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View Full Version : What Joe Lunardi is looking forward to this season:



AlaskanAssassin
11-08-2010, 03:01 PM
Joe Lunardi:


Duke failing to defend its national championship. I say this not from a dislike of the Blue Devils, but from the reality which, more often than not, befalls the consensus back-to-back titlist. There's a reason only Duke (1991-92) and Florida (2006-07) have repeated in the 64-team era: It's really, really hard to do. Think of all the "obvious" repeat champions who didn't: Georgetown, 1985; UNLV, 1991; North Carolina, 1994; Arkansas, 1995; Kentucky, 1997; and Arizona, 1998, to name a half-dozen. All were heavily favored, all came up short and all (it says here) were better teams than the 2010-11 Blue Devils.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/preview2010/columns/story?columnist=bilas_jay&id=5779974

(at the very bottom)

What a crazy thing to look forward to!

Gthoma2a
11-08-2010, 03:06 PM
They were all better teams than we are? He knows this already? I think we had one of the best teams there is and the reason that a lot of these teams didn't repeat was because they didn't have K... he has done it before and he stands the best chance of anyone to do it again.

SCMatt33
11-08-2010, 03:13 PM
That was definitely a poor choice of words on his part. You can't finish the sentence "Here is what I am looking forward to seeing as we start the 2010-11 college basketball season:" with "Duke losing" and not have it come off as hating, even with all the explanation in the world. This is one of those things where someone told him to write 100 words on the topic and he took 5 minutes (at most) out of his day to do it. If you just read his explanation, and not the "look forward to" part, it's actually a reasonable prediction, even if most of us would disagree. He probably should have written something along the lines of "seeing a new champion crowned" if he felt compelled to go in that direction without coming off as hating on Duke.

Of coarse, Coach K is the only coach since John Wooden to attempt to go back-to-back on non-consecutive occasions. Hopefully, he improves on his first attempt to do so.

CLT Devil
11-08-2010, 03:16 PM
Time to revive the "Duke Hatred Tsunami" thread? I'll say most of the articles have been very positive, especially towards K. How long until the Honeymoon is over and writers/bloggers go for the easy story?

I guess this also begs the question; Other than the requisite hatred toward Coach K, who on our team is the 'hated player?' It seemed to be Scheyer last year, at least with UNC and MD fans. I don't think there really is one this year, and would like to add that I have no idea why Scheyer took the mantle last year, but every year someone seems to get the ire of the 'Haters.

NSDukeFan
11-08-2010, 03:17 PM
That was definitely a poor choice of words on his part. You can't finish the sentence "Here is what I am looking forward to seeing as we start the 2010-11 college basketball season:" with "Duke losing" and not have it come off as hating, even with all the explanation in the world. This is one of those things where someone told him to write 100 words on the topic and he took 5 minutes (at most) out of his day to do it. If you just read his explanation, and not the "look forward to" part, it's actually a reasonable prediction, even if most of us would disagree. He probably should have written something along the lines of "seeing a new champion crowned" if he felt compelled to go in that direction without coming off as hating on Duke.

Of coarse, Coach K is the only coach since John Wooden to attempt to go back-to-back on non-consecutive occasions. Hopefully, he improves on his first attempt to do so.

I am either not understanding this properly, and/or you didn't word this as well as you could have. Otherwise, aren't all back-to-back attempts on consecutive occasions?

uh_no
11-08-2010, 03:28 PM
I am either not understanding this properly, and/or you didn't word this as well as you could have. Otherwise, aren't all back-to-back attempts on consecutive occasions?

i think he means its our second attempt at back to back (the first being in 1991-1992)....so pretty much it means we won back to back and then won another championship down the road....this would also be true of florida if they won, say, this year

77devil
11-08-2010, 03:28 PM
I am either not understanding this properly, and/or you didn't word this as well as you could have. Otherwise, aren't all back-to-back attempts on consecutive occasions?

I read it to mean that Wooden had two separate sets of consecutive championship, as Coach K could have had in 2002, and has the opportunity again in 2011. Wooden's first back to back championship seasons were in the mid 60's, followed by a break in 1966 when Texas Western won, after which were the consecutive championships that began in 1967 and ended in 1974.

Starter
11-08-2010, 03:48 PM
I don't think this is "hate," per se, it's just what he thinks. It's not really a good argument, though. Absolutely, it's tough to repeat. It's tough to win once. But it happened a whopping three years ago, and it happened last decade too, so it's not like it's impossible.

Not to mention, all those great teams he named, if you somehow used a time machine and had them play our team straight-up, would almost certainly win. But the most recent team he named was 12 years ago, and our team may just be better relative to the current diluted state of college basketball than those teams were. I know we were last year.

