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bluepenguin
02-10-2011, 09:43 AM
Last night's game had a great outcome. But someone posed a question on snubchat that I think is worthy of discussion. Was the first half of the game an anomaly or did it expose inherent weaknesses in this year's team?
In light of the St. John's game, it's hard to say the first half was an anomaly - even if it was the carolina game, in which all normal rules are thrown out the door. There are several things that come to mind based on the last 5 games or so that have me (and I suspect others) somewhat worried about this teams chances to repeat.
1. Kyrie's injury - this has been discussed ad nauseum, and if he returns, this discussion may be somewhat moot. But without him, some of these issues are more glaring.
2. Inside game - despite having a tall lineup, we seem to be missing an inside game. there does not appear to be a true go to post presence. unc really exposed this, and zeller and henson seemed to have their way with our bigs in the first half. what would happen if we went up against a team like Kansas in the tournament?
3. Nolan - he has carried us so many times, it is hard to actually include him in this discussion. He has taken over Kyrie's job, and imo done a phenomenal job of penetrating - sometimes it appears he does this at will. But, he doesn't like to dish when he penetrates; he usually tries to finish. What happens when we play a stronger team (i.e. non-ACC) that collapses and defends on the drive? He needs to kick out more for open threes - we have the personnel to knock those down.
4. Free throw shooting - generally a plus for this team, but some players are really hurting us from the charity stripe to the point that K actually pulled them out at the end of the game last night so they weren't fouled. We need them in the game.
5. Live by three, die by three - I know some argue this is a ridiculous concept. I don't disagree, but the concept is important. We seem to rely a lot on outside shooting, and even more so because of No. 2 above. When the outside shooting is off, you need the inside game to be working.
Any other thoughts?

jv001
02-10-2011, 09:47 AM
Right now I'm feeling too good to nick pick the team today. I think that I'll just wait a day or two and bask in this great win. GoDuke!

bluepenguin
02-10-2011, 09:49 AM
I too am feeling good after beating Carolina. But as Coach K always says: "NEXT". And thus, I have some concern.

Matches
02-10-2011, 09:49 AM
{shrugs} We have weaknesses. Some of them are correctable and some are not. We're never as bad as we look in our worst moments, or as good as we look in our best moments.

Not sure we really need much inside scoring to win - we put up 79 points against a pretty good defensive team with minimal inside scoring. We need our big guys to rebound, defend, and help our smalls get looks - all of which they did during the 2nd half last night. I'd love to have Elton Brand down there but that's just not this team.

The FT shooting is an aberration. We have some guys who are terrible FT shooters but that's true of almost any team. K's offense/ defense substitutions last night worked fine, and I expect we'll continue to see something along those lines in close games.

hurleyfor3
02-10-2011, 09:51 AM
Kyle shot 3-17. Yee-ikes. FT shooting down the stretch would have made me a lot more nervous had the game been a possession or two closer. Maybe our defense was better than our FT shooting was bad. We beat unc. Yay.

epoulsen
02-10-2011, 10:21 AM
I posted on this issue yesterday. We do not live and die by the three. Consider the three pointer for what it is.... a shot. It is a rare sight if a Duke player puts up a contested three point shot. Coach Ks mentality is if you are open then take the shot, this includes three pointers. We can afford this mentality because we play tight defense, so on an off shooting night we can compensate by keeping their offensive production to a minimum. At the end of my post yesterday I said if we played uncompromising defense, were smart when we handled the ball and kept taking open looks then we would win. In the first half, while we did keep taking open looks, our defense was non-existant and we had, what, eight turn overs? That is not dying by the three, that is dying from a lack of defense and a high turnover rate to compliment their offensive production.... granted the missed shots (which is what a three pointer is) on our end didn't help but thats not what was killing us.

So I ask:

-Are there players taking threes that we feel shouldn't be? (Coach K doesn't think so)

-Are said players taking ill advised or contested three pointers? (I haven't seen many)

-Do we feel as though a missed 3pt attempt would be a made 2 pointer? (Statistically maybe, but really the three point line is about 4 inches wide, how big of a difference is that, recall Seth's toe on the line 2 pointer last night?)

-Do we want to be a team that has to outscore everyone with a non-existant defense, our should defense be our cornerstone which allows us to have a poor shooting night? (I don't)

In the games we have lost this year many are quick to say that we lost because we jacked up threes like they were about to be outlawed. I think we lost those because our defense allowed the opposing team to whatever they wanted offensively, and while a higher level of offensive production on our end would have maybe kept the game a bit closer, I feel we would have lost those games anyway as the opposing team would have made a big play (as they had made plays all game) to seal the win anyway. Thoughts?

