MBB: Duke 91, Vermont 90 Post-Game Thread

[JBDuke]

Put your post-game thoughts here.

[CDu]

Well, at least we didn't lose. But we are going to have figure out defense. Can't let a 1-4 team run layup drills like that.

[Ichabod Drain]

I'm buying stock in TUMS....

[gurufrisbee]

We won.

Now I will go a vomit.

That sums the game up for me.

[DukeBlueHeart4]

Way too close for my liking. This team is beginning to confuse me a little. I know that Vermont shot out of their minds tonight but I still did not expect this. Glad we got the W but we need to learn from the last couple of close-calls.

[rocketeli]

Too close! Before anyone turns into chicken little--Vermont played out of their frickin minds. We need to work on our rebounding though.

[arnie]

Put your post-game thoughts here.

Anyone understand the technical reasons we can't play D?

[uh_no]

Way too close for my liking. This team is beginning to confuse me a little. I know that Vermont shot out of their minds tonight but I still did not expect this. Glad we got the W but we need to learn from the last couple of close-calls.

they're making layups at a ridiculous clip!

[Channing]

If team after team shoots lights out against us perhaps our defense is just bad. In the new environment the pressure man defense leaves you exposed on the backside time and time again.

[Ichabod Drain]

they're making layups at a ridiculous clip!

It's almost like they ran that drill right before tip-off...

[FerryFor50]

I can finally relax my sphincter....

Vermont played out of their minds. Villanova-esque (circa 1983). Hit everything they put up and their zone flummoxed Duke. Gonna suck facing Syracuse if they don't learn how to beat it.

Wayyyy too many threes. Drive, get fouled. That's the new NCAA.

Survive and advance! (Too soon?)

[NYBri]

Allowing a team like Vermont to score 90 is a problem. The ole defense at the top of the key will be our downfall more than once.

[nyesq83]

Nice colorectal extraction!:cool:

[KandG]

Good news: 1) Duke won. 2) It's early in the season. 3) Made (most) of the late game free throws.

Bad news: Where do you even start? Making the 304th best shooting team - one that had lost 3 of 4 games coming in to Cameron - look like the Steve Nash-led Phoenix Suns in their prime? All the credit in the world to Vermont, but they were distraught at the end of the game because they knew they deserved to win. And they're right.

The home team has been a fun team to watch the last two games…on one end of the floor.

[Furniture]

We get everyone's best game

[flyingdutchdevil]

Firstly, congrats to Vermont. Great opponent. Lots of experience, lots of heart.

Secondly, good looking offense. 91 points - not bad.

Thirdly to God-knows-what-the-list-is, that was PATHETIC defense. I thought our defense was bad during the Austin Rivers year, but this was so much worse. And don't BLAME the refs or the new rules, it's Duke 100%.

Jabari, Andre, Cook, Sheed, and Amile had terrible defense. I now see the true value of Hairston and Thornton: when you're mediocre at D, you look like Shane Battier and Wojo in comparison to your teammates who can't defend to save their lives.

I hope Coach K kicks their collective asses for the next 3 days. This team needs it. There is no toughness, there is no cohesive defense, there is little heart.

And I do not feel that I am overreating. Vermont was 1-4 walking into this game (and losing to St. Joes, Bryant, Providence, and Wagner) and scoring an average of 63 points. We were in Cameron, we are a top 10 team, and we had plenty of rest coming into this game.

Wow...just wow.

[Papa John]

And I don't mean that in a good way... Yipes, that was not pretty...

[meowmix911]

Why do people think Vermont shot out of their minds? They shot at least a dozen layups. They actually didn't SHOOT that much. They missed a number of late free throws and were not very good from the 3pt line. I hope we can shore up the communication, because when guys get beat nobody is stepping up from the helpside!

[Dukeblue91]

Wow is all I can say at the moment.
Oh and that our defense is extremely porous or none existent.

[slower]

Just as some sage individual posted that (in light of our difficulties with ECU) Vermont was going to be in trouble tonight, I guess that Alabama is REALLY in a world of trouble on Wednesday. Of course, I don't believe that, but I won't be surprised if some "expert" posts words to that effect in the Alabama pre-game thread. smh

Seems as if we've been having this same conversation (re: defensive incompetence) for many years now.

[meowmix911]

Firstly, congrats to Vermont. Great opponent. Lots of experience, lots of heart.

Secondly, good looking offense. 91 points - not bad.

Thirdly to God-knows-what-the-list-is, that was PATHETIC defense. I thought our defense was bad during the Austin Rivers year, but this was so much worse. And don't BLAME the refs or the new rules, it's Duke 100%.

Jabari, Andre, Cook, Sheed, and Amile had terrible defense. I now see the true value of Hairston and Thornton: when you're mediocre at D, you look like Shane Battier and Wojo in comparison to your teammates who can't defend to save their lives.

I hope Coach K kicks their collective asses for the next 3 days. This team needs it. There is no toughness, there is no cohesive defense, there is little heart.

And I do not feel that I am overreating. Vermont was 1-4 walking into this game (and losing to St. Joes, Bryant, Providence, and Wagner) and scoring an average of 63 points. We were in Cameron, we are a top 10 team, and we had plenty of rest coming into this game.

Wow...just wow.

Agreed. Some of the worst defense on a Coach K team I've ever seen (and I've probably watched every game since 1992).

[duke4ever19]

their zone flummoxed Duke. Gonna suck facing Syracuse if they don't learn how to beat it.

It may be of interest to note that ECU also played zone and managed to hang with us as well.
The scouting report on us is definitely out if tonight is any indicator. Very few teams can match us man-to-man, so they wont, they will go zone.

[DukeWarhead]

Too close! Before anyone turns into chicken little--Vermont played out of their frickin minds. We need to work on our rebounding though.

Nope. This was a pitiful win. Yes, there is such a thing and we just witnessed it. Sure, it's better than an admirable loss, but still pitiful. First ECU, and now Vermont. Frickin' Vermont drops 90 on our floor.
The sky is not falling but this team clearly has not figured out defense yet, and if it does not soon, we can score all we want but will lose quite a few games.
Hard to be too excited after what just happened.

[Henderson]

Too close! Before anyone turns into chicken little--Vermont played out of their frickin minds. We need to work on our rebounding though.

Rebounding was a bright spot tonight. We out rebounded them 30-24. We shot reasonably well both from the field (48%) and the three (37%). We especially shot free throws well tonight, and those free throws down the stretch made the difference in the end.

But OMG that defense. OMG. Vermont didn't play out of their frickin' minds. They played in the paint. Because we let them.

I hope we don't hear from Coach K in his presser what a great basketball game this was against a great well-coached opponent. Malarkey. This was an embarrassingly close win against a 1-4 Vemont team, because Duke failed on the defensive end tonight.

[Potato Head]

Vermont shot ridiculously well from long distance, but they also had a ridiculous number of uncontested layups. Not sure about the 4 point play call, nor the late foul on Vermont, which sort of killed the game from a neutral perspective. Clearly we have some problems, but Vermont was awesome, so props to them. Also, Jabari saved our buns. Probably not for the last time.

[CDu]

If team after team shoots lights out against us perhaps our defense is just bad. In the new environment the pressure man defense leaves you exposed on the backside time and time again.

They didn't shoot the lights out. They got layups. Even more glaring indictment of the defense.

[CDu]

Vermont shot ridiculously well from long distance, but they also had a ridiculous number of uncontested layups. Not sure about the 4 point play call, nor the late foul on Vermont, which sort of killed the game from a neutral perspective. Clearly we have some problems, but Vermont was awesome, so props to them. Also, Jabari saved our buns. Probably not for the last time.

Vermont shot 30.8% from long distance. Hardly "ridiculously well."

[RoyalBlue08]

We have a lot of players this year that are liabilities on the defensive end. So many Duke players lose their men on backdoor cuts, fail to switch properly on the picks, make no effort to block out, etc etc. Good news is that these are things that can be learned. But two of the biggest problems on the defensive end are Jabari and Rodney, and K has pretty much handed them the keys. Hopefully they are willing to learn after a performance like this.

[gurufrisbee]

Cook plays nice defense from the other baseline to the three point line. THen NO ONE plays any defense from the three point line to our own baseline. Pressure defense is meaningless when you don't put any hands on the ball to make actual turnovers and when some simple dribbling allows you to not only beat it, but beat it so badly that it forces other help to leave their man because now people are wide open.

[Camandill]

Kids don't learn defense in high school. This team is young. They will get better.

[Potato Head]

Vermont shot 30.8% from long distance. Hardly "ridiculously well."

From 3 yeah, but a bunch of those were midrange jumpers. "Ridiculously well" might be exaggerating it a bit, but they made all the clutch ones.

[KandG]

Interesting that the Vermont coach said he decided to defend with the zone when he saw how much success ECU had with it, even though he normally hates zone. Said the new rules on contact almost require playing some zone. Food for thought for the Duke coaching staff.

[kAzE]

Vermont shot 64.8% from the floor. WOW. They missed 7 free throws. A couple more makes, and we might be talking about one of the biggest upsets ever. I expect Coach K to make starting lineup changes next game. Thornton is a lock to start, but unfortunately, he's also averaging like 4.9 fouls per game right now with these new rules. Boy, what's going on with Sulaimon? He has really shot the ball poorly as of late, and his defense has been almost equally bad. That's one guy who we really need to step it up right now. He's capable of playing so much better than this.

[dukelion]

Who cares about rebounding at this point. 90 points to Vermont!?

Defending the layup seems to be the main issue.

They gave up more layups than a 650 yard par 5.

[CDu]

From 3 yeah, but a bunch of those were midrange jumpers. "Ridiculously well" might be exaggerating it a bit, but they made all the clutch ones.

They hit quite a few mid-range shots. They did not shoot well from long distance.

[Saratoga2]

Our scoring is excellent, now we need to make changes that include playing defense and rebounding. I am not as convinced Thornton is helping the team much although he has a lot of supporters at Duke. Anyhow, coach K needs to think of what next. Only a couple of days until we play again so not much time to correct things. Would a bigger player inside have helped? I agree that Vermont scored from mid range and inside more than from the three.

[FerryFor50]

From 3 yeah, but a bunch of those were midrange jumpers. "Ridiculously well" might be exaggerating it a bit, but they made all the clutch ones.

Yes they hit a bunch of pull up and mid-range jumpers, not just layups...

And many of the jumpers were pretty well defended.

[Potato Head]

They hit quite a few mid-range shots. They did not shoot well from long distance.

Congratulations on your semantic victory!

[CDu]

Interesting that the Vermont coach said he decided to defend with the zone when he saw how much success ECU had with it, even though he normally hates zone. Said the new rules on contact almost require playing some zone. Food for thought for the Duke coaching staff.

I (and others) brought this up a week or two ago. We may need to go zone. We won't do it, but we may need to do it.

[wallyman]

Kids don't learn defense in high school. This team is young. They will get better.

Well, Rodney's had two years of college to learn. How many times did he allow points by not boxing out? And wasn't D supposed to be part of his resume? He's been great overall, and we're certainly lucky to have him, but astonishing to watch Vermont get all those layups and putbacks. I don't get it. Some years we were bad on D because we didn't have the "athletes." Hard to see why we should be so bad now. It's not Greg Paulus being beat off the dribble.

[CDu]

Congratulations on your semantic victory!

Hey, it isn't my fault you said something completely wrong!

[OldSchool]

Vermont was 2 for 5 from the free throw line in the last four minutes. They left this game at the stripe.

I think our coaching staff is looking at our quick, athletic personnel and foreseeing an overplay style of defense that can turn the opponent over frequently, as has been the case with certain heralded Duke teams from the past. Obviously, we're seeing some growing pains in forging our defensive identity. We're quick to try to cut off a passing lane, but slow to rotate or find and cover or get a body on an open man.

[Potato Head]

Hey, it isn't my fault you said something completely wrong!

Did you watch the game? They couldn't miss in the second half.

[gurufrisbee]

Yes they hit a bunch of pull up and mid-range jumpers, not just layups...

And many of the jumpers were pretty well defended.

With all due respect, what game were you watching?

Vermont spent all night dribbling around our pressure into wide open lanes and/or extra help that came and left their man wide open.

[mapei]

They hit quite a few mid-range shots. They did not shoot well from long distance.

Does anyone have the second-half stats on that? It did seem like they hit from distance down the stretch.

[moonpie23]

great win…..need to work on defense….

I'll take it...

[FerryFor50]

With all due respect, what game were you watching?

Vermont spent all night dribbling around our pressure into wide open lanes and/or extra help that came and left their man wide open.

The game where they hit a bunch of mid range jumpers...

[CDu]

Did you watch the game? They couldn't miss in the second half.

If you had said "they shot ridiculously well from midrange," I wouldn't have disagreed with you. But you didn't say that. So I disagreed.

[Henderson]

Did you watch the game? They couldn't miss in the second half.

But it wasn't from long range. They killed with layups and jumpers in the paint. This wasn't one of those games where an outmanned team rained threes to keep it close.

[burnspbesq]

With all due respect to the Chicken Little Brigade, nothing of significance is at stake on November 24.

The only way this game hurts us is if we fail to learn from it. That applies to both the players and the staff.

[DBFAN]

I know this May seem weird, but I bet we play better D against the bigger and better teams. The reason: the refs won't have some pre conceived notion that if the better team does something that it has to be a foul. Kinda like watching Shaquille play, everything that involved him looked violent so the refs for a long time automatically blew the whistle on him. Or if you want a more recent example, Brian Zoubek

[CDu]

The game where they hit a bunch of mid range jumpers...

And layups.

Yes, they hit some tough shots. They also got a ridiculous number of easy shots.

[loran16]

Duke's D is a man to man D with a strategy of big guys helping out frequently on guard penetrating. It has always been this way.

Duke's interior defenders this year however do not want to be interior defenders. For most of the second half, it was Jabari playing Center and Hood playing PF, and neither guy seems to understand their role inside. Hood didn't box out at all - one guy counted 10 points on offensive boards by Hood's man and there was one comical board where Hood had position jumped and completely whiffed on the ball going to the guy behind him. And Jabari seems deathly afraid to help out - and when he does, he's often incredibly slow to do so.

This cannot happen - the new rules make it FAR HARDER for guards to keep in front of penetrating guards....they're going to get in far more easily. To handle this, guys need to step up and force opponents to make an extra pass - but we're not even doing that.

[kAzE]

I (and others) brought this up a week or two ago. We may need to go zone. We won't do it, but we may need to do it.

I thought we used some zone in recent years? Maybe as early as 2008, after Coach K's first Olympics, he seemed to use it for a few possesions here and there. It's not impossible that he could tinker with it. Obviously, he needs to try something to salvage this defense right now.