I wouldn't bet the house on Duke winning (especially since I live in an apartment), but before last season, I was targeting 2010-11 for them to be a serious contender. Then they won last year. They're obviously still extremely talented, possibly even more so than last year, and few teams are on their level. If they develop the sort of chemistry and team concept that they did last season, and there's no reason to expect that not to happen, a repeat is definitely not out of the question.

ice-9
11-08-2010, 04:02 PM
I don't think we're in the middle of a Duke hate tsunami -- in fact, I think we're in the middle of a lot of Duke love. We're popular picks among recruits again, we have momentum, we are getting a lot of positive press coverage.

It goes back to my theory that it all comes down to winning in the post season: go far and people will love you; lose early and people will doubt you. It wasn't a coincidence that the "tsunami" came at the same time we couldn't advance past the second weekend of the tournament.

MCFinARL
11-08-2010, 04:07 PM
Not to go all semantic here, but in fairness, Lunardi may have not meant that wants Duke not to repeat or will enjoy that happening. He may have meant "looking forward to" more literally, i.e., "expecting." If he did, we can agree or disagree, but it's hard to read that as hating.

SCMatt33
11-08-2010, 04:32 PM
Not to go all semantic here, but in fairness, Lunardi may have not meant that wants Duke not to repeat or will enjoy that happening. He may have meant "looking forward to" more literally, i.e., "expecting." If he did, we can agree or disagree, but it's hard to read that as hating.

Normally, I'd agree with the sentiment here, but ESPN's NCAAB coverage has a pretty good history of these "looking forward to" segments for upcoming weeks/months/years and they are always in the context of what an analyst is "excited to see" and not "expects to happen." Usually the responses are a very generic form of "Player/Team/Conference X try to accomplish Y Short/Medium/Long term goal." It is very rarely worded in the negative and is never an absolute. That being said, I already commented on and still believe that this was something he simply didn't word correctly, but he certainly understood the premise.

CEF1959
11-08-2010, 04:34 PM
There are over 340 Division I basketball schools, each with its own fan base. And only one of those fan bases is "looking forward to" Duke winning the NC this year. So whether Lunardi is hoping or expecting that Duke won't win, the fact that he is "looking forward to" our not winning hardly counts as hate.

mr. synellinden
11-08-2010, 04:54 PM
Not to mention, all those great teams he named, if you somehow used a time machine and had them play our team straight-up, would almost certainly win. But the most recent team he named was 12 years ago, and our team may just be better relative to the current diluted state of college basketball than those teams were. I know we were last year.



I think this is a key point. The college basketball landscape is so different these days with the top players rarely staying more than 2 years, and most leaving after one. That is what makes it so hard to repeat or sustain excellence. Look at what has happened to the elite programs in the last decade. Indiana, UNC, Kentucky, UCLA, UConn, Georgetown, Arizona all have suffered bad (and in some cases embarassingly bad) seasons or stretches. (This to me is what has set Duke apart. Since 95, even during our worst seasons we have always made the tourney.).

This is in very large part due to early departures. It may never happen again that one team, much less a defending national champion, will return two SENIOR pre-season All-Americans. The supporting cast this year compared to 2006 with J.J. and Shelden is significantly more talented and deep. So I would agree that, relative to the competition, this year's team enters the season with a greater advantage than previous defending champions.

Still doesn't mean we are likely to win or even have better than a 20% chance to win, but I think we have the best chance to win which is all you can ask for going into the season or the NCAA tourney.

Kedsy
11-08-2010, 04:59 PM
I think this is a key point. The college basketball landscape is so different these days with the top players rarely staying more than 2 years, and most leaving after one. That is what makes it so hard to repeat or sustain excellence.

I agree with most of what you say, but I don't think it's harder to repeat now than it was, say, from 1974 to 1991, a period in which there were no repeat national champions and during most of which early departures were not that big an issue.

Greg_Newton
11-08-2010, 05:25 PM
IMO, this is meaningless logic. Sure, it's unlikely that Duke wins this year, on a purely statistical basis. It's also unlikely for MSU to win the championship, because that has also only happened twice. It's also unlikely that UNC wins, because a NT team has only had a freshman leading scorer a couple of times. It's also likely that Butler wins, because 0% of NTs have been won by schools whose names are synonyms for house servants. And so on.

Basically, the fact that Duke is coming off a championship doesn't mean that its chances are any worse than anyone else's, it just means that the field is always heavily favored over a single team - and mathematically, the chances of a single team beating the field in ANY two given years (back to back or not) is very small. Has nothing to do with the reality of the 2010-2011 season, though.