Billy Dat
02-10-2011, 10:39 AM
RE: Live and Die by the 3
Someone on this board, can't remember who, once asked why teams are never accussed of living and dying by the 2. I love that we shoot so many 3s. It's a heck of a shot, so great that it's worth 1.5 regular baskets. Our offensive efficiency numbers are always so high because we take and make a lot of 3s. Since the introduction of the 3 point line, teams that utilize the 3 to its full advantage have won a lot of games. How often does a team win when their primary offensive weapon is negated? Would you say Carolina lost last night because, in the 2nd half, we slowed down their interior. Does that mean they died by the 2?

RE: Bigs
I do think there is a lot of merit to the idea that we are not a school where traditional low block big men are going to want to play. But, in all honesty, traditional low block big men are a dying breed. With some exceptions like Dwight Howard, most successful NBA bigs have a face-up game that requires them to knock down 15 footers. I think our primary problem is that our guards are usually so good, our bigs are resigned to screening and rebounding. However, with an elite passing/driving PG like Kyrie, Mason suddenly looked like an All American. The plays we call for our bigs, like last night when we threw the ball into Mason, Miles or Ryan, depend on them having some go to moves. They don't seem to have any. If I were an elite high school big, it would be in the back of my mind that I'd play second fiddle to the guards if I was offered a scholly to Duke.

Personally, I think our biggest weakness is that we have been slow out of the gate and need to get knocked around before we come alive. Part of that is our defense has seemed soft to start a lot of these games. Need to light that candle right out of the gate.

gus
02-10-2011, 10:58 AM
RE: Live and Die by the 3
Someone on this board, can't remember who, once asked why teams are never accussed of living and dying by the 2. I love that we shoot so many 3s. It's a heck of a shot, so great that it's worth 1.5 regular baskets.

Completely agree: I love the 3 point strategy. I think a bulk of our shots should come from 5 feet or 20.75 feet. The reward of the extra point far outweights the increased liklihood of a miss.

Take, for example Dawkin's three point shot early in the 2nd half off a UNC turnover.

Duke had a 2-2 fast break (or was it 2-1, regardless). Dawkins floated out to the three point line. Instead of a contested layup, Smith kicked it to Dre, who was squared up for an uncontested three. Checking the in-game thread later, I know some people groused about the choice because Dre missed, but I'll take an uncontested 3 point shot from Dawkins where he's had the opportunity to square himself to the basket over almost any other shot out there. And the fact that he did it right in front of the coaching staff tells me that they agree.

RelativeWays
02-10-2011, 12:42 PM
I'll be honest. Our defense and complete lack of scoring inside is a big concern. I expected Zeller and Henson to score a lot inside. I didn't expect our big guys to account for a total of 9 points. Thats bad and something needs to be done to fix it. I think that they overthink their offense too much. Both Miles and Mason held the ball for like 2-3 seconds before they decide what to do, and by then the defense is ready for them. We can't have this.

I'll admit, in some ways I'm a little jealous of UNC. Not that I think they are a better team, but I think they know exactly who they are and how to succeed. Again, they have weaknesses, like FTs, outside shooting, depth. But they have a good handle on their strengths and how to use them to their advantage.

I think this team is still searching for its own identity. Its not the physical half court team of last year. Its not the fast transition team we wanted it to be. At times they look a lot like the 07-09 squads, dangerous on the perimenter but sometimes meek on defense, rebounding and one off night from getting run off the floor. I hope we can figure something out because time is running out.

captmojo
02-10-2011, 12:59 PM
I hope we can figure something out because time is running out.

Time's up, and I think it has been figured out. :cool:

Kedsy
02-10-2011, 01:00 PM
Was the first half of the game an anomaly or did it expose inherent weaknesses in this year's team?

First of all, in my mind, last night's game and the St. Johns game had pretty much nothing in common, other than we were losing big at halftime. (And one other thing, which I will discuss at the end.) UNC and St. Johns attacked us in very different ways, both offensively and defensively, so I don't know how anybody could say the St. Johns game and the first half vs. UNC constitute any kind of trend or "blueprint" to defeat us.

To your numbered points:

1. Kyrie will return or he won't. Personally, I think where we miss him most is on defense. Since nobody has any control over this point, I don't know what is gained by discussing it.

