Featherston: Duke Hits The Road

[Bob Green]

I believe this latest excellent article (http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/articles/?p=37820) from Al Featherston raises a couple of key discussion points so I'm starting a thread.

The article starts by discussing Duke's current 25 game win streak but more specifically how the current team make-up has only won the last seven games as illustrated by this Coach Krzyzewski quote:


“We’ve only played seven games with the team we have,” Krzyzewski noted after Sunday night’s hard-fought victory over Maryland. “We’re not this great basketball team. We’re a good basketball team that has to gain experience, gain maturity. Even though we’ve won all of our games, in eight of them we were probably the best team in the country. The last seven, we’re trying to find out who we are as a team.”

In the middle, Al discusses Coach Krzyzewski's neutral court scheduling philosophy and ask the question:


Where’s the problem?

The only potential negative to the neutral court strategy – aside from the complaints of jealous rivals – is the suggestion that avoiding tough non-conference road games robs the team of the kind of potential tests that can toughen it up for the conference road games that can’t be avoided.

The question I throw out to the forum for discussion is should Duke return to playing top teams on their homecourt? Or, is the current neutral court scheduling philosophy working?

At the bottom of the article, Al ranks Duke's eight ACC road games from easiest (Wake Forest) to hardest (UNC). Tonight's game at Tallahassee comes in at #6. I'm sure all of us arm chair coaches/journalist can offer up lots of reasons to rearrange the order of toughness of Duke's ACC road schedule.

Personally, I believe the Feb. 2 game at Maryland will be our toughest road challenge with the Mar. 5 game at UNC coming in second place.

[mkline09]

I believe this latest excellent article (http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/articles/?p=37820) from Al Featherston raises a couple of key discussion points so I'm starting a thread.

The article starts by discussing Duke's current 25 game win streak but more specifically how the current team make-up has only won the last seven games as illustrated by this Coach Krzyzewski quote:



In the middle, Al discusses Coach Krzyzewski's neutral court scheduling philosophy and ask the question:



The question I throw out to the forum for discussion is should Duke return to playing top teams on their homecourt? Or, is the current neutral court scheduling philosophy working?

At the bottom of the article, Al ranks Duke's eight ACC road games from easiest (Wake Forest) to hardest (UNC). Tonight's game at Tallahassee comes in at #6. I'm sure all of us arm chair coaches/journalist can offer up lots of reasons to rearrange the order of toughness of Duke's ACC road schedule.

Personally, I believe the Feb. 2 game at Maryland will be our toughest road challenge with the Mar. 5 game at UNC coming in second place.

Good points. I worried about Duke's lack of playing tough non conference opponents on their home cour for a while. I have since changed my feeling on it though.

I believe that K uses the netural court meetings to expose the team early in the season to NCAA Tournament type situations.

Not sure a team you play once every so often would help prepare for conference teams that know you better and that you have rivalries with.

Duke is more likely to play the Michigan State, Kansas State's of the world on a netural court at the end of the season than on their home floor, unless it is the women's tournament. So overall I don't think K is too overly concerned with the non conference schedule.

They typically play a respectable to good Big 10 team every other year on their home floor. They played Wisconsin last year in the Big 10/ACC Challenged and lost.
So I think they are still some occassions when it happens I just don't see it as being a focus anymore.

And of course the old "Duke is Duke" phrase, which translates to Duke gets everyone's best shot.

[Faustus]

Personally, I miss the big "intersectional" games Duke used to play. They don't have to be very numerous, one or perhaps even two on occasion a year, and we still kind of do them - Temple, St. John's this year, Georgetown last, for example. I do well understand the logic against doing them, and as we'll no doubt find out again tonight, playing road games in conference is nasty enough, and I see the neutral site strategy as good experience for the NCAAs later on too. And I also understand that with the Big10-11-12 Challenge now, every other year we play one of them away built in automatically to our schedule and reducing by one a road game we probably should be setting up somewhere. And Duke almost every year now joins some pretty big names in pre-season tournaments. All true.

But you know, as a fan of college basketball, there is something that brings excitement and interest in taking on big names on their own turf. I still remember beating Kansas in Allen Field House years ago. It was neat having home-and-homes with UCLA and Michigan. Few big time programs will come to Cameron if we won't play at their places in return, and so Duke fans at home see mostly Bradley or Alabama-Birmingham. As a top ranked team, it can't be too dangerous to show the flag in enemy territory every now and again. It's good for the college game in general and raises interest nationwide. As a fan (I'm certainly no coach or AD), I'd like to see a bit more of this sprinkled into our schedule. We know we can beat Bradley at home. But wouldn't it be fun to see what this team could do, in a game that won't make or break our seeding in March 'cause it would be one game December or Jan., at the home of another top ten program in another part of the country?

[ncexnyc]

Definitely a very good article, but who really cares? Most Duke fans already know this and the haters will continue to hate no matter what facts and figures are shown to them.

[NSDukeFan]

Definitely a very good article, but who really cares? Most Duke fans already know this and the haters will continue to hate no matter what facts and figures are shown to them.

I care. I have really enjoyed Al's articles. Even though I probably knew most of what was said in the article, I definitely enjoyed it and liked hearing his perspective. I like his use of facts and figures and as you said haters are irrational and won't be convinced anyway, so why tailor the article to suit them. As has been seen from this thread, there are reasons that sane people may not like the way coach K schedules, but it is nice to hear the reasons he does.