Mal
11-08-2010, 05:45 PM
A good writer, not wanting to be seen as "hating" on anyone, could simply have started his response with "Seeing whether Duke struggles in trying to defend its national championship" and going on from there. But Joe Lunardi's not a particularly good writer - he's known mostly for moving a bunch of numbers around on a weekly basis.

Regardless, it's still a worthless entry into a "things I'm looking forward to seeing" column. You get the chance to see a defending champion fail to defend its championship almost every year. Listing that as one of the interesting plots for the upcoming season is almost like listing "seeing if all the 16 seeds lose in the first round of the tourney again." What a boring response.

77devil
11-08-2010, 06:04 PM
I agree with most of what you say, but I don't think it's harder to repeat now than it was, say, from 1974 to 1991, a period in which there were no repeat national champions and during most of which early departures were not that big an issue.

Can't remember how many conference tournaments decided their only NCAA tourney entrant before it expanded(and am not interested enough to to the research), but it was clearly harder to repeat, (e.g. 1975 NCSU) when a team had to win a one and done tournament just to get an NCAA berth

jafarr1
11-08-2010, 06:12 PM
I don't think we're in the middle of a Duke hate tsunami -- in fact, I think we're in the middle of a lot of Duke love. We're popular picks among recruits again, we have momentum, we are getting a lot of positive press coverage.

It goes back to my theory that it all comes down to winning in the post season: go far and people will love you; lose early and people will doubt you. It wasn't a coincidence that the "tsunami" came at the same time we couldn't advance past the second weekend of the tournament.

I can pretty much guarantee that, if Duke emerges as a dominant force this year, by the end of the season, some of the press will start picking at any chinks in the armor.

The only thing the press loves to do more than build a team (or individual) up is to tear them down.

yancem
11-08-2010, 07:57 PM
I don't think this is "hate," per se, it's just what he thinks. It's not really a good argument, though. Absolutely, it's tough to repeat. It's tough to win once. But it happened a whopping three years ago, and it happened last decade too, so it's not like it's impossible.

Not to mention, all those great teams he named, if you somehow used a time machine and had them play our team straight-up, would almost certainly win. But the most recent team he named was 12 years ago, and our team may just be better relative to the current diluted state of college basketball than those teams were. I know we were last year.

I wouldn't bet the house on Duke winning (especially since I live in an apartment), but before last season, I was targeting 2010-11 for them to be a serious contender. Then they won last year. They're obviously still extremely talented, possibly even more so than last year, and few teams are on their level. If they develop the sort of chemistry and team concept that they did last season, and there's no reason to expect that not to happen, a repeat is definitely not out of the question.

I think that this is an important factor. If you look back at the back to back FL and Duke teams (and you might as well through in '91 UNLV and '97 KY since they came very close to repeating) the common denominator is a talented team that won a year earlier than expected and still managed to return most of the key players.

If Laettner decides to go pro (which there was talk of him doing so) then Duke doesn't repeat. For FL Noah, Horford and Brewer all could have gone pro after their first title and they don't even make the tourney if those three declared.

sandinmyshoes
11-08-2010, 08:03 PM
It might be fair to say they were all better teams than we are, in terms of talent. But he's forgetting that they also had to face better teams than we'll have to face in this era of one-and-done and generally higher attrition rates to the NBA.

CameronBornAndBred
11-08-2010, 08:03 PM
There's a reason only Duke (1991-92) and Florida (2006-07) have repeated in the 64-team era: It's really, really hard to do.

Isn't seeing something that's "really, really hard to do" the essence of sports? How many times have we been sucked in by the possibility of the impossible happening when any other day we don't even care about the contestants?

Duvall
11-08-2010, 08:05 PM
It might be fair to say they were all better teams than we are, in terms of talent. But he's forgetting that they also had to face better teams than we'll have to face in this era of one-and-done and generally higher attrition rates to the NBA.

More importantly, a couple of those teams (UNC 1994, Arizona 1998) just weren't that great even in their own time.

oldnavy
11-08-2010, 08:24 PM
I don't think we're in the middle of a Duke hate tsunami -- in fact, I think we're in the middle of a lot of Duke love. We're popular picks among recruits again, we have momentum, we are getting a lot of positive press coverage.

It goes back to my theory that it all comes down to winning in the post season: go far and people will love you; lose early and people will doubt you. It wasn't a coincidence that the "tsunami" came at the same time we couldn't advance past the second weekend of the tournament.

I disagree. Who hates a loser?? I think it is much more complicated than that. I believe K's involvement with USA and the success there and associated national pride. Also, the positive things all of the pro's had to say about K contributed to less "K Hate" and got the word out "unfiltered" that he is really a great man and coach. Also, do not discount the personality of the team last year. Nobody on that team was easily to dislike. They were very likeable, humble, intelligent and well spoken... just good kids, much like this years squad IMO.