2. Stopping big men inside is not an individual achievement, it's a team achievement. Our bigs have to play their role within our team defense and they have to rebound, especially on the defensive end. If they score, it's a bonus. I'm not down on our big guys like so many others on this board.

3. Nolan kicked out plenty of times to three-point shooters last night. Although I would admit that there is a point-of-no-return on his drive that if Nolan hasn't already seen the guy he's going to pass to then he's not going to pass. He's like a quarterback who can see his primary and secondary target, but isn't so great at scrambling around the pocket and improvising. So if he's slicing and dicing, nobody making a last second cut is going to get the ball.

That said, he still leads the ACC in assists, so I don't buy the idea that he "doesn't like to dish when he penetrates."

4. At this point, Miles and Mason, especially, are not going to dramatically improve from the line (although I'm crossing my fingers that Mason can at least get up into the mid-fifties, percentage-wise). I thought the offense/defense switching at the end of last night's game was a smart move by K for that reason, and since they were in on defense it didn't cost us much, if anything. Of course, for that strategy to work, we have to be able to sub them back in, which means we have to be in a two-shot situation (opponent with 10+ fouls) or our good free throw shooters have to make the front end of the one-and-one.

5. The "live by three, die by three" point has been debunked by others in this thread and I don't have much to add.


And, perhaps not surprisingly, I do have other thoughts. I just finished reading the quotes from the game, and two stood out to me. The lesser of the two was that Seth Curry admitted to doing some Nolan/Kyle watching in the past but realized he had to do more to get his shot last night. Hopefully both he and Andre will learn from that lesson and do it all the time, which would make our team very potent on offense, even without Kyrie.

The more important theme, and one I think is a consistent point from both our losses and the first half last night, is playing as individuals vs. playing as a team.

After the game, Coach K said what he told them had to change at halftime: "When you go like that you’re not coordinated and it was more to get a coordinated effort on the offensive and defensive ends."

His comment about the second half was, "We kind of set a tone of attacking together instead of attacking individually and it worked out."

Which are essentially the same comment, and in retrospect I realize this was exactly what went wrong in the St. Johns game. Once we got behind (in both games), then on both ends of the court every player tried to bring us back all by himself, rather than together as at team. Of course, with Duke's system that won't work.

The great thing from last night's win is (unlike the game in New York) at halftime the team realized what they were doing and got back to team play in the second half. We played great team defense and were able to get Seth and Ryan free for a lot of great shots (even though Ryan missed most of his, they were still nice, open looks).

If our team has truly learned that lesson, then we're in great shape for the rest of the year. Do I think it will never happen again? Of course not. But my hope is now that we have examples of what it looks like to keep playing as individuals (St. Johns) and what it looks like to reverse it and play like a team (UNC 2nd half), the team will snap out of these funks a lot quicker in the future.

So, in conclusion, rather than believing last night's performance "exposed a weakness," I think to the contrary it was the first step in revealing a strength.

Just my opinion, of course.

Zeb
02-10-2011, 01:24 PM
5. Live by three, die by three - I know some argue this is a ridiculous concept. I don't disagree, but the concept is important.

Is it ridiculous or is it important? I don't see how it can be both. Perhaps you could you give us some other examples of concepts that are both ridiculous and important?

SCMatt33
02-10-2011, 01:28 PM
Here's my take:

1. It's been mentioned already, but Kyrie's injury is what it is. Does it hurt the team? Absolutely, yes. There is pretty much no way around that. You have to make up for his loss in other areas, which we can do, but it is pretty self-evident that when you don't have a player of his caliber (unless there were catastrophic chemistry issues) you will get worse.

2. The big men don't bother me so much right now. Since the start of ACC play, they have REALLY picked up the rebounding to the point where one or both Plumlees sniffs double digits on any given night. The offense has been sporadic, but neither one needs to be a consistent scorer, but it has certainly helped when they have done it. I think on defense they have really gotten hung out to dry by the perimeter. Most of those easy layups last night (and other nights) have happened when they are forced to leave their man to help on a guard who has blown by his defender. When you play an aggressive defense, the inside guys will often get stuck trying to guard two guys and has to hope for a block or turnover to bail the team out. As an aside, it is hugely important to use scouting to decide what to do. There was no reason to ever help on Marshall. When we stopped helping, our defense really took over.