[FerryFor50]

And layups.

Yes, they hit some tough shots. They also got a ridiculous number of easy shots.

Yes, and layups. But not as many as people are suggesting, I'd bet...

[drcharl]

Why shouldn't we shift to zone at least periodically? It's too agonizing to watch those easy and often uncontested layups.

[kAzE]

With all due respect to the Chicken Little Brigade, nothing of significance is at stake on November 24.

The only way this game hurts us is if we fail to learn from it. That applies to both the players and the staff.

Nobody is saying the sky is falling. Everybody is saying we need to get better.

[gurufrisbee]

Our scoring is excellent, now we need to make changes that include playing defense and rebounding. I am not as convinced Thornton is helping the team much although he has a lot of supporters at Duke. Anyhow, coach K needs to think of what next. Only a couple of days until we play again so not much time to correct things. Would a bigger player inside have helped? I agree that Vermont scored from mid range and inside more than from the three.

Hood is a slightly tall shooting guard. Parker is a slightly tall small forward. We can pretend they are a 3 and a 4, but we can't pretend they are a 4 and 5 and use THorton in a line up with Cook and Dawkins/Sheed. None of them defend the ball well enough to make up for the fact that then no one can rebound.

[meowmix911]

But it wasn't from long range. They killed with layups and jumpers in the paint. This wasn't one of those games where an outmanned team rained threes to keep it close.

They had almost the same field goal percentage in the 2nd half as the first. Both were 65% I believe. 21 assists on 35 made FG's. 6 TO's only from Vermont. Hard to say a team got lucky and/or shot the lights out when you see those numbers. Strangely a team so quick on offense can't speed up a slow unathletic team on D. Layup line city. Got to improve going forward (and it well, obviously). But the game should have been lost. In a weird way, I wish we lost it--sometimes we need a kick in the face.

[CDu]

Yes, and layups. But not as many as people are suggesting, I'd bet...

Pretty sure you'd be wrong. I will look it up for you though.

[FerryFor50]

Pretty sure you'd be wrong. I will look it up for you though.

I looked for a shot chart... Couldn't find one though.

[loran16]

Hood is a slightly tall shooting guard. Parker is a slightly tall small forward. We can pretend they are a 3 and a 4, but we can't pretend they are a 4 and 5 and use THorton in a line up with Cook and Dawkins/Sheed. None of them defend the ball well enough to make up for the fact that then no one can rebound.

FTR this isn't really true. Jabari parker is 6'8 225 pounds. That's basically lance thomas measurements. Lance played the 4/5. Moreover, those are bigger measurements than a guy who played similarly in position - KYLE SINGLER. Singler played the 2 through 5 in College, and Duke's D was never below the top 20 with him.

There's no reason Jabari can't do what Singler did.

[dukelifer]

With all due respect to the Chicken Little Brigade, nothing of significance is at stake on November 24.

The only way this game hurts us is if we fail to learn from it. That applies to both the players and the staff.

It is true that this game has no meaning- but the D is poor. Guys are either not communicating or understand how to play it correctly. This should have been a loss but it will be forgotten. The team is not committed to playing D at a high level. That needs to be a habit or it will be a long season.

[CDu]

I looked for a shot chart... Couldn't find one though.

Will be up by tomorrow morning I suspect.

[Chicken Little]

Too close! Before anyone turns into chicken little--Vermont played out of their frickin minds. We need to work on our rebounding though.

Bawk, bawk.

Seriously though, this defense has been unbelievably bad. I was willing to accept that the rules changes would take some getting used to(both for players and refs), but this is ridiculous. Something has to give.

[DukeWarhead]

With all due respect to the Chicken Little Brigade, nothing of significance is at stake on November 24.

The only way this game hurts us is if we fail to learn from it. That applies to both the players and the staff.

Members of the Pollyanna Patrol, If you think ECU and Vermont games were just flukes, good on you. Let's hope you're right.

[CDu]

FTR this isn't really true. Jabari parker is 6'8 225 pounds. That's basically lance thomas measurements. Lance played the 4/5. Moreover, those are bigger measurements than a guy who played similarly in position - KYLE SINGLER. Singler played the 2 through 5 in College, and Duke's D was never below the top 20 with him.

There's no reason Jabari can't do what Singler did.

The bigger issue is that Hood is clearly not comfortable inside on defense. He needs to be on the perimeter.

[Henderson]

I looked for a shot chart... Couldn't find one though.

I was following it on game tracker. I didn't get the 2nd half stat, but 13 of their first 16 were in the paint. The second wasn't quite that bad, but it was still points in the paint over and over. And Vt. only took 13 three point shots all game, making only 30%.

[gurufrisbee]

FTR this isn't really true. Jabari parker is 6'8 225 pounds. That's basically lance thomas measurements. Lance played the 4/5. Moreover, those are bigger measurements than a guy who played similarly in position - KYLE SINGLER. Singler played the 2 through 5 in College, and Duke's D was never below the top 20 with him.

There's no reason Jabari can't do what Singler did.

Kyle Singler was at his best for him and for the team when he was playing at the 3. Thanks for the confirmation.

[Goduke2010]

Vermont shot 64.8% from the floor. WOW. They missed 7 free throws. A couple more makes, and we might be talking about one of the biggest upsets ever. I expect Coach K to make starting lineup changes next game. Thornton is a lock to start, but unfortunately, he's also averaging like 4.9 fouls per game right now with these new rules. Boy, what's going on with Sulaimon? He has really shot the ball poorly as of late, and his defense has been almost equally bad. That's one guy who we really need to step it up right now. He's capable of playing so much better than this.

On another thread yesterday I posted that Rasheed's time as a starter was close to ending. Guessing we've arrived even earlier than I thought.

If you followed the 2nd half of last season, all summer with the USA team, and through the beginning of this season, you conclude that he's not an especially good shooter, his D isn't impressive, and he gets seriously flustered/upset at himself and basically races coach K to take himself out of the game.

I really like Sheed, you can tell how badly he wants to do well. Feel bad for the kid.

[CDu]

I was following it on game tracker. I didn't get the 2nd half stat, but 13 of their first 16 were in the paint. The second wasn't quite that bad, but it was still points in the paint over and over.

Yeah, it was still a LOT of shots in the paint in the second. They hit 3 second half threes, but I would still suggest that most of their buckets were very close to the rim.

[DBFAN]

I thin this sums up the teams effort the last two games

@laurakeeley: Very somber Mike K. Said his guys didn't respect Vermont or the game enough, something he's rarely felt about one of his #Duke teams

[wilko]

Why shouldn't we shift to zone at least periodically? It's too agonizing to watch those easy and often uncontested layups.

Duke zone? what team have you been watching?

[CDu]

I thin this sums up the teams effort the last two games

@laurakeeley: Very somber Mike K. Said his guys didn't respect Vermont or the game enough, something he's rarely felt about one of his #Duke teams

Good on Coach K. Don't want to be the players for next practice.

[mike88]

I will be interested in any adjustments that the coaching staff makes in terms of the man to man defense. At least so far this year, we haven't been successful with the pressure defense in terms of getting turnovers. Coupled with poor rotation and lack of a legitimate shot blocker, plus poor defensive rebounding and a plethora of (touch)fouls on the perimeter, gives us performances like ECU and tonight. Part of it is just playing harder and with better communication, but if I were K, I might dial back the half-court pressure a little and make teams make shots over us.

[gurufrisbee]

On another thread yesterday I posted that Rasheed's time as a starter was close to ending. Guessing we've arrived even earlier than I thought.

If you followed the 2nd half of last season, all summer with the USA team, and through the beginning of this season, you conclude that he's not an especially good shooter, his D isn't impressive, and he gets seriously flustered/upset at himself and basically races coach K to take himself out of the game.

I really like Sheed, you can tell how badly he wants to do well. Feel bad for the kid.

If Sheed is about to lose his starting job then it absolutely should NOT go to Thorton.

I'm fine with looking at some other options if those are along the lines of Jones or Semi or Murphy or even maybe Hairston or MP3.

But there is NOTHING that Tyler does better than Sulaimon - not shooting, not passing, not defense, not rebounding, not penetrating - nothing.

[meowmix911]

On another thread yesterday I posted that Rasheed's time as a starter was close to ending. Guessing we've arrived even earlier than I thought.

If you followed the 2nd half of last season, all summer with the USA team, and through the beginning of this season, you conclude that he's not an especially good shooter, his D isn't impressive, and he gets seriously flustered/upset at himself and basically races coach K to take himself out of the game.

I really like Sheed, you can tell how badly he wants to do well. Feel bad for the kid.

Sheed is roughly Daniel Ewing. He needs to get his game back. His freshman stats were on par with players who end up being all-conference in their later years. He's just in a little slump now.

[FerryFor50]

Yeah, it was still a LOT of shots in the paint in the second. They hit 3 second half threes, but I would still suggest that most of their buckets were very close to the rim.

Just went through the play by play...

Roughly 22 made shots were listed as "layups" or "dunks."

11-ish shots were jumpers (including threes).

I stand corrected. They got killed in the paint. :)

[Henderson]

On another thread yesterday I posted that Rasheed's time as a starter was close to ending. Guessing we've arrived even earlier than I thought.

If you followed the 2nd half of last season, all summer with the USA team, and through the beginning of this season, you conclude that he's not an especially good shooter, his D isn't impressive, and he gets seriously flustered/upset at himself and basically races coach K to take himself out of the game.

I really like Sheed, you can tell how badly he wants to do well. Feel bad for the kid.

Laura Keeley tweeted during the game that Andre Dawkins was coming in for Rasheed as a defensive substitution. I thought, "Uh oh."

[miramar]

Bawk, bawk.

Seriously though, this defense has been unbelievably bad. I was willing to accept that the rules changes would take some getting used to(both for players and refs), but this is ridiculous. Something has to give.

You know something is wrong when Tyler Thorton, our best perimeter defender, makes a terrible foul late in the game on a desperation three. Or when a team that comes in shooting something like 40% hits 65%.

The improvement will come, but the sooner the better.

[loran16]

Kyle Singler was at his best for him and for the team when he was playing at the 3. Thanks for the confirmation.

Kyle Singler was at his best at the 3, yes. Duke's D was still great with him at a big man position.

Way to ignore the point.

[mbwalker]

According to play-by-play on ESPN, Vermont made 10 layups in 1st half, 11 layups/dunks/tip-ins in 2nd half. That's 21 total, or 42 points. Add in 12 points from threes (4/13) and 16/23 free throws for a total of 70 points. That leaves 10 baskets you could call mid-range.

So more than two layups for every midrange shot made. Don't know if that qualifies as a layup drill, but it certainly isn't good defense. Way too many points in the paint.

[mgtr]

I have several questions. Why was Sheed in the game so long? Unless he has some mystical role not shown in the stats, he didn't do much. I know he started last year, and did well in some games, but this year I haven't seen much. Second, what Amile's role? I assume it is to rebound and get easy putbacks. Yet he had 6 rebounds, (2 offensive). I think he had 2 points. I don't know what the answer is, but we need to be doing something different when we start playing good teams.

[gurufrisbee]

Kyle Singler was at his best at the 3, yes. Duke's D was still great with him at a big man position.

Way to ignore the point.

Nothing was ignored. Singler was at his best at the 3 - and the team, including their DEFENSE, was their best then, as well.

[azzefkram]

The bigger issue is that Hood is clearly not comfortable inside on defense. He needs to be on the perimeter.

Couldn't agree more. Jabari could man the 5, though I'm not a huge fan of it, but Hood is not a good fit at the 4 when it comes to defense and rebounding.

[wilko]

great win…..need to work on defense….

I'll take it...

I'll agree with that...
I think our strategy on D so far is so shock and awe the opponent into submission with an eruption of a hot start on offense.... Our D HAS to get better.... I'm sure K sees it.

Right now "We are Uke" the D is silent...

[DukeWarhead]

I thin this sums up the teams effort the last two games

@laurakeeley: Very somber Mike K. Said his guys didn't respect Vermont or the game enough, something he's rarely felt about one of his #Duke teams

I wish that was the only problem. Something tells me it is more than just not respecting the opponent.

[CDu]

Per ESPN's play by play, 21 of Vermont's 35 baskets were layups or dunks. That does not include short jumpers or fouls drawn in the paint.

They played well on offense, but we very much let them do what they wanted throughout the game. This was NOT a case of a team shooting out of its mind.

[Goduke2010]

I thin this sums up the teams effort the last two games

@laurakeeley: Very somber Mike K. Said his guys didn't respect Vermont or the game enough, something he's rarely felt about one of his #Duke teams

Look, Coach K is great. But that doesn't mean he's infallible. I hope he's not so set in his ways that he can't rethink what this team can/can't do and adjust accordingly. If that means zone, or Jones/Semi starting, or whatever, I hope he and his staff use the rest of pre-conference to push the reset button and start from scratch. Because nothing could be worse than what we saw tonight.

I think sometimes we say "effort" or "focus" is lacking, when the real culprit is lack of playing well. The staff needs to fix this at a strategic level.

[Duke76]

I thin this sums up the teams effort the last two games

@laurakeeley: Very somber Mike K. Said his guys didn't respect Vermont or the game enough, something he's rarely felt about one of his #Duke teams


no offense, just defensive possessions, their switching is exceptionally confusing to me this year, sometime they both follow the ball
other times they don't...just don't understand their strategy, the lack of boxing out is especially poor this yr...where was jefferson this yr
not sure he got even 10 minutes and Matt jones so 0 minutes i think...thought he was somewhat of a defensive stopper

offense looked disjointed as well....no driving what so ever and that is all vermont did...

[dukelifer]

I'll agree with that...
I think our strategy on D so far is so shock and awe the opponent into submission with an eruption of a hot start on offense.... Our D HAS to get better.... I'm sure K sees it.

Right now "We are Uke" the D is silent...

K said non-existent but either way it is no where to be found.

[CDu]

Nothing was ignored. Singler was at his best at the 3 - and the team, including their DEFENSE, was their best then, as well.

And when we get 4 bigs to bump Parker to the 3, we can do so...

[jipops]

The bigger issue is that Hood is clearly not comfortable inside on defense. He needs to be on the perimeter.

Beat me to it. Hood is not effective at all in his defensive role.

[Henderson]

Rebounding. 30-24.

Free Throw Shooting. 83%, including some clutch ones down the stretch.

Andre: 16 points. Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.

Jabari: 26 points. The Real Deal.

Rodney: 22 points and 7-8 from the line. His season FT% is now about 85%.

[CDu]

Beat me to it. Hood is not effective at all in his defensive role.