Plus, Duke has taken some strides to open the team up a little for PR reasons. I think that it all has contributed to less Duke hate.

ice-9
11-10-2010, 01:45 AM
I disagree. Who hates a loser?? I think it is much more complicated than that. I believe K's involvement with USA and the success there and associated national pride. Also, the positive things all of the pro's had to say about K contributed to less "K Hate" and got the word out "unfiltered" that he is really a great man and coach. Also, do not discount the personality of the team last year. Nobody on that team was easily to dislike. They were very likeable, humble, intelligent and well spoken... just good kids, much like this years squad IMO.

Plus, Duke has taken some strides to open the team up a little for PR reasons. I think that it all has contributed to less Duke hate.


I agree in that all those things count, but I also believe that winning in the post season is the most important factor. If we had lost again in the Sweet Sixteen, sure, Coach K would be getting some accolades for his work with the US national team, but we wouldn't be having the tsunami of love that we have now.

Witness Forde's article as an example: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/preview2010/columns/story?columnist=forde_pat&id=5782981

On what if Hayward's shot had won Butler the game:

And there would be the stories questioning whether Krzyzewski can ever win another title.

The whole basis of that article is about winning.

moonpie23
11-10-2010, 09:22 AM
as coach k pointed out.... "you can't defend something you've already won."

duke will pursue again...

rhcpflea99
11-10-2010, 10:50 AM
I'm having a hard time believing this years Duke team will match the chemistry & toughness Schyer, Zoobek, and Thomas brought to the court.

COYS
11-10-2010, 10:52 AM
I'm having a hard time believing this years Duke team will match the chemistry & toughness Schyer, Zoobek, and Thomas brought to the court.

It is true that championship chemistry is hard to develop, but there is a lot to carry over from last season and part of the legacy last year's seniors have left behind will be the understanding of what it takes to be a championship team they imparted on all the returning players.

jipops
11-10-2010, 11:10 AM
More importantly, a couple of those teams (UNC 1994, Arizona 1998) just weren't that great even in their own time.

Arizona wasn't but UNC was. With the exception of George Lynch, UNC returned their core '93 championship team and added Stackhouse and Rasheed who were studs on day one along with another future NBA player in McGinnis. Make no mistake this team was ridiculously loaded but also had bad chemistry issues between the new young guns and returning seniors (where was the Carolina family then?). This ended up being their ultimate downfall. I remember a Mike Brey quote that said something like "the only team they hate more them themselves is us (Duke)".

Fortunately the 2010-11 Blue Devils won't have this type of problem.

Duvall
11-10-2010, 11:27 AM
Arizona wasn't but UNC was. With the exception of George Lynch, UNC returned their core '93 championship team and added Stackhouse and Rasheed who were studs on day one along with another future NBA player in McGinnis. Make no mistake this team was ridiculously loaded but also had bad chemistry issues between the new young guns and returning seniors (where was the Carolina family then?). This ended up being their ultimate downfall. I remember a Mike Brey quote that said something like "the only team they hate more them themselves is us (Duke)".

Well, that's the thing. It wasn't just their ultimate downfall, it was their midseason downfall as well. Their chemistry problems caused them to lose a fair number of games during the regular season, and finish second in the ACC at 11-5. They really only came together for the Duke games - when they lost in the second round it didn't even feel like that much of an upset.

They should have been a great team, but they never were.

jipops
11-10-2010, 11:35 AM
when they lost in the second round it didn't even feel like that much of an upset.

They should have been a great team, but they never were.

Yet oh what a happy day that was!

Very true, they were kind of a 'should have been', though they did seem to put it together after winning the ACC tournament. I believe Stackhouse got mvp. I guess on paper they just looked outstanding, but <insert cliche' here>.

Turk
11-10-2010, 04:59 PM
I don't think Lunardi is a Duke hater. (It seems odd that he chose not to mention the 2002 Devils in his list; I would rank that team over 1995 Arkansas or 1998 Arizona...) The only criticism I've ever heard from Mr. Lunardi about Duke is Coack K's overzealous and aggressive ref-baiting compared to other coaches.

What he is "looking forward to" is the Butler or the WVU or whomever that knocks off the consensus no-brainer #1 team - that's what makes the tournament so good. Here's a quote from a "summer buzz" filler piece:

Duke
Lunardi's Upside: Another trophy for the Blue Devils, this time on April 4 at Reliant Stadium in Houston.
Lunardi's Downside: If I had to bet a mortgage payment on Duke or "the field" in 2011, give me the latter.

I love me some Bracketology, even in November!! Almost better than stuffin' and punkin pie!!