As for the perimeter D, Nolan is by far our best and has to shut down the other team's best guard. It's really tough, though, to give full energy to the defense, when you have to be the creator AND the scorer on offense AND play 38-40 minutes a night. Nobody can give 110% effort at both ends of the court for 40 minutes and still be effective. I think recently it started to show on D, which is why Coach K has tried every possible way for Nolan to work off of the ball some and not have to be the creator for 40 minutes a night. BTW, to address number 3, I know last night wasn't the best example, but Nolan is averaging over 5 assists per game.

4. FT shooting. Mason stinks and Miles is mediocre. Outside of those two, we are pretty much 80 percent as a team. The good news is that unless someone fouls out, we can throw out the lineup that we did at the end of the game last night and still be effective. Mason's issues seem to be all mental as he has zero consistency in his shooting motion. It's also something that is really tough to fix at this time of the year. Hopefully, whoever fixed Lance's shot is working with Mason and we can see some progress, but even if he still stinks, I don't expect us to turn into Memphis 2008 or Syracuse/Kansas in 2003 and completely wilt at the line in the tourney.

5. Shooting is always the most important stat for every team. If you look at the game plan on KenPom for any team, efg% will almost always have a higher correlation to offensive efficiency than any other stat. For me, the "live by the three" thing comes into play with where our "Mendoza line" is so to speak. What is the point below which we can't be effective against top teams. If you go back to 2007-2009, if we didn't shoot 35-40% from three, we probably weren't going to beat many top 25 type clubs. Look at last night, we shot about 30% for the game and shot exactly the same (4-13) in both halves, so the difference between 14 down and 20 up had nothing to do with 3 point shots on offense. In our 2 losses, Duke was terrible from the three in the two games until it was too late. The percentage wasn't nearly as bad against FSU, but we also gave up a high percentage to them on threes. There is no team in history that will start a game 1-21 from three and expect to win on the road, but we've also won plenty of games this year shooting mediocre which leads me to believe that as long as we can get close to 30%, we'll have a chance against even the best teams (less if the team in question isn't in the top 10).

gwlaw99
02-10-2011, 01:39 PM
But, he doesn't like to dish when he penetrates; he usually tries to finish. What happens when we play a stronger team (i.e. non-ACC) that collapses and defends on the drive? He needs to kick out more for open threes - we have the personnel to knock those down.?

I don't see how the ACC leader in assists can be accused of not passing the ball. Sure he finishes a lot because he is a great finisher. I don't see him having trouble passing if he needs to. He had one pass from the lane last night that made me say "wow."

78Devil
02-10-2011, 01:42 PM
My question on this topic is Kyle Singler's shooting percentage. I am a huge fan of his, and I still believe he is the most important player on this team. Even when he is not shooting well, he does everything else well. BUT his shooting percentage has dropped way off. And more importantly, many of those shots aren't even close. In fact, some of our better rebounding in the second half last night seemed to occur because his shots were SO far off that they just hard bounced off the rim back to the offensive players. Any insights? I know that lots of players go through slumps, but this one seems earlier and longer. I keep waiting for a really good game from him, but I can't remember the last one. But maybe the stat guys can convince me its not the case.

Spam Filter
02-10-2011, 01:45 PM
Honestly, is there a more overused word in sports than "exposed", teams can't just lose any more, they are always "exposed".

Seriously, every time Duke has a bad half or a bad game, it's never they just didn't play well, or the other team played great, or both, it's always Duke being exposed as having a fatal flaw that will lead to their eventual downfall Greek tragedy style.

Yes, we have weaknesses, low post scoring among them, but every team has weaknesses, winning is all about exploiting your opponents' weakness with you strengths better than they exploit your weakness with their strenghs.

Last night was a text book example, they did a better job of exploiting our weaknesses in the first half, we did a better job in the 2nd half.

The flaws that we showed last night should not be news, anyone watches this team play all year knows that we have interior scoring issues. But none of our flaws are fatal in the sense that our strengths cannot make up for it in some other way. Focus on what we can we well and hope we get even better at doing them, rather than wringing our hands over what we can't do.

Last years' team had the same interior scoring issues and it didn't stop them from cutting down the nets.

Spam Filter
02-10-2011, 01:47 PM
I don't see how the ACC leader in assists can be accused of not passing the ball. Sure he finishes a lot because he is a great finisher. I don't see him having trouble passing if he needs to. He had one pass from the lane last night that made me say "wow."

