "retraction" ["I don't believe everything I wrote"] does acknowledge the usefulness of more balance on O, but you rightly [to my mind] insist that it's an open-ended question about whether more "normal" balance is actually essential to our weird success.

As a self-described loony optimist, I'm a glass 3/4 full proponent of the Devil's NCAAT hopes this spring; so naturally I'm going to agree with your reminder - though this is, thankfully, a point that seems to garner unanimous assent - that they play real hard every game. Then you end on a kind of "smell the roses" reminder. I suspect and am genuinely curious to know whether skeptics just aren't having as much fun watching this weird team win ugly [I prefer "fiercely" or "relentlessly"] and differently. I guess that, because this team doesn't win within the usual-normal parameters of excellent teams, some have concluded that it can't go far. I am hoping - well, hell's bells, we all are - that this team's quirky-truly-outlier-weirdness will produce, at the end, as much satisfaction as it has given voice to, along the journey, a remarkably irritated angst.

For me, finally, I just get so much enjoyment out of watching Scheyer, who must surely be the personification of a different, unexpected, weird brand of he-got-game.

[gumbomoop]

I made this point yesterday in the "Can we win the national championship?" thread- we have the number one offensive efficiency in the nation over the year so far with teams knowing in advance that we rely mainly on Jon, Nolan, and Kyle for most of our points. What will be different going forward? I don't think we will see better defenses than the average defense we have faced in the last two months until the Elite Eight or Final Four. AT that point, we will need a little luck or unexpected contribution.

I think the real key for this year's team reaching the Elite 8 / Final 4 is rebounding, and that is what makes this team seem different than past years' teams. In the past, if we didn't force 5-10 more turnovers and/or shoot well from 3 point range, we were in trouble. This team can win shooting a low %, as long as we continue to play outstanding positional defense, refrain from turnovers (which negate our positional defense when they lead to fast breaks) and rebound well.

I want to resist complimenting every poster, but see that I am failing, for mike88 here both substantiates and downplays the weirdness-factor.

In neglecting the rebounding factor, I have missed the obvious. It definitely is a big difference from a few years' back. So it's part of what's weird about this team, but there's nothing at all weird about winning because, among other things, you rebound well. Good analysis, too, re the attributes of our strong D: positional rather than lock-down intimidating.

Re both positional D and rebounding, the MPs inconsistency [it's sure not lack of muscle and hops] has not yet been a killer, owing to the improvement in LT and Z. LT has finally gained some discipline to his energy, while retaining energy quite sufficent to disrupt. And Z is on a roll, it appears. Which raises the interesting issue of whether Z has moved beyond his earlier "situational" mpg. It seems so. His emergence, we all know, has been such a lift.

[MarkD83]

People are remembering past tournament losses and saying, what if we have a bad shooting night, where is the scoring going to come from? But my answer to that is twofold: (a) just because the front line didn't score against, e.g., VaTech doesn't mean they won't score in a different game; and (b) the real problem in our past tournament losses, as well as our regular season losses this year, has been poor defense, not a lack of balanced scoring.

The statements I have highlighted are two excellent points that make me optimisitic. Duke has won many games this year where they have shot horribly, but the constant has been rebounding and defense.

[RelativeWays]

This is a weird team for sure and going into March, I don't really think it has hit its true apex. 2 things stop it from being a nightmare tourney team.

1. Lack of a consistant offensive option outside the lawfirm of Scheyer, Singler and Smith. If we could get someone, ANYONE to consistantly score 12-15 a game, the complexion of the game changes. Preferably it would be one of the Plumlees so we have a consistent 2 point inside threat. We could solve a lot of this simply converting 2 points on our current large offensive rebound advantage. Z is learning to not bring the ball down. We need to get him and Miles to practice their putbacks, and more importantly, FTS!!!!!!!!!!!!

2. Defensive consistency. This team still plays a lot of man and when they play faster personnel, its hard for them to keep up. They don't look comfortable in a zone. The rebounds have helped as that limits second chance opportunities, but we've had a few teams shoot 60%+ on us. Some of that you can't stop, but we need to figure out how to disrupt the oppositions flow.

This Duke team could be a 1st or 2nd weekend exit. We've seen what happens when other teams get their offense rolling on us. This could be an elite 8 or even a final 4 team depending on match ups and how it continues to adapt. Thats one thing the team has done well the past couple of games, its adapted.