Furthermore, the entire offseason argument was that we might offset our lack of size inside with extra length on the perimeter. Playing Hood at the 4 makes us even smaller inside and takes away our size advantage outside.

[CDu]

Rebounding. 30-24.

Free Throw Shooting. 83%, including some clutch ones down the stretch.

Andre: 16 points. Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.

Jabari: 26 points. The Real Deal.

Rodney: 22 points and 7-8 from the line. His season FT% is now about 85%.

Lots of nice offensive stats. No nice defensive stats .

[wallyman]

And, for the Tyler fans, worst play of a dreadful game was when he fouled the three-point shooter throwing up a prayer at the buzzer. Understand what he brings and what he doesn't, but if, as a senior, he makes that play, hard to figure out an argument for why he should be in there when it matters.

[DBFAN]

I find myself being wrong most of the time when I am trying to speculate on some of K's tactics, but I'm not so sure some of this game being so tight wasn't because K felt like his team needed a kick in the rear end before they head to NY. Maybe because they didn't get the lesson when they played ECU, or maybe it takes a diff kind do pressure off of a kid when they start to believe its their effort mad not their skill. Now instead of wondering or being worried going into next week, they may feel like they have something to prove to themselves, and to their Coaches, and school. Obviously I'm just guessing here but so,e quotes from the presses seem to reaffirm my thoughts

@DukeReport: Coach K presser " it's their day to play against us... Our guys don't always see that".


@laurakeeley: K: "You’re going to have questions, and you’re going to pick different parts of the game, and I’m going to just tell you we were awful.”


@laurakeeley: Very somber Mike K. Said his guys didn't respect Vermont or the game enough, something he's rarely felt about one of his #Duke teams

[fogey]

Wow.

I coached 4th graders today who blocked out better than our guys. Rodney may not be large enough to play underneath, but he was just as big or bigger than the guy he was guarding and several times he just turned and became a spectator when the ball went up, rather than finding his man and exploding to gain rebounding position on him. That goes for others as well; blocking out is really a lost art in this switching, man to man defense.

Maybe Dennis Rodman is available (if he is back from North Korea) to give a guest lecture on the subject.

[Henderson]

Lots of nice offensive stats. No nice defensive stats .

Agreed about the defensive stats. But our defensive play was like the old joke about Wagner music: "Worse than it sounds."

Even among the offensive stats, we only shot 49% from the field (solid, not exceptional) and 37% from 3 (good, not exceptional). FT% was really good. But we can't play defense like that and expect to make up for it on offense.

[jipops]

Furthermore, the entire offseason argument was that we might offset our lack of size inside with extra length on the perimeter. Playing Hood at the 4 makes us even smaller inside and takes away our size advantage outside.

I actually think Hairston should be subbing in and out with Amile. Problem is if Jabari sits that takes away a lot of scoring from the frontcourt we rely on if both Josh and Amile are in there. Semi has yet to show any defensive ability down low.

[NYBri]

And, for the Tyler fans, worst play of a dreadful game was when he fouled the three-point shooter throwing up a prayer at the buzzer. Understand what he brings and what he doesn't, but if, as a senior, he makes that play, hard to figure out an argument for why he should be in there when it matters.

Hard to argue with that.

[dyedwab]

A few random and disconnected observations

1. One of the things about the defense was that we were expending a lot of energy. We were moving around a lot - but it looked like we had no earthy idea why.

2. K's post-game presser was as big a rip of one of his teams as I've ever heard.

3. Going back, it's been pretty clear that Rasheed has been struggling for a while. In a lot of Coach K's pre-season comments, the absence of Rasheed mentions perked my ears. But his cratering right now is really bad for the team as a whole

4. There is currently nothing we are doing well on defense. If we picked one thing (turnovers, stopping penetration, defensive rebounding, forcing bad shots) our prospect would improve a lot.

5. With our defense as awful as it is, we still are 5-1. We can win because of our offensive firepower. And we may have to.

6. I'm looking forward to someday soon rooting for a Duke team that again prides itself on its defense.

[sagegrouse]

Wow.

Maybe Dennis Rodman is available (if he is back from North Korea) to give a guest lecture on the subject.

I thought our man Kyrie said he bought a one-way ticket to Pyongyang.

Sagegrouse

[azzefkram]

Maybe Marshall isn't ready for primetime but when the opposing team shoots 76% from 2pt range, could he really make it worse?

[Duvall]

Maybe Marshall isn't ready for primetime but when the opposing team shoots 76% from 2pt range, could he really make it worse?

Two ends of the floor.

This Duke team may just have personnel problems that can't be fixed.

[jipops]

K ripped Duke basketball in the post game which included himself. This was not remotely up to the standard this program has built over the years. This was not a win, we just happened to have 1 more point. This is a paraphrasing of his comments.

Teams usually have a very difficult time making the tournament playing defense like this. It's a good thing we can score.

[azzefkram]

Two ends of the floor.

This Duke team may just have personnel problems that can't be fixed.

We have enough offensive firepower to punt one of the positions when on O.

[meowmix911]

And, for the Tyler fans, worst play of a dreadful game was when he fouled the three-point shooter throwing up a prayer at the buzzer. Understand what he brings and what he doesn't, but if, as a senior, he makes that play, hard to figure out an argument for why he should be in there when it matters.

I actually think that he slipped. It was exactly the same spot where the Vermont player slipped right after changing his sneakers...

[jipops]

Two ends of the floor.

This Duke team may just have personnel problems that can't be fixed.

Well, it appears nearly 100% unlikely this is going to be a very good defensive team. But I don't believe that some of the issues won't be fixed or compensated for.

[wallyman]

We have enough offensive firepower to punt one of the positions when on O.

Ok, it's just one game (we'll put ECU aside for the moment), and it's just one day. But if you watched the UNC game and you watched the Duke game, who looked like the better team? Like I said, just one day....

[davekay1971]

Interesting that the Vermont coach said he decided to defend with the zone when he saw how much success ECU had with it, even though he normally hates zone. Said the new rules on contact almost require playing some zone. Food for thought for the Duke coaching staff.

I made a point to this effect during the in-game thread. Pressure man to man is very difficult to play with these rules. Our guys are well coached enough to know that there's basically no hand-checking, no contact allowed. How do you guard a reasonably quick player in that situation? With your feet? Sure...give it a try. The offensive player has every advantage in a no-contact situation because he knows where he's going to go. He doesn't have to be as quick...he just has to go. Hand-checking allows the defensive player to even the odds because he can feel, before he can see, where the offensive player is going to go. Hand checking in excess can also slow the offensive player down, which gives the defensive player the advantage and led to the rules change.

The rules, as they are now, give so much advantage to the offense that they make aggressive man to man almost impossible to play. Either you're going to send the opponents to the free throw line all night, or allow them to do a layup drill all night. The last two games, we've elected to do the latter.

Our opponents, however, have gone zone to negate our athletic advantage. And the new rules reward the zone in a big way. That wasn't the intent in the new rules, I bet, but this isn't the first time a set of rules (or law) has had unintended consequences.

So, what should Duke do? I didn't see a lack of effort on D...I saw players afraid to aggressively defend. Should k tell them, screw the rules, hand check everyone and dare the refs to call them all? Should he just tell them to move their feet faster and pray? Should he alter his defensive focus slightly to deny the three point shooters and back off the drivers to prevent the layups? Or should he go with more zone?

I think, now, that this discussion will be the DBR debate of the season.

[azzefkram]

I actually think Hairston should be subbing in and out with Amile. Problem is if Jabari sits that takes away a lot of scoring from the frontcourt we rely on if both Josh and Amile are in there. Semi has yet to show any defensive ability down low.

The Josh and Amile show at the 5 has not been cutting it. Coach seems to have an exceptionally quick hook when it comes to Amile. His D is not great but it is at least passable. He seems active on the boards and has some offensive game. I am completely flummoxed by Josh's continued floor time.

[CDu]

I actually think that he slipped. It was exactly the same spot where the Vermont player slipped right after changing his sneakers...

He may or may not have slipped, but the foul occurred by literally jumping into the shooter. Which is all the more impressive in that the shooter was fading away.

[dukebballcamper90-91]

A loss to this team at home would've been worse than Lehigh

[-jk]

What I saw, over and over, was bad communication on D. "Switches" or "hedges" - in name only - where two defenders followed the same guy, leaving someone else wide open.

If we can learn to communicate, I suspect that'll work itself out a bit. Until then, it'll be a bit shaky.

-jk

[darthur]

I made a point to this effect during the in-game thread. Pressure man to man is very difficult to play with these rules. Our guys are well coached enough to know that there's basically no hand-checking, no contact allowed. How do you guard a reasonably quick player in that situation? With your feet? Sure...give it a try. The offensive player has every advantage in a no-contact situation because he knows where he's going to go. He doesn't have to be as quick...he just has to go. Hand-checking allows the defensive player to even the odds because he can feel, before he can see, where the offensive player is going to go. Hand checking in excess can also slow the offensive player down, which gives the defensive player the advantage and led to the rules change.

The rules, as they are now, give so much advantage to the offense that they make aggressive man to man almost impossible to play. Either you're going to send the opponents to the free throw line all night, or allow them to do a layup drill all night. The last two games, we've elected to do the latter.

Our opponents, however, have gone zone to negate our athletic advantage. And the new rules reward the zone in a big way. That wasn't the intent in the new rules, I bet, but this isn't the first time a set of rules (or law) has had unintended consequences.

So, what should Duke do? I didn't see a lack of effort on D...I saw players afraid to aggressively defend. Should k tell them, screw the rules, hand check everyone and dare the refs to call them all? Should he just tell them to move their feet faster and pray? Should he alter his defensive focus slightly to deny the three point shooters and back off the drivers to prevent the layups? Or should he go with more zone?

I think, now, that this discussion will be the DBR debate of the season.

For what it's worth, K addressed some high level defensive strategy question at the end of the presser. I couldn't make out the question, but here was his response:

"Nothing will work if you don't talk on defense. You have got to talk. Someone says go zone, go this... We are going to revisit my first three years here. Nothing works well if you don't work well. Sounds like some parent talking to their kids. I'm talking to myself too. We have to work well."

[Goduke2010]

We have enough offensive firepower to punt one of the positions when on O.

Just tell Marshall to never cross half court. We'll take our chances 4 on 5 on the Offensive end, Marshall can wait at the other end.

[roywhite]

You know something is wrong when Tyler Thorton, our best perimeter defender, makes a terrible foul late in the game on a desperation three. Or when a team that comes in shooting something like 40% hits 65%.

The improvement will come, but the sooner the better.

Tyler is a good perimeter defender? Haven't see much evidence of it; he hustles, but he hasn't been stopping anyone, and fouls at a high rate. Rasheed's game has disappeared both offensively and defensively. Perhaps some illness is a factor, but I wanted to see a more consistent performance this year, and it's been disappointing so far; his confidence and focus seem fragile.

Personnel-wise, seems to me that a better Duke defensive team will include a heckuva lot more minutes for Matt Jones; it would be nice to see his time in the lineup come dramatically, like it did with Elliott Williams a few seasons back, and the defense became much better (let's hope it doesn't take until February to get Matt more involved as it did with Williams).

That move alone would not fully address our defensive shortcomings, but seems to me to be indicated.

[dukebballcamper90-91]

I think having Marshall camp out in the paint and challenge some shots woulda helped tonight.

[nyesq83]

Can good football and good basketball coexist at Duke at the same time???

[Gewebe14]

Tyler is a good perimeter defender? Haven't see much evidence of it; he hustles, but he hasn't been stopping anyone, and fouls at a high rate. Rasheed's game has disappeared both offensively and defensively. Perhaps some illness is a factor, but I wanted to see a more consistent performance this year, and it's been disappointing so far; his confidence and focus seem fragile.

Personnel-wise, seems to me that a better Duke defensive team will include a heckuva lot more minutes for Matt Jones; it would be nice to see his time in the lineup come dramatically, like it did with Elliott Williams a few seasons back, and the defense became much better (let's hope it doesn't take until February to get Matt more involved as it did with Williams).

That move along would not fully address our defensive shortcomings, but seems to me to be indicated.

The advantages that Tyler did bring his first few years have been negated by the rule change this year.... he's sadly become much more ineffectual. Still love him tho!

[_Gary]

I made a point to this effect during the in-game thread. Pressure man to man is very difficult to play with these rules. Our guys are well coached enough to know that there's basically no hand-checking, no contact allowed. How do you guard a reasonably quick player in that situation? With your feet? Sure...give it a try. The offensive player has every advantage in a no-contact situation because he knows where he's going to go. He doesn't have to be as quick...he just has to go. Hand-checking allows the defensive player to even the odds because he can feel, before he can see, where the offensive player is going to go. Hand checking in excess can also slow the offensive player down, which gives the defensive player the advantage and led to the rules change.

The rules, as they are now, give so much advantage to the offense that they make aggressive man to man almost impossible to play. Either you're going to send the opponents to the free throw line all night, or allow them to do a layup drill all night. The last two games, we've elected to do the latter.

Our opponents, however, have gone zone to negate our athletic advantage. And the new rules reward the zone in a big way. That wasn't the intent in the new rules, I bet, but this isn't the first time a set of rules (or law) has had unintended consequences.

So, what should Duke do? I didn't see a lack of effort on D...I saw players afraid to aggressively defend. Should k tell them, screw the rules, hand check everyone and dare the refs to call them all? Should he just tell them to move their feet faster and pray? Should he alter his defensive focus slightly to deny the three point shooters and back off the drivers to prevent the layups? Or should he go with more zone?

I think, now, that this discussion will be the DBR debate of the season.

Post of the night in terms of identifying at least one of the primary reasons for the poor defense. I've thought exactly the same thing while watching the Duke games this year. The new rule is a killer for the kind of defense we play. Or at least try to play. I say that because I don't believe the problems we are seeing can be attibuted 100% to the rules. We are just piss poor on that end of the floor right now. But I do believe Dave is spot on concerning the rule and why its helping our opponents so much. It's just been a drive and dish or drive and shoot a layup party for the opposition recently.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I can honestly say my expectations for this team have taken a serious beating over the last two games. That's not to say we can't get back on track. We've got the coach and athletes to correct things. But I'm not nearly as confident in this team as I was just one week ago.

[CDu]

The advantages that Tyler did bring his first few years have been negated by the rule change this year.... he's sadly become much more ineffectual. Still love him tho!

Yeah, the new rules (which in theory I like, though maybe less extreme) seem to really hurt Thornton and Hairston - two players lacking in athleticism but willing to play physical. Thornton is generally a smart player (terrific off-ball defender), but he is only a good on-ball defender when he is allowed to foul. Now, he is no longer allowed to foul...