Most of his passes are penetration kick outs an open 3, he's not particularly adept at dumping off to the bigs for layups. But then again, our bigs aren't very adept at presenting themselves as targets for those type of passes, so it's not all on Nolan either.

Kedsy
02-10-2011, 02:02 PM
My question on this topic is Kyle Singler's shooting percentage. I am a huge fan of his, and I still believe he is the most important player on this team. Even when he is not shooting well, he does everything else well. BUT his shooting percentage has dropped way off.

Well, actually, his overall shooting percentage is higher this year than it was last year, even after the UNC game.

What's more important, at least to me, is that in 819 minutes with Kyle on the court, we've outscored our opponents by 460 points, and in the 142 minutes with Kyle on the bench, we've only outscored them by 8. To me, that's pretty amazing.

dukelifer
02-10-2011, 02:11 PM
My question on this topic is Kyle Singler's shooting percentage. I am a huge fan of his, and I still believe he is the most important player on this team. Even when he is not shooting well, he does everything else well. BUT his shooting percentage has dropped way off. And more importantly, many of those shots aren't even close. In fact, some of our better rebounding in the second half last night seemed to occur because his shots were SO far off that they just hard bounced off the rim back to the offensive players. Any insights? I know that lots of players go through slumps, but this one seems earlier and longer. I keep waiting for a really good game from him, but I can't remember the last one. But maybe the stat guys can convince me its not the case.

He had an off night- but he was guarded well and he may have rushed some of the few open looks. But Kyle defended well yesterday and that is not always clear when watching the game in real time. Barnes was pretty much a non-factor in the second half. I would prefer Kyle to shoot his shot in the lane more off of curls and lay off the threes when he is having a tough night. But those games happen- as hard as that is to watch. Next game he could be lights out. Last year he got hot at the right time.

NSDukeFan
02-10-2011, 02:13 PM
...
2. Inside game - despite having a tall lineup, we seem to be missing an inside game. there does not appear to be a true go to post presence. unc really exposed this, and zeller and henson seemed to have their way with our bigs in the first half. what would happen if we went up against a team like Kansas in the tournament?
I would hope our bigs would play the whole game like they did in the second half, rebound and defend like demons, perhaps get outscored, but not by more than our back court outscores the opposition's.

3. Nolan - he has carried us so many times, it is hard to actually include him in this discussion. He has taken over Kyrie's job, and imo done a phenomenal job of penetrating - sometimes it appears he does this at will. But, he doesn't like to dish when he penetrates; he usually tries to finish. What happens when we play a stronger team (i.e. non-ACC) that collapses and defends on the drive? He needs to kick out more for open threes - we have the personnel to knock those down.
Except that the (non-ACC) teams tend to not have be as strong defensively as FSU, UNC or Maryland. I believe if teams overplay his drive and try to stop him that way even more than they already are, there will be a lot of even more open 3-pointers, which I think would be great. I agree the team definitely has the personnel to knock down open threes. At this point, I agree that Nolan sometimes forces up a shot or two when there may be better options, but I don't if anyone in the country is playing better than him, so I will live with the odd less than ideal play for the other dozens of great plays and decisions he makes.

4. Free throw shooting - generally a plus for this team, but some players are really hurting us from the charity stripe to the point that K actually pulled them out at the end of the game last night so they weren't fouled. We need them in the game.
Hopefully, the Plumlees will improve their three point shooting, but if not, there will be some offensive-defensive substitutions as there was last night.
5. Live by three, die by three - I know some argue this is a ridiculous concept. I don't disagree, but the concept is important. We seem to rely a lot on outside shooting, and even more so because of No. 2 above. When the outside shooting is off, you need the inside game to be working.
Any other thoughts?[/QUOTE]
I would love to have Carlos Boozer or Elton Brand on the team, but they don't have any eligibility. Mason, Miles and Ryan are all working on their post moves and are usually pretty good at passing the ball out if they don't have a good opportunity. I expect they will continue to improve and am hoping they will provide the team a bit more offense out of the post and from drive and dish plays and offensive rebounding. The team's more reliable inside game at this point, however is Nolan, Kyle and, at least last night, Seth, driving or pulling up mid-range.

