Unanswered prayers

[lotusland]

It occurred to me that our team would have been allot different had we
landed John Wall or if G stayed for his Sr, year or even if EWill had stayed. I
thought the key difference for Duke this year was our toughness and rebounding. We needed Singler at the 3 to win the NC and I don't think that happens with one or more of those guys on board. Either Scheyer's playing the wing with Wall at PG or Nolan is riding the bench more with G and/or EWill in the lineup. I don't think Kyle gets to play through his shooting slump while adjusting to his new position if we have one or more of those talented guard/wing players. that means few minutes for our 4 bigs an maybe zoobs doesn't get to come on strong towards the end of the year. The end result might have been amore talented but less successful team.

[cspan37421]

Sometimes less is more.

Analogy, bit of a stretch, but stay with me: 1984 Detroit Tigers. Only one regular hit over .290, and no pitcher won 20 games. Yet they just ran roughshod over everyone, starting 35-5 (hey, I like that record!), finishing 104-58, and losing just once in the postseason.

Chemistry, baby. It's chemistry.

[Starter]

I agree with this. Everyone on Duke this season had such defined and specific roles. I have difficulty figuring out where G would have fit in, though it probably would have been a good problem to have.

Similarly, I always thought that Maggette and Avery leaving after 2009 worked out wonderfully in terms of our national title in 2001. Williams, Dunleavy and Boozer were thrown into the fire in 1999-2000. After two losses to start their careers, they amazingly lost just once more (the Bootsy Thornton game!) before Florida ended their season. They grew as players and began 2000-01 as seasoned, confident players. Meanwhile, Battier got used to being The Man.

Maggette, who had some terrible habits that he never shook IMO, would have been a lousy influence on our young, impressionable players if he had stayed another season. And Avery would have stunted Williams' growth; Jason wouldn't have experienced being a starting point guard until 2001. As it turned out, he already had that year under his belt and was ready to help lead a national title team.

[4decadedukie]

You cannot improve on the National Championship; other potential Duke 2009-2010 teams -- each with unique chemistry, with a differing mix of talents, and with individual challenges -- might (or might not) have equaled this ultimate accolade, but none could exceeded it. Many have correctly commented that Duke was not the nation's most talented team this year, but by direct competition, it was the best team in America.

[gumbomoop]

You cannot improve on the National Championship; other potential Duke 2009-2010 teams -- each with unique chemistry, with a differing mix of talents, and with individual challenges -- might (or might not) have equaled this ultimate accolade, but none could exceeded it. Many have correctly commented that Duke was not the nation's most talented team this year, but by direct competition, it was the best team in America.

Glad to have an opportunity to comment on this last phrase. Ever since early morn of 4/6/10, I've considered starting a thread entitled, "OK, so just how good was this team?", but got sidetracked by my Retire Scheyer obsession, multiple threads anticipating next year's brilliance [i.e., We Are Never Satisfied], and life.

The jump-off point to such a thread is the above tag-quote phrase, "It was the best team in America." Which, as it turns out, reflects the opinion expressed by Bobby Knight sometime around midnight after the NC game. Now Duke Haters Ubiquitous will say, naturally, "Knight knows nuthin,' he's a tool for K." [Sorry if this sounds somewhat more intelligent than the standard Duke Hate rhetoric....] But if one gives Knight at least marginal credibility, listen to [my notes re] what he said in explaining Duke's NC: "Duke over the course of the year showed it could play any way you wanted to play. They did their job of broadening their play offensively, while improving defensively. Without any reservation, in my mind they ended up the best team in the country."

So, given the fact that one is unlikely to be able to have an intelligent discussion of Knight's opinion anywhere else, I am reduced to asking you, fellow posters, to remove your Dark Blue Shades, and seriously grapple with the issue, Just How Good Was That Team?

And to make it slightly more controversial, how good not just "by direct competition" [above tag quote], but by hypothetical competition with, say, Kansas, Syracuse, and UK?

[CrazieDUMB]

So, given the fact that one is unlikely to be able to have an intelligent discussion of Knight's opinion anywhere else, I am reduced to asking you, fellow posters, to remove your Dark Blue Shades, and seriously grapple with the issue, Just How Good Was That Team?

And to make it slightly more controversial, how good not just "by direct competition" [above tag quote], but by hypothetical competition with, say, Kansas, Syracuse, and UK?

First and foremost, we have a banner that says we were The Best Team. However, if you want to get technical about it, look no further than my pal kenpom. There we have a very strong argument for being scientifically proven as the best team.

http://kenpom.com/rate.php

The other team that was close all season with us was Kansas. I think if we played them 100 times, we'd probably win somewhere between 52-55, so it is close.

[4decadedukie]

I like your latest post and the questions it suggests, but -- and I say this with much honest respect for you -- I cannot be drawn into a response, simply because any reply will necessarily be far too speculative. To illustrate, CrazyDUMB indicates a likely Duke win-loss ratio of 50-55 in a hundred game competition with KU (and his opinion is as valid as any other), I might favor KU by the same margin, and others would doubtless offer differing opinions. Obviously, there can never be a resolution to this (and similar) questions. However, as CrazyDUMB stated, “We have a banner that says we were the best team.” And that, I propose, is all that really counts.