[jimrowe0]

I am absolutely baffled as to why at the end of the game, we weren't giving the ball to Parker and Hood. Also, why are we jacking up threes when the game is so close. The game was a layup drill for Vermont for most of the second half, we could not stop them from penetrating. Add to that was the fact that we were terrible on our defensive rotations which also resulted in easy buckets for Vermont. Lastly, Andre killed us for a stretch from 6-3 minutes left by turning the ball over, getting beat constantly on the defensive end, and not making his shots. Personally, I don't want Andre in the game when it is close unless it is strictly to shot free throws.

[ncexnyc]

To paraphrase a line from one of my buddy Willie's plays, "A big man, a big man, my TV remote for a big man."

Sorry, but this isn't time to panic and make drastic changes. Yes, to date the D has been pretty bad, but this is a fairly young team with new players getting a lot of playing time. Not sure why people keep saying the zone D's are killing us, as we put up 91 tonight. It's our D and the things, which make up solid D that are hurting us.

Nice to see Dre have another solid game and he has definitely improved on the defensive end of the court.

We had a closed thread about Rasheed the last week or so, but for a kid who I thought would be gangbusters this year, he's been M.I.A.

We saw more of the Good Quinn, bad Quinn tonight. Some nice drives to the hoop and then the head scratching 3.

It's easy to see why it's so hard to win a championship. Despite this team's obvious talent, we are still short that one piece. Can Coach K find it, or workout a system change that covers for the lack of that missing component? Only time will tell, so stay tuned.

[Goduke2010]

Post of the night in terms of identifying at least one of the primary reasons for the poor defense. I've thought exactly the same thing while watching the Duke games this year. The new rule is a killer for the kind of defense we play. Or at least try to play. I say that because I don't believe the problems we are seeing can be attibuted 100% to the rules. We are just piss poor on that end of the floor right now. But I do believe Dave is spot on concerning the rule and why its helping our opponents so much. It's just been a drive and dish or drive and shoot a layup party for the opposition recently.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I can honestly say my expectations for this team have taken a serious beating over the last two games. That's not to say we can't get back on track. We've got the coach and athletes to correct things. But I'm not nearly as confident in this team as I was just one week ago.

Agree on the rule change being especially impactful on our defensive approach. It's why we need to approach the problem from a strategic rather than execution perspective. The latter can and should improve, but that won't be enough given the rule change.

[Billy Dat]

I feel like, overall, we have gotten into the bad habit of thinking that we can outscore other teams rather than stopping them. Vermont was getting much easier shots than we were, we actually pulled some scores out of our hats to stay in it in the last few minutes. Once they tied it up, our collective rear ends were creating diamonds from coal and Vermont was running downhill. What a game, the only play they screwed up was their last possession.

It's funny, this team, at least early, certainly tests our collective fan tolerance for being really good in Nov/Dec versus making big improvements between Nov/Dec and March. We're used to being undeafeated with some ranked scalps on our belt...instead we are nearly losing our non-con unbeaten streak to Phish. It's a different look, that's for sure.

[Newton_14]

Well that was pretty brutal. I walked out of Cameron feeling like we had just lost. K was very unhappy in the post-game presser and rightfully so. In his words "the defense was nonexistent all game" I had chosen "atrocious". We never really stopped them, even on the last play where the shot actually went in but the kid just did not get it off in time. To credit Vermont, they did play an outstanding game. Their PG ran their offense beatifully, and got a ton of help from 3 of the forwards who combined just carved us up the entire game. About mid-way through the second half we were up 10 but i felt that if we suffered any kind of scoring drought, we were going to be in a bit of trouble. Credit our guys for hanging in after going down 4 with under 4 minutes to go and making enough plays to squeak out the win, but still it felt like we lost.

Offensively, I thought we played pretty solid again. A lot of weapons. Jabari with 22, Hood with 20, Andre with 16, and Quinn with I believe 13. Like ECU, once Vermont fell behind early they went exclusively to zone and stuck with it until our final two possessions. Not sure I would have switched back to man had I been them.
Vermont shot 65% with 50 points in the paint, and 21 assists against just 7 turnovers. Ouch. We have got to find a way to improve defense. I felt at one point K should have just put Marshall in as it could not get any worse than it was.

To have a chance in New York next week, we have to make some changes and find a way to get stops. I almost wish K would mix in some full court and half court zone presses to try to change things up and force turnovers as the man to man full court pressure is totally ineffective right now. We expend a lot of energy and get nothing from it.
As bad as our interior defense is, we have to find a way to stop all the dribble penetration and keep people in front and it ain't just one kid either. All of them are getting smoked off the dribble time an again, and teams are still killing us with the high pick and roll at the top of the key.

The positives: We faced tremendous pressure the last 5 minutes, and willed our way to coming back and wiining by making big plays on offense. The Andre and Quinn 3's were huge, as was Rasheed's drive to get fouled and make the free throws.. Jabari had a couple of strong scores inside, and Hood's drive for the game winner was a thing of beauty as well as an obivous attempt to take advantage of the new rules. Great play. The defensive intensity was good the last 2 minutes and was where it should have been all game. If not for the two suspect fouls on the 3 point shooters, we would have had a cushion at the end vs having to survive the clock runninng out before a kid makes a runner.
On to New York to try to win a tournament. Let's see if K can right the ship enough to cut down the nets next Friday.
Next Play. Go Duke!

[roywhite]

I actually think that he slipped. It was exactly the same spot where the Vermont player slipped right after changing his sneakers...

It was the kind of game where there were TWO bizarre fouls on 3-point shots, one by Tyler with the shot clock running out and the Vermont shooter flailing up a desperation shot that went well wide, and then Sulaimon falling (slipped? pushed?)under the feet of the Vermont shooter when he hit a 3-pointer.

My .02 is that Sulaimon's foul was a fluke and Thornton's was inexcusable.

[gocanes0506]

Cook plays nice defense from the other baseline to the three point line. THen NO ONE plays any defense from the three point line to our own baseline. Pressure defense is meaningless when you don't put any hands on the ball to make actual turnovers and when some simple dribbling allows you to not only beat it, but beat it so badly that it forces other help to leave their man because now people are wide open.

I would disagree. Cook was beat consistently from the point. The biggest thing that this defense has an issue with is getting beat off the dribble with whoever is guarding at the point. They play very flat footed and upright on defense. The D plays with the other 4 guys having their eyes on the ball. That leads to guys being able to make cuts around the D while getting wide open.

Now being able to play with your eyes on the ball used to work when you could keep a hand on the guy your defending. It would allow you to keep your eye on the ball to try to steal the ball during a pass.

The lateral quickness on the defensive end needs to improve to keep from the penetration from happening. As the point man gets beaten everyone comes to his rescue and layups happen.

[kAzE]

Look, Coach K is great. But that doesn't mean he's infallible. I hope he's not so set in his ways that he can't rethink what this team can/can't do and adjust accordingly. If that means zone, or Jones/Semi starting, or whatever, I hope he and his staff use the rest of pre-conference to push the reset button and start from scratch. Because nothing could be worse than what we saw tonight.

I think sometimes we say "effort" or "focus" is lacking, when the real culprit is lack of playing well. The staff needs to fix this at a strategic level.

Hey come on now, we still won the game. I'm pretty happy we at least won and nobody got hurt.

[CDu]

Hey come on now, we still won the game. I'm pretty happy we at least won and nobody got hurt.

Thank goodness for that. Losing to a 1-4 team at home would probably rate as the worst loss in the Coach K era.

[Henderson]

Hey come on now, we still won the game. I'm pretty happy we at least won and nobody got hurt.

Of course. Winning the game was WAY better than losing it. But I'm not thumping my chest for beating Vermont by a point at home.

If you set your sights low enough, you'll never be disappointed. As Coach K said to open his presser, "We were awful." You can't sugar coat a cat turd and turn it into an M&M.

[subzero02]

Post of the night in terms of identifying at least one of the primary reasons for the poor defense. I've thought exactly the same thing while watching the Duke games this year. The new rule is a killer for the kind of defense we play. Or at least try to play. I say that because I don't believe the problems we are seeing can be attibuted 100% to the rules. We are just piss poor on that end of the floor right now. But I do believe Dave is spot on concerning the rule and why its helping our opponents so much. It's just been a drive and dish or drive and shoot a layup party for the opposition recently.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I can honestly say my expectations for this team have taken a serious beating over the last two games. That's not to say we can't get back on track. We've got the coach and athletes to correct things. But I'm not nearly as confident in this team as I was just one week ago.

if our guards could just consistently box out I'd be thrilled

[ncexnyc]

Thank goodness for that. Losing to a 1-4 team at home would probably rate as the worst loss in the Coach K era.
Yes, it was nearly Black Sunday for me. A huge heel upset, Giants biting the dust on a, as time expires FG, and Duke nearly going down in flames.

[Goduke2010]

Hey come on now, we still won the game. I'm pretty happy we at least won and nobody got hurt.

True, and there wasn't an earthquake mid-game that destroyed Cameron. That glass is damn near full! :-P

[roywhite]

Overall perspective -- there have been plenty of years where Duke had it together early and was the best team in the country in November/December, while other teams tended to come on later in the season. This is a year where Duke is clearly not playing the best in the country, and will have to improve majorly to be a factor by season-end. The trademark Duke defense has been missing so far, whether through rule change, lack of cohesion, or lack of inside size.

Can the improvement happen? Yes, definitely; we've got the best coach, two of the best players in Hood and Parker, and other pieces. It will be an interesting ride.

[ncexnyc]

True, and there wasn't an earthquake mid-game that destroyed Cameron. That glass is damn near full! :-P

I can promise you this. Come the end of the season, the only people talking about this game will be the Vermont fans for the, should have, could have moment. This will be their season high. We on the other hand will be discussing our NCAA run, however that turns out.

As crappy a taste some of you may have in your mouth with today's win, it's still a win and I prefer being on that side of the ledger.

[kAzE]

True, and there wasn't an earthquake mid-game that destroyed Cameron. That glass is damn near full! :-P

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not happy with the way we played on defense, but you we're making it sound like absolutely nothing could be worse than what happened. I'm just saying at least we won and everyone is still healthy, so thank goodness for that.

Is there any way we can get finish Jahlil Okafor's high school credits by the end of the semester and get enrolled at Duke by January? A nice, big center would be pretty great right now.

[Goduke2010]

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not happy with the way we played on defense, but you we're making it sound like absolutely nothing could be worse than what happened. I'm just saying at least we won and everyone is still healthy, so thank goodness for that.

Is there any way we can get finish Jahlil Okafor's high school credits by the end of the semester and get enrolled at Duke by January? A nice, big center would be pretty great right now.

Seriously, Winslow as well.

I'm really curious to see how these rule changes (which I love, btw, despite their impact on our team) impact our recruiting approach. A rim protector (Okafor to some extent, someone like Turner to a greater extent) seems especially vital.

[roywhite]

One indication of the kind of night it was -- the surprisingly stellar contributions from Catamounts' bench player Hector Harold, a recent transfer from Pepperdine Univ. in Malibu (which is strange enough but he went to prep school in New England)

Hector Harold profile (http://www.uvmathletics.com/roster.aspx?rp_id=2241&path=mbball)

At Pepperdine, he averaged 3.2 points/game, shooting 29% from the floor and 20% from 3-points.
Prior to tonight's game, his best performance for Vermont was 11 points vs Wagner, the only Vermont game in which he scored more than 2 field goals.

Tonight?
9-12 FG; 2-3 3-Pt; 4-5 FT; 24 points total.

Of such things are huge upsets possible. An interesting footnote, but it still leaves us with questions about Duke's defense.

[throatybeard]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l3oUUUzOxE

[Newton_14]

It was the kind of game where there were TWO bizarre fouls on 3-point shots, one by Tyler with the shot clock running out and the Vermont shooter flailing up a desperation shot that went well wide, and then Sulaimon falling (slipped? pushed?)under the feet of the Vermont shooter when he hit a 3-pointer.


My .02 is that Sulaimon's foul was a fluke and Thornton's was inexcusable.

In fairness, Tyler try to flash at the guy just to bother him (vs trying to block it) and the kid kicked his leg out and kicked Tyler in the side. Still a bad play given how far behind the line the kid was. On the Rasheed play he actually got pushed down and unfortunately was laying on the floor in the exact spot where the kid landed. I thought that one should have been a no call as the ball was half way to the hoop by the time the kid came down on Rasheed. It did not affect the shot in any way.

I have no complaints for our offense tonight. You can't easily drive against a zone, but we still beat their zone time and time again which is why we scored 91 points. Also disagree that Hood "disappeard" That's bull. The kid had 22 points including a great drive for the winning basket. He struggled on defense but so did most every other kid.

[DieHard]

I heard a lot about pressure defense with this team and full court havock. I think Coach K will continue to try to teach this until ACC play, or until he quits being stubborn. So far, we look more like a team that needs to play defense within the three point line rather than pressure D all over the floor. I am not saying zone, but there have been several years we packed in our man-to-man D (2010). Our communication is awful, and everyone is breaking us down off the dribble.

I know people are are down on him, but Rasheed is our best on the ball defender when he is engaged. We would have lost against ECU if he had not played Williams so well the last few minutes. I had a very good seat that night to watch. Williams was getting anywhere on the floor he wanted until Rasheed started covering him.

It is early. The players are young. Trust Coach K to figure it out. This Duke team has a high ceiling, and is much less of a finished product than a normal Duke team at this point in the season. It will be a fun ride.

[Kedsy]

Thornton is a lock to start, but unfortunately, he's also averaging like 4.9 fouls per game right now with these new rules.

Tyler is currently averaging 8.5 fouls per 40 minutes. Also, after that egregious foul on a three-point shooter when we were up 4, I don't think he's a lock for anything.


I actually think that he slipped. It was exactly the same spot where the Vermont player slipped right after changing his sneakers...

I watched the replay of that play a couple times. I don't think he slipped. I think he just made a bad play.


Does anyone have the second-half stats on that? It did seem like they hit from distance down the stretch.

Vermont shot 3 for 8 from three-point range in the 2nd half.


Hood didn't box out at all - one guy counted 10 points on offensive boards by Hood's man...


I coached 4th graders today who blocked out better than our guys.

These are just two of the many posts in this thread about our getting killed on the offensive glass. But according to the box score, Vermont only had six offensive rebounds the entire game (and only one guy got more than 1, and he had 2, so either the guy who counted 10 points on offensive boards by Rodney's man or the guy who wrote up the box score may have been drunk; not sure which, though). The box score also says Vermont only had 2 second-chance points, so again one of those two guys had his eyes closed.