[QUOTE]I'll be honest. Our defense and complete lack of scoring inside is a big concern. I expected Zeller and Henson to score a lot inside. I didn't expect our big guys to account for a total of 9 points. Thats bad and something needs to be done to fix it. I think that they overthink their offense too much. Both Miles and Mason held the ball for like 2-3 seconds before they decide what to do, and by then the defense is ready for them. We can't have this.
What would you suggest to fix it? Should Nolan be a bit less aggressive looking for his own shot and try to get the ball in the post more? Should the team's post players look to force more shots if they are well defended? I would like to have more inside scoring, but that is not currently where this team excels. I do hope to see more passing inside to at least draw the defense in.

I'll admit, in some ways I'm a little jealous of UNC. Not that I think they are a better team, but I think they know exactly who they are and how to succeed. Again, they have weaknesses, like FTs, outside shooting, depth. But they have a good handle on their strengths and how to use them to their advantage.

Don't be jealous of UNC, and especially when there is no good reason. I think this is exactly why Duke doesn't look to pound the ball inside all the time, because the team knows where its two all-American candidates are and tries to have them most involved in the offense. I think that is a good decision; I just hope the team continues to move the ball around a lot, so that passing can create some easy shots more of the time.

I think this team is still searching for its own identity. Its not the physical half court team of last year. Its not the fast transition team we wanted it to be. At times they look a lot like the 07-09 squads, dangerous on the perimenter but sometimes meek on defense, rebounding and one off night from getting run off the floor. I hope we can figure something out because time is running out.
I agree that the team hasn't fully figured out its identity yet, but if the bigs can play like they did in the second half defensively and on the boards, than there is the potential for this team to go far.

OldPhiKap
02-10-2011, 02:27 PM
We are a very good team, with room for improvement.

We have a proven coach who knows how to make those improvements and protect against the flaws as well as anyone.

There is no perfect team. And I wouldn't trade ours for any other one out there this year.

Next play. Beat Miami.

-- OPK

Troublemaker
02-10-2011, 02:28 PM
Last night's game was a step in the right direction, as Seth Curry now takes the pole position in the race to be that third scorer this team needs. He's got to be brimming with confidence right now having come up so clutch in a heated rivalry game, and hopefully that confidence gives him sustaining power.

I know I'm oversimplifying to some extent, but ever since Kyrie went down, the season has become a search for a third scorer. If you were to take last year's championship team and made Jon a 9ppg scorer instead of an 18ppg scorer, you would hear the same complaints about that team. Nolan doing too much, not enough inside scoring, can't play defense, etc.

Look, re: defense, you have to be able to put the ball in the basket so your defense can set up, especially when facing a great transition team like Carolina (or even a good one like St. John's). Also, sometimes you run into a matchup where one of your scorers is blanketed by a long, athletic defender, like how Kyle was smothered by Barnes. On such an occasion, you need to have two other scorers on which to rely.

So my latest hope is Seth Curry. Last night's game could be a springboard to him scoring 14-15 ppg the rest of the season, and that would be huge. That would put us right on par with the second-tier contenders like Pitt, Kansas, and Texas, imo.

Ohio St has its own tier and that's okay. It's hard to lose a top 5 draft pick like Irving and still be the best team in the country. However, I don't concede that Duke can't be among the next group of contenders. Duke isn't there yet but there's plenty of season left for that third scorer to emerge and last night's game could be viewed in hindsight as the turning point.

captmojo
02-10-2011, 02:36 PM
... his shots were SO far off that they just hard bounced off the rim back to the offensive players. Any insights?

Yes.
Shots that back-rim and come straight back off toward the shooter, such as most all of Kyle's were last night, aren't "SO far off". These, in fact, are dead on target. They miss off the back-rim because they were off-range...just a tad long. Kyle's main effort was defense on Harry and his work was so hard that his shot was a bit over charged. Shots under these conditions can be either too long or too short.

Zeb
02-10-2011, 03:20 PM
What's more important, at least to me, is that in 819 minutes with Kyle on the court, we've outscored our opponents by 460 points, and in the 142 minutes with Kyle on the bench, we've only outscored them by 8. To me, that's pretty amazing.

It doesn't surprise me--Singler rarely sits at all in competetive games (40 minutes last night for example). So when he sits it is nearly always in blow outs when Duke goes deep into the bench. During these times we also often seek to use up clock and do not look to score. So why wouldn't our scoring diminish greatly relative to our opponents?

