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View Full Version : Passing is key for Duke (Chronicle Article)



dragoneye776
04-04-2012, 12:30 AM
I read this Chronicle article today and I had to agree with a lot of the points mentioned: http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/passing-key-duke-moving-forward

The pump fake and pass is something I did not see often near the end of the season and neither was passing to the bigs off the pick and roll. I remember reading somewhere that we don't pass to the bigs off the pick and roll because we either don't have good passers or our bigs can't catch the ball on the run. As a result, we constantly shoot the 3 off the ball screen, making us easily guarded.

I disagree though. I believe that we have great passers like Quinn and Andre into the post and the Plumlees and Kelly are more than able to catch the ball on the run.
I found two video examples of beautiful pick and rolls: Curry at 0:09 and Gbinije at 0:50 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhTq1Gq_Qg8.
Austin also did two great passes to Hairston during the Lehigh game, both resulted in a open jumper, and Hairston landed one (I can't find the video).
Here's a great low post assist by TT 0:22 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq455-7PokU
and by Curry here 0:09 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq455-7PokU
and 0:55 here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvLQVEbUfss.
And this slow motion one by Rivers at 0:26 is just awesome http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGD9YPN-8ls
and again at 0:46 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBJ9yTTJrtM.

If we ran our offense like this towards the end of the year, we surely wouldn't have had such a "stagnant offense" that Rivers talked about. The two games against VT and then against Lehigh consisted of just about three things
1. Guards shooting off screens
2. Rivers driving
3. Plumlees playing with back to basket
When our threes don't land and Rivers can't seem to finish his drives, why didn't do we some epic passing like we did at the beginning of the year? I'm not saying we should have gone with Quinn over Tyler, I'm just commenting on a noticeable lack of good passing. (First Thread!)