I'll grant you it seemed to me like we gave up way more than 6 offensive rebounds, and that they had more than 1 rebound-putback, and I'm going to try and look at a replay tomorrow and count (no promises, though), but if the box score's right, you guys are hugely overreacting.

[Kedsy]

In fairness, Tyler try to flash at the guy just to bother him (vs trying to block it) and the kid kicked his leg out and kicked Tyler in the side.

On the TV replay, you could see Tyler hit him with his upper body. This was not a crafty kick, a la Jon Scheyer. This was Tyler not realizing how close he was or how fast he was moving. The guy was putting up a desperation heave and Tyler had no legitimate reason to try and bother him. Just a bad play all around.

Rasheed tripped and the guy landed on him. I didn't see a push but I'll take your word for that, but if the ref didn't see the push, either, it was probably the right call. Unfortunate, but not really a bad play on Rasheed's part.

[roywhite]

Boxscore (http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=22724&SPID=1845&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=4200&ATCLID=209323049)

Especially notable:
Vermont 31-41 from 2-pt

Hector Harold's night, which I posted about above

Vermont's 21 assists vs 6 turnovers...that's spectacular
Includes 2 players with 9 assists each, PG Carissimo, and F Voelkel (who is a terrific glue guy -- rebounds, defends, passes well, and team captain); how often do you see a team with 2 players getting 9 assists?

[ChillinDuke]

I made a point to this effect during the in-game thread. Pressure man to man is very difficult to play with these rules. Our guys are well coached enough to know that there's basically no hand-checking, no contact allowed. How do you guard a reasonably quick player in that situation? With your feet? Sure...give it a try. The offensive player has every advantage in a no-contact situation because he knows where he's going to go. He doesn't have to be as quick...he just has to go. Hand-checking allows the defensive player to even the odds because he can feel, before he can see, where the offensive player is going to go. Hand checking in excess can also slow the offensive player down, which gives the defensive player the advantage and led to the rules change.

The rules, as they are now, give so much advantage to the offense that they make aggressive man to man almost impossible to play. Either you're going to send the opponents to the free throw line all night, or allow them to do a layup drill all night. The last two games, we've elected to do the latter.

Our opponents, however, have gone zone to negate our athletic advantage. And the new rules reward the zone in a big way. That wasn't the intent in the new rules, I bet, but this isn't the first time a set of rules (or law) has had unintended consequences.

So, what should Duke do? I didn't see a lack of effort on D...I saw players afraid to aggressively defend. Should k tell them, screw the rules, hand check everyone and dare the refs to call them all? Should he just tell them to move their feet faster and pray? Should he alter his defensive focus slightly to deny the three point shooters and back off the drivers to prevent the layups? Or should he go with more zone?

I think, now, that this discussion will be the DBR debate of the season.

Couldn't agree more, Dave.

This is exactly how I see it. Fear. We look scared to get in front of guys. No idea if it's by design (coaching staff wants this in order to avoid fouls) or just poor play (very poor play).

New rules definitely seem to favor zone in this regard. I imagine big-time shot blockers are at a premium as well. Basically anything that is a defensive benefit while minimizing contact/proximity to the offensive player.

Really bad game. I count this one as a loss.

- Chillin

[Newton_14]

On the TV replay, you could see Tyler hit him with his upper body. This was not a crafty kick, a la Jon Scheyer. This was Tyler not realizing how close he was or how fast he was moving. The guy was putting up a desperation heave and Tyler had no legitimate reason to try and bother him. Just a bad play all around.

Rasheed tripped and the guy landed on him. I didn't see a push but I'll take your word for that, but if the ref didn't see the push, either, it was probably the right call. Unfortunate, but not really a bad play on Rasheed's part.

Yeah I would have definitely called the foul on Tyler there, no question. He was over aggressive. I was in Section 5 so the play was on the other end from me, which may have schewed my view point. It did look like he got kicked and he actually complained to the ref. Still a play a Sr cannot make though. Rasheed's play was just bad luck.

[Steven43]

On another thread yesterday I posted that Rasheed's time as a starter was close to ending. Guessing we've arrived even earlier than I thought.

If you followed the 2nd half of last season, all summer with the USA team, and through the beginning of this season, you conclude that he's not an especially good shooter, his D isn't impressive, and he gets seriously flustered/upset at himself and basically races coach K to take himself out of the game.

I really like Sheed, you can tell how badly he wants to do well. Feel bad for the kid.

So, according to you (and many others) Rasheed is not playing well on offense or defense and is not mentally strong. And Rasheed does not bear the brunt of fan ire alone. According to many DBR posters Jabari cannot (or does not) play effective interior or help defense and is not a great rebounder. Hood does not play effective defense and is a poor rebounder. Amile is a mediocre rebounder and interior defender. Cook often has poor shot selection, is an inconsistent shooter, plays average defense and does not get many steals. Tyler is a major offensive liability, is not quick enough to keep most guards in front of him, and commits way too many fouls. Josh also commits too many fouls, cannot rebound or play defense very well, and offers next to nothing offensively. Alex and Marshall are not advanced enough to warrant more than a few token minutes (in Alex' case not even that). Andre is a defensive liability and a streaky shooter. Jones is not nearly the shooter he was purported to be coming out of high school. And finally, Semi has shown defensive, offensive, and rebounding ability, yet almost never sees the court.

I probably only agree with about 50% or so of these assessments, and, of course, each of these players has many positives that could outweigh any negatives they may have. I just don't recall a season that had so many Duke players being called out by DBR posters for having multiple holes in their respective games. It's troublesome because posters to DBR are often spot-on when it comes to player assessments. Particularly when so many of them are saying similar things. Oh well, it's early.

[g-money]

I heard a lot about pressure defense with this team and full court havock. I think Coach K will continue to try to teach this until ACC play, or until he quits being stubborn. So far, we look more like a team that needs to play defense within the three point line rather than pressure D all over the floor. I am not saying zone, but there have been several years we packed in our man-to-man D (2010). Our communication is awful, and everyone is breaking us down off the dribble.


I made a point to this effect during the in-game thread. Pressure man to man is very difficult to play with these rules. Our guys are well coached enough to know that there's basically no hand-checking, no contact allowed. How do you guard a reasonably quick player in that situation? With your feet? Sure...give it a try. The offensive player has every advantage in a no-contact situation because he knows where he's going to go. He doesn't have to be as quick...he just has to go. Hand-checking allows the defensive player to even the odds because he can feel, before he can see, where the offensive player is going to go. Hand checking in excess can also slow the offensive player down, which gives the defensive player the advantage and led to the rules change.

The rules, as they are now, give so much advantage to the offense that they make aggressive man to man almost impossible to play. Either you're going to send the opponents to the free throw line all night, or allow them to do a layup drill all night. The last two games, we've elected to do the latter.

I think these two posts summed up Duke's main defensive problem nicely. Even relatively quick/athletic guards like Cook and Sulaimon can be beaten off the dribble if they are applying max pressure without being allowed to hand check. The Vermont guards we faced tonight were undersized, but they (along with the vast majority of D-1 guards) are good enough ballhandlers to blow by pressure defense in the absence of hand checking.

A second issue Duke faces is the lack of any real shot blocking ability. In years past, somebody like Mason could cover up a lot of our defensive "sins" on the perimeter.

All in all I do think that Duke would be better served by easing off the perimeter pressure a bit - at least as long as the refs continue to call the game tightly. Forget trying to steal the ball; just focus on keeping your man in front of you and don't extend the defense more than a couple feet beyond the three point line.

On the flip side, if we get to March and the refs have decided to swallow the whistle (which would not surprise me at all), then maybe we should just take our lumps early on and have the right style of defense in place for the tournament.

It'll be fun to see how things play out.

[Dukehky]

Yeah I would have definitely called the foul on Tyler there, no question. He was over aggressive. I was in Section 5 so the play was on the other end from me, which may have schewed my view point. It did look like he got kicked and he actually complained to the ref. Still a play a Sr cannot make though. Rasheed's play was just bad luck.

That's part of the new rules emphasis. The shooter is not done with the shooting motion until he lands. If a player disrupts the landing, then it is a shooting foul. It was bad luck, and maybe a push, but that foul was the right call. Guarantee you if somebody did that to Dre, it would have been the same call. However, it did look like Sheed and Dre both did nicked on a few 3's in the first half, so I guess they just didn't see those.

I thought tonight was one of Josh's better games actually. He got burned on one or two defensive rotations, which is better than his normal four or five. I did not think anybody else off the bench played well. Tyler just can't operate like he did last year because it was his bull doggishness that made him effective. He doesn't have great speed and that just kills him with the new rules emphasis. K got real tight real quick with the bench tonight. I think Matt has a lot to offer this team defensively, he must not be showing anything in practice. I would also put Rasheed on the ball handler if their 2 guard isn't overly big. His length and speed is really disruptive and I think would be markedly better than QC's ball pressure because he got torched quite a few times, same against Kansas. Amile either has to be the player people think he can be or Marshall needs to become somewhat effective for Duke to accomplish all of its goals

Lot of things to improve on, but they still won. Again, I really think that this team will peak towards the end of the season, so I'm not really worried. If this kind of defense persists into the midway point of the ACC season, I'll start to panic a bit. Hey, we won the rebounding battle again!!!!!

[DownEastDevil]

Got tired of seeing the hedging out front on defense and watching a man run free in the paint. Would of made sense if we were getting turnovers from it.

[BD80]

... Jabari, Andre, Cook, Sheed, and Amile had terrible defense. I now see the true value of Hairston and Thornton: ...

None of them played well on D. Hairston and Thornton were possibly the worst.


The bigger issue is that Hood is clearly not comfortable inside on defense. He needs to be on the perimeter.

I don't recall ever seeing Rodney inside on defense.


I actually think that he slipped. It was exactly the same spot where the Vermont player slipped right after changing his sneakers...

Tyler's play was a consequence of his "chippiness." He ran at the shooter, trying to distract him by running under him. Possibly the dumbest play since Steve Gray hit his own rim trying to break unc's fullcourt press by passing along the baseline.

Our defensive rotation has been worse than awful. At best, we will get one defender to rotate to help on the ball, and ever so rarely will a wing slide down to cover the helper's man.

[jay]

That's part of the new rules emphasis. The shooter is not done with the shooting motion until he lands. If a player disrupts the landing, then it is a shooting foul.


That's always been the rule. JJ used to draw tons of shooting fouls thanks to this rule.

[BlueDevilBrowns]

A lack of a shot-blocking big is definitely hurting us mostly because we need one to make up for the utter lack of perimeter defense by our guards.

The problem is we are allowing so much penetration that we're allowing point-blank shots at the rim.

Tactically, the only solution I see is laying off the pressure and taking our chances with a few more 3's allowed per game. At least a 3 pointer is a lower percentage shot than a layup.

Personnel-wise, I'd like to see Hood slide over to the SG spot and use Semi at SF with Parker and Amile in the paint. This way, even though we would "sag" on defense, the length of Hood and Semi could still cause disruptions for smaller guards.

[CrazyNotCrazie]

I thought Tyler's foul on the 3 was somewhat par for the course for him lately - it seems like every game, he is good for 1-2 fouls 25-30 feet from the basket. I know the coaches love his feistiness, but I just don't get it. I was shocked when we were going offense-defense late in the game and he was brought in for defense. I know it is hard to bring in a guy who hasn't played much into a tight, late game situation, particularly a freshman, but based on what I have seen, I would strongly prefer Jones playing in those situations than Tyler. There is no excuse for anyone, particularly a senior captain, to make a foul like that. Rasheed had a somewhat similar foul, but it was pretty clear that he slipped, so I am less disturbed by his foul.

It seems like historically, our defense has been most successful when a veteran, bigger guy was helping to orchestrate the defense, helping to make up for missed switches or other mistakes on the perimeter. Our interior players are young and/or not natural interior players, so there is no one to play this role. Josh is the closest person we have, but his limitations outweigh his strengths enough that he can't play major minutes, and given that his first instinct is to try to draw a charge and that is no longer going to fly under the new rule interpretations, his defensive value has been diminished.

[jv001]

Tyler is a good perimeter defender? Haven't see much evidence of it; he hustles, but he hasn't been stopping anyone, and fouls at a high rate. Rasheed's game has disappeared both offensively and defensively. Perhaps some illness is a factor, but I wanted to see a more consistent performance this year, and it's been disappointing so far; his confidence and focus seem fragile.

Personnel-wise, seems to me that a better Duke defensive team will include a heckuva lot more minutes for Matt Jones; it would be nice to see his time in the lineup come dramatically, like it did with Elliott Williams a few seasons back, and the defense became much better (let's hope it doesn't take until February to get Matt more involved as it did with Williams).

That move alone would not fully address our defensive shortcomings, but seems to me to be indicated.

I have to agree that with the new defensive rules, it's hard for Tyler to be a good on the ball defender. He fouled way to much last year under the old rules. As roywhite says, Matt may just begin to take some of Tyler's mins. One other thing about the new rule. If the defensive player is going to be called for a foul with little contact, then the offensive player should have to keep his hand on top of the basketball. He should not be allowed to palm or carry the basketball. It's almost impossible to guard the player driving to the basket otherwise. Just my opinion on the new rule. GoDuke!

[moonpie23]

did marshall even get a whiff?

[azzefkram]

I'll grant you it seemed to me like we gave up way more than 6 offensive rebounds, and that they had more than 1 rebound-putback, and I'm going to try and look at a replay tomorrow and count (no promises, though), but if the box score's right, you guys are hugely overreacting.

5 of them occurred in the last 10 minutes of the game which is probably why it seemed like we were giving up more. I don't think it's as bad as some are making it out to be but it is slightly worrisome. On the plus side, we grabbed 14 o-rebounds and Jabari was exceptionally beastly grabbing 4 in the last 10 minutes.

[Steven43]

A lack of a shot-blocking big is definitely hurting us mostly because we need one to make up for the utter lack of perimeter defense by our guards.

The problem is we are allowing so much penetration that we're allowing point-blank shots at the rim.

Exactly. This is precisely what I feared might happen if Marshall was unable to step into the role of rim-protector, rebounder, and overall disruptor on defense. Even before the 2012-2013 season many Duke fans were looking ahead and seeing a potential void of big men for the 2013-2014 season knowing Ryan and Mason would be gone. Marshall was supposed to be a major part of the solution to that problem. Not only that, but we were desperately trying to recruit other big men (Tarik Black, Tony Parker, Mitch McGary) that would likely have been on the '13-'14 team.