[gumbomoop]

I like your latest post and the questions it suggests, but -- and I say this with much honest respect for you -- I cannot be drawn into a response, simply because any reply will necessarily be far too speculative. To illustrate, CrazyDUMB indicates a likely Duke win-loss ratio of 50-55 in a hundred game competition with KU (and his opinion is as valid as any other), I might favor KU by the same margin, and others would doubtless offer differing opinions. Obviously, there can never be a resolution to this (and similar) questions. However, as CrazyDUMB stated, “We have a banner that says we were the best team.” And that, I propose, is all that really counts.

Fair enough, so I think I made a mistake in that last paragraph, with reference to hypothetical game v. KU, 'Cuse, UK. Forget that. I was only using that - ill-advisedly, I now see - to get back to Knight's intriguing, but too brief, analysis.

Knight had been praising Duke late season, not just after they won it all. He seems to have seen things that "passed" his sophisticated eye test that untutored eyes missed. Just as KenPom [CrazyDUMB's post] and his sophisticated statistical analysis "got Duke right," whereas the average Stoopid just saw a mediocre team, gets all the calls, NCAA-CBS conspiracy, blah, blah, blah.

True enough, it doesn't really make any difference "Just How Good Was That Team," but, wishing not quite to let go of them, and their intriguing excellence [yes???], I'm hoping to be informed by some more detailed response than, "Good Enough to Win NC." Such informed analysis cannot be had elsewhere. Cannot. Too late, season's over, Stoopids too stoopid.

You're my only hope.

Speaking of unanswered prayers.......

[4decadedukie]

Coach Knight is probably as perceptive concerning collegiate basketball as any other individual, and obviously I could never suggest that my observations come even remotely close to his conclusions in their validity or relevance; however, I will add one fact. Duke's defensive performance -- in transition, in the paint, and in our defensive-end of the court -- was truly excellent this year, it generally improved throughout the season, and I suspect it was decisive.

[CDu]

First and foremost, we have a banner that says we were The Best Team.

Technically, that's not what a championship banner says. It says we were the team that won first prize in the tournament. The two often coexist, but they are not one and the same.

Winning a six-game, single-elimination tournament requires quite a bit of luck in addition to being very good. Was UNI really better than Kansas? I don't think anyone would reasonably say that. As such, the results of the tournament automatically aren't a perfect measure of who was the best team. The tournament is just a measure of which team played the most consistently well over a three-week period and thus kept advancing.


However, if you want to get technical about it, look no further than my pal kenpom. There we have a very strong argument for being scientifically proven as the best team.

http://kenpom.com/rate.php

The other team that was close all season with us was Kansas. I think if we played them 100 times, we'd probably win somewhere between 52-55, so it is close.

Our #1 Pomeroy rating is a much stronger argument that we were the best team than the championship is. Though even Pomeroy would admit (and did admit) that his system may have overrated the ACC (and thus also overrated us). As such, whether we were really better than Kansas is up for debate.

But there is no debating that we were, at worst, ONE of the few on the short list of best teams.

[CrazieDUMB]

Technically, that's not what a championship banner says. It says we were the team that won first prize in the tournament. The two often coexist, but they are not one and the same.

Winning a six-game, single-elimination tournament requires quite a bit of luck in addition to being very good. Was UNI really better than Kansas? I don't think anyone would reasonably say that. As such, the results of the tournament automatically aren't a perfect measure of who was the best team. The tournament is just a measure of which team played the most consistently well over a three-week period and thus kept advancing.

If I may respectfully nit-pick your nit-pick, I believe the NCAA recognizes the tournament champion as the national champion. Officially speaking, because the NCAA only recognizes the champion, then our banner says we're the Best Team. I guess my point is that it depends on how you define Best Team; by official NCAA standards, it's us.

If we define best team as a scientific analysis of our performance throughout the course of the season, then KenPom says we're the best team.

No matter how you want to look at it, we're the best. Q.E.D. ;)

EDIT: If we define our success by what haters believe, Duke hasn't fielded an above average team since 1991.

[patentgeek]

One thing I haven't heard mentioned much, if at all, about this Duke team is its consistency. Starting immediately after the Georgetown game (which was only shortly before Zoubek came on), Duke was remarkably consistent for the remainder of the regular season and the ACC tourney - one loss, to a top 15 team (MD), on that team's home court on Sr. Night, when the ACC POY threw in a couple of circus shots in the last few minutes. There were very few other games in which the outcome was in doubt with 5 minutes to go (maybe at Miami, or GT in the ACC tournament). Other teams that were spoken of as being juggernauts (e.g., Kansas, Kentucky, Syracuse) had as many or more losses/scares over the last 6-7 weeks of the season as Duke did. And Duke wasn't playing a bunch of nobodies - this was against ACC competition, with teams playing a bunch of different styles. In my view, this was largely due to the defense - it was very consistently good after the Georgetown fiasco. The consistency was one reason I felt pretty good about Duke's chances in the NCAAs (and why I made out like a bandit in several pools by picking Duke to win it all).