In a totally different direction, see Pomeroy's indictment of plus-minus stats--pretty damning. kenpom treatise on plus-minus (http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/a_treatise_on_plus_minus/)

bluepenguin
02-10-2011, 03:30 PM
Time's up, and I think it has been figured out. :cool:

Wasn't it Coach K who said very recently Duke was still trying to figure it out?

bluepenguin
02-10-2011, 03:39 PM
Nolan kicked out plenty of times to three-point shooters last night. Although I would admit that there is a point-of-no-return on his drive that if Nolan hasn't already seen the guy he's going to pass to then he's not going to pass. He's like a quarterback who can see his primary and secondary target, but isn't so great at scrambling around the pocket and improvising. So if he's slicing and dicing, nobody making a last second cut is going to get the ball.

That said, he still leads the ACC in assists, so I don't buy the idea that he "doesn't like to dish when he penetrates."

Just because he leads the ACC in assists does not necessarily negate the argument that he doesn't dish when he drives. For example, if most of his assists come from when he is at the top of the key feeding to the wing or inside, and not from when he drives and dishes off, then it is conceivable that despite leading the league in assist, he doesn't dish when he drives.


The more important theme, and one I think is a consistent point from both our losses and the first half last night, is playing as individuals vs. playing as a team.

After the game, Coach K said what he told them had to change at halftime: "When you go like that you’re not coordinated and it was more to get a coordinated effort on the offensive and defensive ends."

His comment about the second half was, "We kind of set a tone of attacking together instead of attacking individually and it worked out."

Which are essentially the same comment, and in retrospect I realize this was exactly what went wrong in the St. Johns game. Once we got behind (in both games), then on both ends of the court every player tried to bring us back all by himself, rather than together as at team. Of course, with Duke's system that won't work.

This could also support the above argument. If you drive without dishing off to the open man, that's not attacking together.

bluepenguin
02-10-2011, 03:49 PM
Is it ridiculous or is it important? I don't see how it can be both. Perhaps you could you give us some other examples of concepts that are both ridiculous and important?
Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear. I tend to agree that the concept of "live by the three, die by the three" is not really a valid argument. It is no different than saying "live by the dunk, die by the dunk". The concept upon which I was trying to elucidate was that if your main offensive weapon isn't working, you better have a back-up. Remember what used to happen when JJ's shot's weren't going in? Compare and contrast that to last season when we had at least three different weapons in any game and opponents had a hard time stopping us because they had to pick their poison.
Thus, if all you have is three point shooting, then if that is off, you're gonna lose, i.e. live by the three, die by the three.
In Duke's case, there has been a lot of discussion about finding another weapon outside Kyle and Nolan. Last night it was Curry. I would love to see Duke develop an inside-outside game. Remember how effective that was with JWill and Boozer, et. al.? Or with Laettner's teams? Keep defenders packed in opens up the outside for the perimeter game. And if the defense tries to move out and pressure the perimeter game, the guards feed it into the strong inside players who won't be doubled.

weezie
02-10-2011, 03:51 PM
I keep waiting for a really good game from him, but I can't remember the last one.

But the thing it, Kyle is having monster defensive games. He had Harry B completely gobsmacked last night. The Harry was yapping and jaw-boning at the beginning of the game but his sulking slowly started to rise. There were so many fouls against Kyle that weren't called, he was dragging a Harry anvil throughout the game. The refs simply would not call contact how many times? Late in 2nd half, Kyle was huge with the rebound that put him on the line; as usual, he appears from nowhere and is right on the mark. The shots will fall, if the refs call the contact, holding and shoving.

sagegrouse
02-10-2011, 04:00 PM
I would hope our bigs would play the whole game like they did in the second half, rebound and defend like demons, perhaps get outscored, but not by more than our back court outscores the opposition's.

Except that the (non-ACC) teams tend to not have be as strong defensively as FSU, UNC or Maryland. I believe if teams overplay his drive and try to stop him that way even more than they already are, there will be a lot of even more open 3-pointers, which I think would be great. I agree the team definitely has the personnel to knock down open threes. At this point, I agree that Nolan sometimes forces up a shot or two when there may be better options, but I don't if anyone in the country is playing better than him, so I will live with the odd less than ideal play for the other dozens of great plays and decisions he makes.

Hopefully, the Plumlees will improve their three point shooting, but if not, there will be some offensive-defensive substitutions as there was last night.
5. Live by three, die by three - I know some argue this is a ridiculous concept. I don't disagree, but the concept is important. We seem to rely a lot on outside shooting, and even more so because of No. 2 above. When the outside shooting is off, you need the inside game to be working.
Any other thoughts?

Insightful and reasonable.

