tommy
02-26-2012, 06:12 PM
I don't think there's much question but that the defensive effort against FSU was excellent. Nobody who watched that game could fairly say that Duke did anything other than play with focus and intensity and intelligence for the entire 40 minutes. Which they needed to in order to win that game against a team that tough in that pressure cooker environment.
I actually did a full charting of the game like I was doing earlier in the season, in addition to the formulaic charting I've been doing over at dukehoopblog.com, which will be up shortly over there. Some of the stuff that I was tracking that doesn't make it into that other type of charting includes ball denial, staying in front of one's man, and help defense.
In this game, Miles Plumlee graded out very strong in those areas -- in particular denying entry passes. Tyler Thornton did the best of the perimeter guys in denying wing passes where FSU wanted to be getting them. In terms of stopping dribble penetration and staying in front, Austin Rivers, as usual, graded out the highest.
You can look shortly over at dukehoopblog for the entire chart, but the highlights first of all are a pretty good (for us) overall defensive rating of 100.5; Austin's team leading number of 94.7, fueled by the fact that he forced his man to miss 10 shots and only gave up 2 hoops, and Tyler's 95.9. But for me, the best was that Andre Dawkins checked in with a 99.0, better than the team as a whole, and Dre only was responsible for 1.5 hoops and a free throw.
In terms of the more basic stop % numbers I've been posting here, here they are for this game:
Stops
Hoops
Stop%
Curry
25
30
45%
Rivers
32
32
50%
Dawkins
21
18
54%
Mason
13
14
48%
Thornton
21
20
51%
Kelly
28
25
53%
Miles
27
21
56%
Cook
10
3
77%
Gbinije
0
1
0%
Hairston
2
5
29%
TEAM
36
34
51%
Of the four primary perimeter guys, Andre led the team! Maybe there's something to the idea that his D is better when his shot is falling, huh?
But numbers, in my mind, really don't capture in this particular game, the strength of the defensive effort. To me, it felt like a real vintage Duke defensive game, where there were very few mental errors, we were down on the floor a lot, we were talking, we were aggressive from start to finish, we played very good team defense -- just the kind of defense that some of our best teams over the years have played in some of their toughest games. That's not to say this team can or will bring it to this level regularly now, but we know for sure they have the ability -- both physical and mental.
I actually did a full charting of the game like I was doing earlier in the season, in addition to the formulaic charting I've been doing over at dukehoopblog.com, which will be up shortly over there. Some of the stuff that I was tracking that doesn't make it into that other type of charting includes ball denial, staying in front of one's man, and help defense.
In this game, Miles Plumlee graded out very strong in those areas -- in particular denying entry passes. Tyler Thornton did the best of the perimeter guys in denying wing passes where FSU wanted to be getting them. In terms of stopping dribble penetration and staying in front, Austin Rivers, as usual, graded out the highest.
You can look shortly over at dukehoopblog for the entire chart, but the highlights first of all are a pretty good (for us) overall defensive rating of 100.5; Austin's team leading number of 94.7, fueled by the fact that he forced his man to miss 10 shots and only gave up 2 hoops, and Tyler's 95.9. But for me, the best was that Andre Dawkins checked in with a 99.0, better than the team as a whole, and Dre only was responsible for 1.5 hoops and a free throw.
In terms of the more basic stop % numbers I've been posting here, here they are for this game:
Stops
Hoops
Stop%
Curry
25
30
45%
Rivers
32
32
50%
Dawkins
21
18
54%
Mason
13
14
48%
Thornton
21
20
51%
Kelly
28
25
53%
Miles
27
21
56%
Cook
10
3
77%
Gbinije
0
1
0%
Hairston
2
5
29%
TEAM
36
34
51%
Of the four primary perimeter guys, Andre led the team! Maybe there's something to the idea that his D is better when his shot is falling, huh?
But numbers, in my mind, really don't capture in this particular game, the strength of the defensive effort. To me, it felt like a real vintage Duke defensive game, where there were very few mental errors, we were down on the floor a lot, we were talking, we were aggressive from start to finish, we played very good team defense -- just the kind of defense that some of our best teams over the years have played in some of their toughest games. That's not to say this team can or will bring it to this level regularly now, but we know for sure they have the ability -- both physical and mental.