Well, we didn't get any of them. And now Marshall is not even playing. It seems as if he's almost been forgotten already; just an afterthought. I would be elated if Coach would start him at center and let him learn on the job. Give him a chance to grow into the player he has the potential to be. Why wait? The Duke program probably never has and might never again have a greater need for a big man than we have RIGHT NOW. Would his defensive contributions, or lack thereof, really be any worse than what we are presently getting at the five?

[DevilFalcon]

Is Marshall really not able to guard the rim and put a stop to paint score after paint score? Our defense was awful all around, but to not see a huge guy get some burn when we were constantly giving up paint buckets seems odd.

[Cameron]

The positives. Jabari and Rodney once again had great games offensively. They compose if not the best, then one of the best, wing tandems in the nation. Just a superb scoring combo and pretty much indefensible. They are the best duo on the wing at Duke since Dunleavy and Battier. Also, Andre came in off the bench and brought a whopping amount of energy and effort, culminating in 16 points and some timely outside shooting. He also demonstrated some of that underrated athleticism of his by getting to the basket and finishing. It's just a matter of time before Andre explodes for one of those 7 or 8 three-pointer games where everything he lofts up just falls in. Even though he missed it, that 26-footer he launched off an outlet pass from Rodney was beautiful. Kid's got his swagger back.

As for the negatives, letting Vermont score 90 in Cameron ranks right up there. Giving up 90 points to an America East team in regulation is something an America East team does. Not a Duke team with this caliber of talent. And it didn't just happen because we were the unfortunate victims of a 1985 Villanova shooting performance. Vermont shot almost 70 percent from the field because it identified a glaring weakness in the middle of Duke's D and worked our defense over for short-distance shots in the paint over and over and over. They made 4 threes the entire game. So this close call wasn't the result of some magical shooting night by another team "just getting up for Duke." The Catamounts beat our a-- the old-fashioned way, by effectively moving the ball around the perimeter and wearing down our overextended guards until an opening presented itself, knowing that once they got the ball past our first line of defense there was not going to be any real help waiting. So the recipe has been written. Beat Duke's guards off the bounce and you can get to the paint for an easy bunny or simply dump the ball down to a post for a layup since there isn't anybody there -- anybody intimidating, at least -- to block or alter your shot. It looked like Vermont was running the Mikan Drill. As others have pointed out, the new approach to officiating already has our undersized guys under the basket playing with much more caution than normal out of fear of not wanting to rack up fouls early and often. So that compounds the problem even more when the bodies that we do have are not playing as physical as they need to in order to compensate for their lack of height and length.

Since K is not likely to go zone for any significant period of time, why not install some version of the pack-line defense around the arc in order to stop all these easy drives to the basket and to better mask our obvious deficiencies at protecting the rim? We do not have a Brian Zoubek or Mason Plumlee on this team who we can position in front of the basket to deter penetration, swat shots, and eat up defensive rebounds. Amile is great at the things he does do, but serving as a formidable defensive safety in the middle who can bail out our guards if they get beat off the dribble or stuck in the passing lanes 30 feet away from the basket is not one of them. He is not that player, and neither is Josh. This is where Marshall might be able to come in great use if he were further along in his development. But he's not.

The obvious drawback of packing in our perimeter defense is not being able to generate as many points in transition, which, in a sad twist, is where some of our best offense has come from this season. We are at our most effective on the break and extremely dangerous with Jabari's crazy ability to finish in the open floor and our versatile forwards who can spot up on a dime from any distance and sink shots from beyond the arc while the opposing team's bigs are concerned with making rim runs to prevent a highlight reel dunk. A pick-your-poison type of thing. However, when that aggressive perimeter pressure is not working and is actually exposing your inability to defend the paint more than it is effectively forcing turnovers, at what point do you settle for a compromise and employ a defensive strategy that will work to limit what is killing you most?

I am not Coach K and I am not nearly as smart as the majority of the posters here are when it comes to dissecting basketball and its intricacies. But something has to change or this defense, as it currently is, could easily do us in just as quickly as Lehigh did in 2012. We will not outscore everyone.

[Dukeface88]

Is Marshall really not able to guard the rim and put a stop to paint score after paint score? Our defense was awful all around, but to not see a huge guy get some burn when we were constantly giving up paint buckets seems odd.

My impression is that most of their shots came when the inside defender was helping against the initial driver, who dumped it off for a layup. I don't see how Marshall (or anyone else) would make a difference to that situation. He'd still have to help off, and you can't contest shots when your back is turned, no matter how tall or athletic you are.

I almost wonder if, rather than backing off and playing more conservatively, we might be better off increasing the pressure. There was a point with about 15:30 left in the second half where we really dialed up the intensity past the 3-point line, which led to Jabari getting a steal and a dunk (followed by a Vermont timeout that took away the brief momentum). That sort of thing seemed to work well in our previous games too. Maybe play more a half-court trap or even a full-court press? Disrupt the offense before it starts?

[throatybeard]

I love how all of a sudden everyone is saying "rim-protector." I'd like to see Jon Stewart's staff edit a montage of this.

[Jderf]

Kids don't learn defense in high school. This team is young. They will get better.

This mantra is what I keep saying to myself. Followed by ten slow, deep breaths. Followed again by the mantra. Then again by more breathing. Etc.

[Papa John]

We're used to being undeafeated with some ranked scalps on our belt...instead we are nearly losing our non-con unbeaten streak to Phish. It's a different look, that's for sure.

I'll say... Pass the bathtub gin, brotha!

[wilko]

Is Marshall really not able to guard the rim and put a stop to paint score after paint score? Our defense was awful all around, but to not see a huge guy get some burn when we were constantly giving up paint buckets seems odd.

The only thing I can figure is that he cant move fast enough to get out of the way.... w/o fouling

[OldPhiKap]

Well, at least we're not peaking too early this season.

Something tells me there is going to be a real focus on communication and defense over the next few days. This game is over, time to see how we bounce back in those regards.

[OldPhiKap]

The only thing I can figure is that he cant move fast enough to get out of the way.... w/o fouling

It seems that any contact goes against the defender. Marshall could be set, have someone drive into him, and somehow get called for a foul. Seriously.

[PSurprise]

It seems that any contact goes against the defender. Marshall could be set, have someone drive into him, and somehow get called for a foul. Seriously.

Have we had ANY charges called in our favor this year? I've seen most our games, and I can't remember a single charge call.

[davekay1971]

It seems that any contact goes against the defender. Marshall could be set, have someone drive into him, and somehow get called for a foul. Seriously.

Exactly.

Insert Marshall right now, with the way guys are getting past the perimeter defenders, and you'll have Marshall back on the bench with 2 fouls before the first TV timeout, and some nice guard from the other team warmed up from the free throw line. I haven't seen anything from Marshall yet to indicate that he's got the athleticism, skill, and timing to block shots without picking up the kind of touch fouls they're calling. Remember Mason's enforced matador defense from last season? That's what Marshall would have to do to stay on the floor. Not sure that would help us.

Since we don't have anybody on the team (other than Jabari) who seems skilled at timing blocks without fouling, we are going to have to deal with this in other ways.

K emphasized effort and communication.

I'd add in judicious backing off of drivers who aren't great 3 point shooters. Since K refused to do this for four years against that dead-eye shooter King Rice (you suck, you really really suck...except against Duke), I'm not expecting to see this...but I think it would help. A good driver is going to beat in-your-belt man defense every time with these rules. If he's a good finisher or passer, that's going to mean trouble.

And we're going to have to help smartly and consistently. Guys have to be aware of good drivers and be ready to rotate over from weak side to contest their drives.

Zone is another answer, especially against teams that don't have world class 3 point shooters. Again, I don't expect to see that from Duke...but we'll see it deployed against us as long as underpowered teams are hanging with us by playing it.

[Ima Facultiwyfe]

Coach K is always saying how important talking is, especially on defense. Last night I was sitting on the floor behind the basket. I'd been looking forward to being that close so I could see and hear what that was like. I didn't see or hear any.
Love, Ima

[MChambers]

These are just two of the many posts in this thread about our getting killed on the offensive glass. But according to the box score, Vermont only had six offensive rebounds the entire game (and only one guy got more than 1, and he had 2, so either the guy who counted 10 points on offensive boards by Rodney's man or the guy who wrote up the box score may have been drunk; not sure which, though). The box score also says Vermont only had 2 second-chance points, so again one of those two guys had his eyes closed.

I'll grant you it seemed to me like we gave up way more than 6 offensive rebounds, and that they had more than 1 rebound-putback, and I'm going to try and look at a replay tomorrow and count (no promises, though), but if the box score's right, you guys are hugely overreacting.
My sense is that we gave up some key offensive rebounds in the last 6 or 7 minutes, such as the one that went long over Rodney, who wasn't boxing out, and the one where Jabari went for a block, when he had no chance of blocking the shot. The rest of the game we were fine on the glass, but in thefinal minutes as we tried to turn up the defense, the rotations weren't there, leading to offensive rebounds.

[JBDuke]

Have we had ANY charges called in our favor this year? I've seen most our games, and I can't remember a single charge call.

There was one last night. And I can recall two others. There might have been one or two more that I missed, but they are certainly few and far between, and IMO, the refs have been going beyond the new rules definitions in favoring the offensive player.

[MChambers]

The obvious drawback of packing in our perimeter defense is not being able to generate as many points in transition, which, in a sad twist, is where some of our best offense has come from this season. We are at our most effective on the break and extremely dangerous with Jabari's crazy ability to finish in the open floor and our versatile forwards who can spot up on a dime from any distance and sink shots from beyond the arc while the opposing team's bigs are concerned with making rim runs to prevent a highlight reel dunk. A pick-your-poison type of thing. However, when that aggressive perimeter pressure is not working and is actually exposing your inability to defend the paint more than it is effectively forcing turnovers, at what point do you settle for a compromise and employ a defensive strategy that will work to limit what is killing you most?

I am not Coach K and I am not nearly as smart as the majority of the posters here are when it comes to dissecting basketball and its intricacies. But something has to change or this defense, as it currently is, could easily do us in just as quickly as Lehigh did in 2012. We will not outscore everyone.
This is an excellent analysis, but I want to point out that our extended pressure is not generating points in transition, because we are not causing turnovers or bad shots. I'd vote for a 2010 style man-to-man, but I'm not as smart about this as Coach K.

[Matches]

There was one last night. And I can recall two others. There might have been one or two more that I missed, but they are certainly few and far between, and IMO, the refs have been going beyond the new rules definitions in favoring the offensive player.

Yea, Josh drew one last night.

Not particularly surprising that we drew few charges, though, given that we were nowhere near them on most of their layup attempts.

[Matches]

I thought Tyler's foul on the 3 was somewhat par for the course for him lately - it seems like every game, he is good for 1-2 fouls 25-30 feet from the basket. I know the coaches love his feistiness, but I just don't get it. I was shocked when we were going offense-defense late in the game and he was brought in for defense. I know it is hard to bring in a guy who hasn't played much into a tight, late game situation, particularly a freshman, but based on what I have seen, I would strongly prefer Jones playing in those situations than Tyler. There is no excuse for anyone, particularly a senior captain, to make a foul like that. Rasheed had a somewhat similar foul, but it was pretty clear that he slipped, so I am less disturbed by his foul.


Well, Tyler played all of 11 minutes last night, and he wasn't on the floor when Vermont made their run to get within striking distance. Yes, he played poorly when he was in there, and the foul on the desperation three was terrible, but IMO he's being given a disproportionate share of the blame for our poor defense. I haven't seen anything from Jones that suggests he's a better option than TT, largely because Jones has barely played. Is the desire to shift to him just an embrace of the unknown over the known?

Yea, I know K praised his defense in preseason. And Marshall Plumlee is one of the six best players on the team, and Alex Murphy is a four-year starter, etc. K says lots.

[moonpie23]

it could be just me, but does anyone else see the team's body language whining a lot after fouls? not just duke either…...

[-jk]

Coach K is always saying how important talking is, especially on defense. Last night I was sitting on the floor behind the basket. I'd been looking forward to being that close so I could see and hear what that was like. I didn't see or hear any.
Love, Ima

I can certainly believe it, just based on all the missed switches/hedges. That's almost entirely a communication issue.

-jk

[roywhite]

How wonderful to see a Duke team that is playing with poise and maturity, is communicating well, playing with passion, blending veterans and newcomers successfully, and features a defense that gets stronger as the game goes on.

Uhh, that would be the Duke Football team currently, not the men's basketball team.

[azzefkram]

Exactly.

Insert Marshall right now, with the way guys are getting past the perimeter defenders, and you'll have Marshall back on the bench with 2 fouls before the first TV timeout, and some nice guard from the other team warmed up from the free throw line. I haven't seen anything from Marshall yet to indicate that he's got the athleticism, skill, and timing to block shots without picking up the kind of touch fouls they're calling. Remember Mason's enforced matador defense from last season? That's what Marshall would have to do to stay on the floor. Not sure that would help us.


Not quite. In Marshall's limited minutes he has shown an ability to alter shots with out fouling. He is averaging 4 fouls/40. Josh is averaging nearly 11. Josh has shown zero ability to block and/or alter shots (just 12 in over 900 minutes). We have seen about 70 not overly impressive minutes of Marshall and more than 2/3 of it he was dealing with a foot injury. We have seen 900 minutes of Josh not rebounding, not blocking shots, fouling at a prodigious rate and having one of the worst dRtg on the team. Maybe Marshall will have all the flaws you say he does. I suspect he's a little better than that. Here's the thing though. Every fault you attribute to Marshall, you can state for Josh as well. Josh is certainly not the reason for our defensive shortcomings but you'd have a hard time convincing me he's helping.

The lack of respect Mason gets is a tad disheartening. Mason was our best defender by dRtg his last three years and top 3 in his freshman year.

[miramar]

I thought Tyler's foul on the 3 was somewhat par for the course for him lately - it seems like every game, he is good for 1-2 fouls 25-30 feet from the basket. I know the coaches love his feistiness, but I just don't get it. I was shocked when we were going offense-defense late in the game and he was brought in for defense. I know it is hard to bring in a guy who hasn't played much into a tight, late game situation, particularly a freshman, but based on what I have seen, I would strongly prefer Jones playing in those situations than Tyler. There is no excuse for anyone, particularly a senior captain, to make a foul like that. Rasheed had a somewhat similar foul, but it was pretty clear that he slipped, so I am less disturbed by his foul.

I know there have been rule changes and all that, but all the fouling is a big part of the defensive deficiencies that everyone is pointing out. Look at the number of fouls per forty minutes so far:

Hairston 11.0
Thorton 7.8
Jefferson 6.4
Sulaimon 3.8
Parker 3.4
Hood 2.8
Cook 2.3

Needless to say, Hairston's, Thorton's, and Jefferson's numbers are off the charts, but these statistics may actually be worse than they seem. Remember that most of these numbers have been against inferior opponents, and the only time that we have faced a comparable team was against Kansas, with predictable results:

Parker 5 (33 min), Thorton 5 (20 min), Hood 4 (38), Cook 4 (36), Sulaimon 4 (28), Jefferson 3 (26), Hairston 3 (9), and Dawkins DNP.