For me, the two keys to the game were (a) the ability to hit shots by in the 2nd half by Nolan and Seth and (b) the ability of the team, esp. the big guys, to grab rebounds and loose balls. We seemed to lose most of those scrambles in the first half.

Where the second is important is that, by preventing offensive rebounds by Carolina, we denied easy shots to Henson and Zeller. Their second half scores (18 points in total) were in the end of game situation where Duke had the lead. BTW, I was very impressed with Messrs. Z and H in baby blue.

Am I despondent that we got so little scoring from our front line? Well, I am disappointed. But if I were a Carolina fan, I would be wondering why none -- NONE -- of the Tar Heel guards got into double digits, even though college tends to be a guards' game. Give the Duke defense some credit.

sagegrouse

Kedsy
02-10-2011, 04:04 PM
Remember what used to happen when JJ's shot's weren't going in? Compare and contrast that to last season when we had at least three different weapons in any game and opponents had a hard time stopping us because they had to pick their poison.

What three offensive weapons did we have last year that we don't have this year? Jon's points came primarily from jump shots. If our shots weren't falling last year we had the same problem we have this year except this year we have more shooters and last year we had better offensive rebounders.

Kedsy
02-10-2011, 04:06 PM
Just because he leads the ACC in assists does not necessarily negate the argument that he doesn't dish when he drives.

While I suppose theoretically this could be true, the reality is Nolan dishes plenty when he drives. Admittedly his dishes are mostly to 3-point shooters on the wings, rather than to big men poised to dunk, but he still dishes plenty.

weezie
02-10-2011, 04:08 PM
Jon's court vision and cool temperament helped calm rough waters at times, too.

Kedsy
02-10-2011, 04:13 PM
Jon's court vision and cool temperament helped calm rough waters at times, too.

Jon was a great college player, no question, with many talents that were not obvious in the box score and many that were. But to say this year we are too dependent on the outside shot but last year we weren't is not accurate in my opinion. That was all I was trying to say.

weezie
02-10-2011, 04:27 PM
Jon was a great college player, no question, with many talents that were not obvious in the box score and many that were. But to say this year we are too dependent on the outside shot but last year we weren't is not accurate in my opinion. That was all I was trying to say.

No, I was responding to what you asked about what weapons we had last year vs. this year. Hope you didn't take offense!

captmojo
02-10-2011, 04:59 PM
Wasn't it Coach K who said very recently Duke was still trying to figure it out?

Well, they did a decent job of getting it figured out in the second half last night, did they not?
Quite a simple answer against the holes, for the moment. Keep them with the ball on the outside and outrun them down the floor. Which did not happen in the first half. How much did kerraliner score from outside of 7 feet from the basket?
See? It worked.

Kedsy
02-10-2011, 05:29 PM
In a totally different direction, see Pomeroy's indictment of plus-minus stats--pretty damning. kenpom treatise on plus-minus (http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/a_treatise_on_plus_minus/)

I read that treatise when it came out and I just re-read it again, and I don't think it's particularly damning. All he seems to be saying is it's hard to screen for randomness. In his model, he plays 20 games between two exactly even teams, and yet, in 40% of those games, one team or the other won by 13 or more points (and in 25% of those games one team or the other won by 19 or more points).

That's a lot of randomness, but the thing is, if that randomness eliminates plus/minus as an effective metric, doesn't it also eliminate any other metric based on points scored? Except, hold the phone, Pomeroy's main rating is pretty much entirely based on points scored. Does that mean it's a useless metric?

And while I'm ragging on KenPom (who I'm actually a big fan of, in general), can I say something else that bothers me about his ratings? They're only useful if you assume a team can force its average tempo. Just because a team is very efficient in a 50 possession game doesn't mean they'll be equally efficient in an 80 possession game (and similarly a team used to being efficient in an 80 possession game may not be equally efficient in a 50 possession game). In fact, they would almost certainly be worse if they play outside their comfort zone, speed-wise. So if they can force their preferred slow tempo (either by playing great defense or playing something like the Princeton offense) then, fine, his numbers make sense. But if they can't force their tempo against a fast team, then the numbers are pretty close to useless. And yet I couldn't find anywhere on Pomeroy's site where he measures how good teams are in forcing their tempo (which I would assume could be done using some sort of standard deviation).

My point is Pomeroy isn't infallible. His test involving plus/minus certainly provides fodder for thought, but I don't think it should be considered the last word on the subject.