So to answer the OP's question, I think that, compared to the rest of the country, this Duke team was very good, probably as good as anybody, and its consistency made it less susceptible to upsets than some of its fellow juggernauts.

[freshmanjs]

If I may respectfully nit-pick your nit-pick, I believe the NCAA recognizes the tournament champion as the national champion. Officially speaking, because the NCAA only recognizes the champion, then our banner says we're the Best Team. I guess my point is that it depends on how you define Best Team; by official NCAA standards, it's us.



I've never seen the NCAA attempt to claim that the national champion is necessarily the best team. In some seasons, that is pretty obviously not the case. (1985 for example).

[Rich]

I've never seen the NCAA attempt to claim that the national champion is necessarily the best team. In some seasons, that is pretty obviously not the case. (1985 for example).

Many of us would argue, and have argued, that was also not the case in 1986 and 1999.

[Rich]

The jump-off point to such a thread is the above tag-quote phrase, "It was the best team in America." Which, as it turns out, reflects the opinion expressed by Bobby Knight sometime around midnight after the NC game. Now Duke Haters Ubiquitous will say, naturally, "Knight knows nuthin,' he's a tool for K." [Sorry if this sounds somewhat more intelligent than the standard Duke Hate rhetoric....] But if one gives Knight at least marginal credibility, listen to [my notes re] what he said in explaining Duke's NC: "Duke over the course of the year showed it could play any way you wanted to play. They did their job of broadening their play offensively, while improving defensively. Without any reservation, in my mind they ended up the best team in the country."

So, given the fact that one is unlikely to be able to have an intelligent discussion of Knight's opinion anywhere else, I am reduced to asking you, fellow posters, to remove your Dark Blue Shades, and seriously grapple with the issue, Just How Good Was That Team?

And to make it slightly more controversial, how good not just "by direct competition" [above tag quote], but by hypothetical competition with, say, Kansas, Syracuse, and UK?


First and foremost, we have a banner that says we were The Best Team. However, if you want to get technical about it, look no further than my pal kenpom. There we have a very strong argument for being scientifically proven as the best team.

http://kenpom.com/rate.php

The other team that was close all season with us was Kansas. I think if we played them 100 times, we'd probably win somewhere between 52-55, so it is close.

This is obviously a completely speculative discussion, but I wouldn't want to have to play Butler 100 times. In many ways they were a mirror image of Duke this year. I think it was our talent that made us 2 points better that Monday, but I wouldn't want to have to do it again.

[Indoor66]

This is obviously a completely speculative discussion, but I wouldn't want to have to play Butler 100 times. In many ways they were a mirror image of Duke this year. I think it was our talent that made us 2 points better that Monday, but I wouldn't want to have to do it again.

Actually, if we played them again with different refs, the outcome could be much different - we could win by 15.

[diablesseblu]

Actually, if we played them again with different refs, the outcome could be much different - we could win by 15.

Yep....as soon as the officials for the final game were announced (the week before), I told the entire family to brace themselves.

It's never a good day for Duke re the officials when Teddy Valentine is on the court.

[MarkD83]

I know that the transitive property does not apply to basketball but...this is a conversation about the 2010 National Champion Duke Blue Devils (I just love that phrase) so..

One week before beating West Virginia, West Virginia beat Ky so Duke > Ky.

One week before beating Butler, Butler beat Syracuse so Duke > Syracuse.

[BleedsP287]

I think the whole best team debate is simple. We have a tournament of basketball games to decide who is the champion. The simplest definition what it means to be champion is that team is best. I'm fine with that as a definition. Part of being best is, and should be, not losing games you should win. It's more clear when you try arguing it from the other direction and you want to support a team being best that didn't win the tournament because they lost a game everyone thought they should win (because everyone thought they were best, but then, turns out they weren't, as indicated by their loss to a mediocre team).

I suppose if we played a bunch of best-of-seven series we could better eliminate the danger of choking in a single game from determining the champion, but, to repeat myself, I'm satisfied with declaring the team that wins out to be the best.

[freshmanjs]

I think the whole best team debate is simple. We have a tournament of basketball games to decide who is the champion. The simplest definition what it means to be champion is that team is best. I'm fine with that as a definition. Part of being best is, and should be, not losing games you should win. It's more clear when you try arguing it from the other direction and you want to support a team being best that didn't win the tournament because they lost a game everyone thought they should win (because everyone thought they were best, but then, turns out they weren't, as indicated by their loss to a mediocre team).

I suppose if we played a bunch of best-of-seven series we could better eliminate the danger of choking in a single game from determining the champion, but, to repeat myself, I'm satisfied with declaring the team that wins out to be the best.

your logic assumes that the better team would win 100% of the time when they play a lesser team.