That's 28 fouls in 190 minutes, or 5.9 per 40 minutes. Hairston had the equivalent of 13.3 fouls per 40 minutes while Thorton had 10.

[freshmanjs]

I know there have been rule changes and all that, but all the fouling is a big part of the defensive deficiencies that everyone is pointing out. Look at the number of fouls per forty minutes so far:

Hairston 11.0
Thorton 7.8
Jefferson 6.4
Sulaimon 3.8
Parker 3.4
Hood 2.8
Cook 2.3

Needless to say, Hairston's, Thorton's, and Jefferson's numbers are off the charts, but these statistics may actually be worse than they seem. Remember that most of these numbers have been against inferior opponents, and the only time that we have faced a comparable team was against Kansas, with predictable results:

Parker 5 (33 min), Thorton 5 (20 min), Hood 4 (38), Cook 4 (36), Sulaimon 4 (28), Jefferson 3 (26), Hairston 3 (9), and Dawkins DNP.

That's 28 fouls in 190 minutes, or 5.9 per 40 minutes. Hairston had the equivalent of 13.3 fouls per 40 minutes while Thorton had 10.

thornton

[dyedwab]

...but it looks like in-your-shorts pressure man-to-man defense is discouraged by the new rules emphasis and packed in defenses like zones are rewarded. Which suggests two things. 1) this is not supposed to be what happened and 2) as coaches adjust, this will lead to fewer fast breaks and actually less exciting offense.

Watching last night, and taking off my Blue Devil shaded glasses, the Duke defense looked like what happens after a team in a pick-up game has been on the court for four or five straight games. Lots of matador defense, lots of uncontested shots. But it wasn't like VT was getting transition hoops, and it wasn't like they were making great shots. They were just getting a lot of shots that were as easy as they would be in drills. I would agree with the suggestion that our team is unsure how to play aggressive D under these rules, which goes to an earlier point that their was a lot of movement on D for us, but not a lot of effective movement.

And none of that deals with missed assignments, etc.

(and I also don't think the refs will radically shift back to the way they called the games before. it may slide away from what it is now, but it won't be what it was)

[FerryFor50]

Watching last night, and taking off my Blue Devil shaded glasses, the Duke defense looked like what happens after a team in a pick-up game has been on the court for four or five straight games. Lots of matador defense, lots of uncontested shots.

I dunno... when my team is out there, that defensive look is usually game 1. :)

[subzero02]

...but it looks like in-your-shorts pressure man-to-man defense is discouraged by the new rules emphasis and packed in defenses like zones are rewarded. Which suggests two things. 1) this is not supposed to be what happened and 2) as coaches adjust, this will lead to fewer fast breaks and actually less exciting offense.

Watching last night, and taking off my Blue Devil shaded glasses, the Duke defense looked like what happens after a team in a pick-up game has been on the court for four or five straight games. Lots of matador defense, lots of uncontested shots. But it wasn't like VT was getting transition hoops, and it wasn't like they were making great shots. They were just getting a lot of shots that were as easy as they would be in drills. I would agree with the suggestion that our team is unsure how to play aggressive D under these rules, which goes to an earlier point that their was a lot of movement on D for us, but not a lot of effective movement.

And none of that deals with missed assignments, etc.

(and I also don't think the refs will radically shift back to the way they called the games before. it may slide away from what it is now, but it won't be what it was)

I wonder how quickly fouls would've racked up if our games against Purdue and Butler from our 2010 Championship run were officiated using the current rules

[davekay1971]

Not quite. In Marshall's limited minutes he has shown an ability to alter shots with out fouling. He is averaging 4 fouls/40. Josh is averaging nearly 11. Josh has shown zero ability to block and/or alter shots (just 12 in over 900 minutes). We have seen about 70 not overly impressive minutes of Marshall and more than 2/3 of it he was dealing with a foot injury. We have seen 900 minutes of Josh not rebounding, not blocking shots, fouling at a prodigious rate and having one of the worst dRtg on the team. Maybe Marshall will have all the flaws you say he does. I suspect he's a little better than that. Here's the thing though. Every fault you attribute to Marshall, you can state for Josh as well. Josh is certainly not the reason for our defensive shortcomings but you'd have a hard time convincing me he's helping.

The lack of respect Mason gets is a tad disheartening. Mason was our best defender by dRtg his last three years and top 3 in his freshman year.

Sorry, please don't mistake my post for disrespect for Mason. I wholeheartedly defended his need to avoid fouls, frequently at the cost of allowing easy layups, last season. Mason was a true All-American and essential to keep on the floor last season. When he was able to aggressively defend the post, he was very good at it, which I mentioned, again, several times last year. When he was in foul trouble, however, he played smart to keep himself on the floor...which was the right move, since his post presence was a tremendous asset on both ends of the court.

Thanks for the stat on Marshall, and again, I'm not intending criticism of Marshall as a player, just pointing out a problem I'd forsee if he was put on the court to be a "rim-protector". If Marshall gets a chance and shows an ability to stop teams from attacking the rim, without getting into quick foul trouble, then he'll have earned his minutes, whether he contributes on the offensive end or not.

[MCFinARL]

These are just two of the many posts in this thread about our getting killed on the offensive glass. But according to the box score, Vermont only had six offensive rebounds the entire game (and only one guy got more than 1, and he had 2, so either the guy who counted 10 points on offensive boards by Rodney's man or the guy who wrote up the box score may have been drunk; not sure which, though). The box score also says Vermont only had 2 second-chance points, so again one of those two guys had his eyes closed.

I'll grant you it seemed to me like we gave up way more than 6 offensive rebounds, and that they had more than 1 rebound-putback, and I'm going to try and look at a replay tomorrow and count (no promises, though), but if the box score's right, you guys are hugely overreacting.

Wow--those statistics are startling and really demonstrate how when we are watching we can get a much different impression of a game than the reality. I hope you do have a chance to look at that replay, because i share your impression that they had more offensive rebounds and putbacks than these numbers. I'd love to hear what you find.

[FerryFor50]

I wonder how quickly fouls would've racked up if our games against Purdue and Butler from our 2010 Championship run were officiated using the current rules

Or Louisville last year...

[CDu]

These are just two of the many posts in this thread about our getting killed on the offensive glass. But according to the box score, Vermont only had six offensive rebounds the entire game (and only one guy got more than 1, and he had 2, so either the guy who counted 10 points on offensive boards by Rodney's man or the guy who wrote up the box score may have been drunk; not sure which, though). The box score also says Vermont only had 2 second-chance points, so again one of those two guys had his eyes closed.

I'll grant you it seemed to me like we gave up way more than 6 offensive rebounds, and that they had more than 1 rebound-putback, and I'm going to try and look at a replay tomorrow and count (no promises, though), but if the box score's right, you guys are hugely overreacting.

The play-by-play alone suggests that the bolded text is incorrect. I count 8 points (3 baskets and two free throws) immediately following offensive rebounds for Vermont.

That doesn't change your point (that the points off offensive rebounds attributed to Hood's defense was wrong). But the reason that it seemed like they got more than 2 second-chance points is because they DID get more than 2 second-chance points.

[FerryFor50]

A few thoughts on the "new rules":

- There are not actually any NEW rules; the NCAA just instructed officials to enforce the existing rules more to the letter of the law
- The NCAA will tout that overall scoring is up, and it is. However, that's just a side effect.

Scoring is up because fouls and free throw attempts are up, mainly. Average possessions have only increased by about 1.

http://college-basketball.si.com/2013/11/13/new-foul-rules-have-so-far-increased-overall-scoring/
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the-dagger/assessing-impact-rules-college-basketball-opening-weekend-133040518--ncaab.html

As a result, the games are actually slowed down, which is the opposite effect the NCAA wanted.

- With the rules enforcement, you get one of two things:

* long, drawn out games with tons of trips to the FT line, star players in foul trouble (impacting game results), players fouling out left and right
* fast paced games with absolutely zero defense (you know, like the clash between NCAA powerhouses Duke and Vermont)

I'm not sure that's really a better reality.

- Additionally, you still see the same physicality around the basket without the whistles. Most of the fouls are on hand checks, including on post moves. Yawn. Why not call fouls on grabs and holds instead?

- The virtual removal of the charge is a pretty big deal, too. Now you see offensive players who got themselves into pickles with out of control, poorly planned drives getting bailed out because they made contact with a defensive player, even if they initiated the contact. I agree that a defensive player shouldn't be able to slide over while someone is in mid-air, but the calls have skewed to the opposite end of the spectrum.

I think the block/charge call is an even bigger factor for the Duke defense than the hand checking. Duke has always been beaten off the dribble at the perimeter because of the aggressiveness of the man to man, particularly against fast guards. But there was always the fall back of having someone rotate over to at least make the other team *think* about getting called for a charge. Now there is no fear from the offense, rightfully so. And I think it's partly why you see a lack of rotation - there just isn't much benefit to it anymore... in fact, it's mostly fraught with downside of getting into foul trouble.

Duke's very fortunate to be as deep as they are this year - they should be using that depth to be more aggressive on defense, fouls be damned.

[FerryFor50]

The play-by-play alone suggests that the bolded text is incorrect. I count 8 points (3 baskets and two free throws) immediately following offensive rebounds for Vermont.

That doesn't change your point (that the points off offensive rebounds attributed to Hood's defense was wrong). But the reason that it seemed like they got more than 2 second-chance points is because they DID get more than 2 second-chance points.

I think people see plays like the one where the Vermont's 6'2" PG Carissimo gets an offensive putback on 6'8" Rodney Hood during the final moments of the game and that sets an indelible impression in their head that Duke got killed on the glass. Not entirely surprising to have that opinion, really...

[BD80]

A zone defense would not be the panacea many believe it would be. A good zone requires the very things that are lacking in our man-to-man defense, rotation and communication. It would be one thing if teams were pulling our "bigs" away from the basket and driving for layups. To the contrary, our "bigs" have been able to check their men while at least keeping a foot in the lane. And yet they are STILL late in rotating to help, or when they do, their man opens up under the basket with no one rotating to help underneath. At least now when our guys stand still, they are standing near an opponent (except Andre who ignores his man cutting the baseline backdoor). In a zone, they would be standing on their imaginary "X."

Amile and Josh must be showing an understanding in practice of what is expected, because I cannot see any redeeming merit to their play in the last 2 games. They are not rebounding or even boxing out to help Jabari rebound. Their "help" defense is atrocious, and secondary rotation non-existent. I trust Coach K will have team playing better D, but the learning curve is bad for my heart.

The comments about Rasheed make me realize why Josh and Tyler are getting PT. We need players who don't need the ball to contribute. (Tyler - you DON'T NEED THE BALL TO CONTRIBUTE). Rasheed is now our 4th option to attack from the wing, whereas he was our 1st option last year (Seth was more of a spot up shooter, maybe option 1A to attack).

The film study should be brutal this week. I hope they stop the action and circle the culprits every time a player is caught just watching the action. Too often we had four players standing still, as if waiting for an outlet to start a break or spotting up for a 3-point shot.

[Kedsy]

I think people see plays like the one where the Vermont's 6'2" PG Carissimo gets an offensive putback on 6'8" Rodney Hood during the final moments of the game and that sets an indelible impression in their head that Duke got killed on the glass. Not entirely surprising to have that opinion, really...

Well, OK, except Rodney can't be faulted for not boxing out Carissimo. That responsibility would have been on the guard who should have been defending Carissimo.

[budwom]

The worst thing about last night's game (well, one of the worst) is that we might have expected much better defense and communication after the
ECU close call. But nyet, evidently whatever they worked on the last few days failed to bear discernible fruit.

[duke96]

Sorry, please don't mistake my post for disrespect for Mason. I wholeheartedly defended his need to avoid fouls, frequently at the cost of allowing easy layups, last season. Mason was a true All-American and essential to keep on the floor last season. When he was able to aggressively defend the post, he was very good at it, which I mentioned, again, several times last year. When he was in foul trouble, however, he played smart to keep himself on the floor...which was the right move, since his post presence was a tremendous asset on both ends of the court.

Thanks for the stat on Marshall, and again, I'm not intending criticism of Marshall as a player, just pointing out a problem I'd forsee if he was put on the court to be a "rim-protector". If Marshall gets a chance and shows an ability to stop teams from attacking the rim, without getting into quick foul trouble, then he'll have earned his minutes, whether he contributes on the offensive end or not.

Seems to it may be advisable to make the investment of having Marshall and/or Amile on the court pretty much all the time in our games the rest of the year to develop them. It will cost us in the near-term, but it's hard for me to imagine making a strong tournament run without one of those two guys (ideally Marshall) being a reliable, seasoned player (defender) by the end of the year. Pitino is making similar investments in playing his less talented bigs at Louisville at this point in the season despite an abundance of talent at G/SF as we do. If Duke does not do this, perhaps we'll have the chance to observe both strategies in comparison.

[oldnavy]

Why shouldn't we shift to zone at least periodically? It's too agonizing to watch those easy and often uncontested layups.

I've been asking this question for 30 years! Vermont's coach said he hated to do it, but he switched to zone. Heck, even Roy (whom I gave credit too in the UNC/UL thread) went zone.

Maybe with the rule change Coach K will see that we are even more at vulnerable than ever, and switch to zone just every once in a while to disrupt the other team.

I, like many of you were probably do the play by play BEFORE it happened each time Vermont had the ball. Pass, Pass, Drive, Dish or layup... rewind, repeat....

[-jk]

A few thoughts on the "new rules":

- There are not actually any NEW rules; the NCAA just instructed officials to enforce the existing rules more to the letter of the law
...


The block/charge rule did change. Before, defensive position had to be established before the ball handler left the floor. Now, the defender must establish position before the ball handler begins to gather the ball before leaving the floor.

It shouldn't change for someone merely dribbling, though. Just jumping to pass or shoot.

-jk

[Matches]

I've been asking this question for 30 years! Vermont's coach said he hated to do it, but he switched to zone. Heck, even Roy (whom I gave credit too in the UNC/UL thread) went zone.

Maybe with the rule change Coach K will see that we are even more at vulnerable than ever, and switch to zone just every once in a while to disrupt the other team.



Several of the players were asked last night if the team has been practicing zone, and responded that it has not. So the odds of seeing it anytime soon are slim to none.

