good losses?

[mike88]

People have mixed opinions about the idea of "good losses" but as Duke fans, our experience this year might be an example of how a few, well-timed losses can help a team achieve more in the end:

1) Wisconsin: early season loss helped us by 1) focusing on our defensive limitations; 2) took a little of the pressure off by keeping us out of the #1 spot in the polls. First time we have lost in the ACC-BigTen challenge . . .thus changing the trajectory of the season over past years

2) GaTech: reinforced that our team would not always out-shoot opponents and that recbounding late in the game was essential for us; gave us a sense that winning on the road in the ACC would be tough

3) NC State: not sure there was much good here, but it did help us understand that we could lose to any team if we were flat and did not bring energy

4) Georgetown: reinforced that defense and limiting turnovers were key; helped us recognize that we were not completely ready to compete against the very best teams nationally yet

5) Maryland: maybe the "best" of the losses; coming late enough in the year to remind us that losing was possible and didn't feel good, but in the context of a strong effort on our part. I think this game helped us get ready to win the ACC tournament in ways that the others did not

In all, I think our losses were good in that they were pretty spread out within the season and that they didn't occur after early March!

[JBDuke]

IMO, the Georgetown loss was perhaps the most important, because, IIRC, it was after that game that K decided to go back to a more standard motion offense, which finally freed up Kyle, giving him more open looks, and got him playing closer to the level we all expected from him this year. Kyle's performance made a significant jump afterwards, and I believe made him our MVP for the rest of the year (closely followed by Jon and Brian and not too far back by Nolan).

[Newton_14]

I was thinking of this earlier today actually. But I was only focusing on one loss. I think the Georgetown loss was the best thing that happened to this team all year for 2 reasons.

Reason 1: It embarrassed our guys and forced them to look in the mirror and realize that to compete against the best in the nation, they had to change. They had to work harder on defense for one. But it also led to K changing the offense and tweaking the defense. All of these things ended up being reasons this team really evolved into a very deadly team. To beat them, the opponent would have to limit their TO's and shoot a very high percentage to offset Duke's incredible offensive rebounding, or somehow keep Duke off of the offensive glass. Otherwise, the opponent would have little to no chance of winning.

Reason 2: The entire country saw that game and wrote Duke off right then and there. They assumed that was the best Duke had to offer and if Duke was lucky enough to make the Sweet 16, they would play a top 15 team and lose.

Thus even though Duke would only lose one more game the rest of the regular season, people dismissed it as nothing more than weak ACC competition. Surely this Duke team was not good enough to be a contender. Just look at how Georgetown destroyed them...

Little did they know......

[AZLA]

Agreed, Georgetown loss leads to Duke working harder to improve their overall toughness on defense -- especially amongst the bigs.

I can't believe I had picked Georgetown to make the Final Four. Totally killed my bracket.

[weezie]

And that victory by Georgetown pretty much sealed their fate. From that point on, they began to believe the hype that was written in the aftermath of our loss.
JT3 has never seemed able to breed discipline into his players at Gtown. Who is supposed to be the "heart" of the team? They seem to lose focus and start blaming each other instead of themselves.
OTOH, I can't wait to go into DC, and into then Georgetown area in my BLUDEVL mobile in order to get my hair done tomorrow. That should be fun!:D

[hurleyfor3]

OTOH, I can't wait to go into DC, and into then Georgetown area in my BLUDEVL mobile in order to get my hair done tomorrow. That should be fun!:D

Please tell me you aren't taking any hairstyling cues from one of the folks you were with on Monday night :D

[Welcome2DaSlopes]

When you win it all, i guess you can say all loses where good loses, but if you don't win it all maybe that loss stop momentum moving into the tourny, all depends on the way you twist and turn the story