A more likely adjustment would be more of a sagging man-to-man, backing off overplays and concentrating on staying in front of guys, 2010 style. We have to handle the boards better for that strategy to be effective though.

[BD80]

Well, OK, except Rodney can't be faulted for not boxing out Carissimo. That responsibility would have been on the guard who should have been defending Carissimo.

My sense is that Rodney should be rebounding more, and particularly that rebound. The stats show he had 7 rebounds, which is pretty good, but he doesn't seem to be cleaning the off-side rebounds that he should get.

Amile had 6 rebounds in 12 minutes. So I owe an apology. It seemed to me he disappeared - because he was on the bench most of the game.

Andre and Rasheed definitely need to attack the boards more. Two rebounds between them in a combined 46 minutes.

[davekay1971]

A few thoughts on the "new rules":

Scoring is up because fouls and free throw attempts are up, mainly. Average possessions have only increased by about 1.
As a result, the games are actually slowed down, which is the opposite effect the NCAA wanted.

- With the rules enforcement, you get one of two things:

* long, drawn out games with tons of trips to the FT line, star players in foul trouble (impacting game results), players fouling out left and right
* fast paced games with absolutely zero defense (you know, like the clash between NCAA powerhouses Duke and Vermont)
.

Great post...edited for length only...

In response, I have to wonder whether the NCAA will monitor the effect during the pre-conference schedule, then determine whether or not to back off of this new emphasis mid-season. If the only consequences of the changes is slower games, free-throw shooting contests, and an increase in zone defense, then the NCAA will have some impetus to back off on the emphasis changes.

[PSurprise]

If the NCAA made all these drastic 'interpretations' to the rules in order to increase scoring, why 1) didn't they do it incrementally to allow the coaches and players to adjust and 2) didn't (don't) they think of decreasing the shot clock to say, 30 seconds? That seems to me would do more for increasing scoring...I'd rather watch teams have more possessions than watch more free throws, which (it seems to me at least) where most of the additional points are coming from. Otherwise, we just need to recruit the best free throw shooters and we'll have an easy path to the NC (kidding, slightly).

[davekay1971]

I've been asking this question for 30 years! Vermont's coach said he hated to do it, but he switched to zone. Heck, even Roy (whom I gave credit too in the UNC/UL thread) went zone.

Maybe with the rule change Coach K will see that we are even more at vulnerable than ever, and switch to zone just every once in a while to disrupt the other team.

I, like many of you were probably do the play by play BEFORE it happened each time Vermont had the ball. Pass, Pass, Drive, Dish or layup... rewind, repeat....

K is one of the most flexible, open minded coaches in the history of the game...with the exception of zone defense. Even though I've brought it up in a couple of posts, I don't expect to ever see a Mike Krzyzewski coached Duke team play more than a smattering of zone. And, that being said, I'd probably spill my beer if I saw them play zone at all. Which would be tragic.

[flyingdutchdevil]

K is one of the most flexible, open minded coaches in the history of the game...with the exception of zone defense. Even though I've brought it up in a couple of posts, I don't expect to ever see a Mike Krzyzewski coached Duke team play more than a smattering of zone. And, that being said, I'd probably spill my beer if I saw them play zone at all. Which would be tragic.

I assume you mean the spilling of the beer and not the zone, right?

Beer is sacred nectar.

[jipops]

The comments about Rasheed make me realize why Josh and Tyler are getting PT. We need players who don't need the ball to contribute. (Tyler - you DON'T NEED THE BALL TO CONTRIBUTE). Rasheed is now our 4th option to attack from the wing, whereas he was our 1st option last year (Seth was more of a spot up shooter, maybe option 1A to attack).

This is an interesting point. It does seem that much of Rasheed's struggles are due to Rodney now assuming a primary perimeter attack role that Rasheed had last year. Now he's taking on a very different role from within the offense and he's having a harder time adjusting to it than any of us had thought. There were a couple plays in the first half where he did initiate the offense via the drive and those possessions were productive. But he wasn't called on for this afterwards and Sheed isn't going to be a spot-up guy like Andre is. It would be good to see him work more off cuts and look for the mid-range.

But of course, offense is not really a problem to address right now.

[FerryFor50]

My sense is that Rodney should be rebounding more, and particularly that rebound. The stats show he had 7 rebounds, which is pretty good, but he doesn't seem to be cleaning the off-side rebounds that he should get.

Amile had 6 rebounds in 12 minutes. So I owe an apology. It seemed to me he disappeared - because he was on the bench most of the game.

Andre and Rasheed definitely need to attack the boards more. Two rebounds between them in a combined 46 minutes.

On the Carissimo play in particular, he just mistimed his jump and Carissimo was in the right place at the right time, like he was most of the night. Crafty Italians!

[FerryFor50]

The block/charge rule did change. Before, defensive position had to be established before the ball handler left the floor. Now, the defender must establish position before the ball handler begins to gather the ball before leaving the floor.

It shouldn't change for someone merely dribbling, though. Just jumping to pass or shoot.

-jk

Good point... but the primary complaint has been the hand checking rule. Everyone seems to forget how important taking charges was to Duke's overall defense. Not just taking the charge, but making teams *think* about taking the charge. That along kept teams out of the lane more often.

[oldnavy]

A zone defense would not be the panacea many believe it would be. A good zone requires the very things that are lacking in our man-to-man defense, rotation and communication. It would be one thing if teams were pulling our "bigs" away from the basket and driving for layups. To the contrary, our "bigs" have been able to check their men while at least keeping a foot in the lane. And yet they are STILL late in rotating to help, or when they do, their man opens up under the basket with no one rotating to help underneath. At least now when our guys stand still, they are standing near an opponent (except Andre who ignores his man cutting the baseline backdoor). In a zone, they would be standing on their imaginary "X."

Amile and Josh must be showing an understanding in practice of what is expected, because I cannot see any redeeming merit to their play in the last 2 games. They are not rebounding or even boxing out to help Jabari rebound. Their "help" defense is atrocious, and secondary rotation non-existent. I trust Coach K will have team playing better D, but the learning curve is bad for my heart.

The comments about Rasheed make me realize why Josh and Tyler are getting PT. We need players who don't need the ball to contribute. (Tyler - you DON'T NEED THE BALL TO CONTRIBUTE). Rasheed is now our 4th option to attack from the wing, whereas he was our 1st option last year (Seth was more of a spot up shooter, maybe option 1A to attack).

The film study should be brutal this week. I hope they stop the action and circle the culprits every time a player is caught just watching the action. Too often we had four players standing still, as if waiting for an outlet to start a break or spotting up for a 3-point shot.

Good point, BUT it at least would change the tempo and make the offensive team adjust. I am not say we should abandon MTM, but just mix in a zone when teams like Vermont get our number and go on a roll. To me, Vermont lost the game on an ill advised outside jump shot late in the game and we got the rebound. It was a subtle thing, but it was one of the few "stops" we had. We had done nothing to justify them "settling" for a jumper at that point. It was an open jumper, but why take a 15-20 footer when we are conceding layups???

Mix in a zone once in a while, just like teams going zone on us, knocks us back a step and we have to adjust... it CAN NOT BE WORSE, can it???

[UrinalCake]

didn't (don't) they think of decreasing the shot clock to say, 30 seconds?

The NCAA did consider shortening the shot clock during the latest discussion, when these other changes were implemented. They ultimately did not vote in favor of the change. I think one of the arguments against it was that quality of play would decrease - you'd have more rushed jumpers to beat the shot clock and fewer chances to generate a good shot. Though with the hand check rules, you're getting lots of one-on-one play anyways.

I agree with you that a shorter shot click would be better than the garbage officiating we're seeing now

[Kedsy]

My sense is that Rodney should be rebounding more, and particularly that rebound. The stats show he had 7 rebounds, which is pretty good, but he doesn't seem to be cleaning the off-side rebounds that he should get.

Amile had 6 rebounds in 12 minutes. So I owe an apology. It seemed to me he disappeared - because he was on the bench most of the game.

Andre and Rasheed definitely need to attack the boards more. Two rebounds between them in a combined 46 minutes.

Rodney's current defensive rebounding percentage is 13.3%, almost exactly what it was at Mississippi State (13.2%). He's obviously improved in other areas over what he did as a freshman, but from a rebounding perspective it may be that this is just what we get from him.

Amile's defensive rebounding percentage is 17.8%, much improved over his freshman DR% of 13.8%, and Amile only got one defensive rebound total in our first two games this season, so he's actually been defensively rebounding very well since then (about 25.6%).

Notwithstanding his goose egg against Vermont, Rasheed's defensive rebounding percentage for the season (12.1%) is also improved over last year (10.9%) and is not bad for a guard.

Andre's defensive rebounding percentage (11.1%) is way better than his previous seasons (8.6%, 8.1%, 8.5%) and is also not bad for a guard.

Actually, based on DR%, the two Duke players who aren't really pulling their weight on the defensive rebounding side are Quinn (7.0% after grabbing 11.0% last year) and Josh (7.2%, which wouldn't be so good as a guard and is just plain awful for someone who plays near the basket almost all the time). Also, ironically, Marshall, whose 10.3% is somewhat anemic for a 7-footer.

[CDu]

Well, OK, except Rodney can't be faulted for not boxing out Carissimo. That responsibility would have been on the guard who should have been defending Carissimo.

Unless we got caught on a switch. It is very possible that Hood's assignment was Carissimo at that point. Very possible that it wasn't his assignment as well.

[CDu]

Actually, based on DR%, the two Duke players who aren't really pulling their weight on the defensive rebounding side are Quinn (7.0% after grabbing 11.0% last year) and Josh (7.2%, which wouldn't be so good as a guard and is just plain awful for someone who plays near the basket almost all the time). Also, ironically, Marshall, whose 10.3% is somewhat anemic for a 7-footer.

Considering that Hood is playing quite a bit of PF this year and the rest of the time at SF, I'd include him on the list of not pulling their weight on the glass. He's a good rebounder for a guard, but he's been asked to play out of position a lot. And he hasn't responded with the necessary rebound rate.

Similarly, Sulaimon and Dawkins have been playing a fair amount of SF, which means a bit more rebounding responsibility.

Agree with you on Hairston and technically Plumlee too, though Plumlee may be a victim of small sample size in this case.

But basically, what we're seeing is that a bunch of guys are being asked to play up a position (Jefferson and Parker often at C instead of PF; Hood often at PF; Sulaimon/Dawkins often at SF). The result is, as expected, a lower-than-average rebound percentage as a team, as those guys aren't seeing the requisite bump in rebound percentage (with the possible exception of Parker and Jefferson).

[Dukehky]

I assume you mean the spilling of the beer and not the zone, right?

Beer is sacred nectar.

The zone is not worthy of the blue devils in K's mind.

I never really got it either. I just don't think he wants to be seen as taking something from Jimmy B.

[roywhite]

Unless we got caught on a switch. It is very possible that Hood's assignment was Carissimo at that point. Very possible that it wasn't his assignment as well.

....and, unfortunately, very possible that he didn't know what his assignment was.

[FerryFor50]

....and, unfortunately, very possible that he didn't know what his assignment was.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOZCAjcYurE

[ncexnyc]

Well, Tyler played all of 11 minutes last night, and he wasn't on the floor when Vermont made their run to get within striking distance. Yes, he played poorly when he was in there, and the foul on the desperation three was terrible, but IMO he's being given a disproportionate share of the blame for our poor defense. I haven't seen anything from Jones that suggests he's a better option than TT, largely because Jones has barely played. Is the desire to shift to him just an embrace of the unknown over the known?

Yea, I know K praised his defense in preseason. And Marshall Plumlee is one of the six best players on the team, and Alex Murphy is a four-year starter, etc. K says lots.

Glad someone else has noticed Bruise Brother #1 getting a raw deal. I was wondering if a number of posters had been taking driving lessons from Ol' Roy, as they were doing a good job of throwing TT under the bus and then rolling over him a few times and this was after a win (yes, very ugly win).

[CDu]

Glad someone else has noticed Bruise Brother #1 getting a raw deal. I was wondering if a number of posters had been taking driving lessons from Ol' Roy, as they were doing a good job of throwing TT under the bus and then rolling over him a few times and this was after a win (yes, very ugly win).

In fairness, he did have one really egregious mistake fouling a desperation shooter, which makes him an easy target last night.

But I don't think he's getting a disproportionate amount of blame for last night's loss. Pretty sure everyone on the team is getting blamed, and Thornton is not excluded from that list.

Hard to say anything positive about an 11 minute, 4 foul, zero point performance from Thornton. He certainly wasn't the main reason we struggled defensively, but he also wasn't really part of the solution either.

[azzefkram]

Actually, based on DR%, the two Duke players who aren't really pulling their weight on the defensive rebounding side are Quinn (7.0% after grabbing 11.0% last year) and Josh (7.2%, which wouldn't be so good as a guard and is just plain awful for someone who plays near the basket almost all the time). Also, ironically, Marshall, whose 10.3% is somewhat anemic for a 7-footer.

Quinn hasn't been rebounding like he did last year, but he is up in just about every other category. Marshall hasn't looked good rebounding the ball this year but sample size is a factor in that percent.

[wilko]

I'm guessing that a good amount of practice time this week will be spent on proper ball inflation.
You cant play good D with under-inflated balls

[kmspeaks]

I made a point to this effect during the in-game thread. Pressure man to man is very difficult to play with these rules. Our guys are well coached enough to know that there's basically no hand-checking, no contact allowed. How do you guard a reasonably quick player in that situation? With your feet? Sure...give it a try. The offensive player has every advantage in a no-contact situation because he knows where he's going to go. He doesn't have to be as quick...he just has to go. Hand-checking allows the defensive player to even the odds because he can feel, before he can see, where the offensive player is going to go. Hand checking in excess can also slow the offensive player down, which gives the defensive player the advantage and led to the rules change.

So, what should Duke do? I didn't see a lack of effort on D...I saw players afraid to aggressively defend. Should k tell them, screw the rules, hand check everyone and dare the refs to call them all? Should he just tell them to move their feet faster and pray? Should he alter his defensive focus slightly to deny the three point shooters and back off the drivers to prevent the layups? Or should he go with more zone?

I think, now, that this discussion will be the DBR debate of the season.


Since K is not likely to go zone for any significant period of time, why not install some version of the pack-line defense around the arc in order to stop all these easy drives to the basket and to better mask our obvious deficiencies at protecting the rim?

The obvious drawback of packing in our perimeter defense is not being able to generate as many points in transition

I am not Coach K and I am not nearly as smart as the majority of the posters here are when it comes to dissecting basketball and its intricacies. But something has to change or this defense, as it currently is, could easily do us in just as quickly as Lehigh did in 2012. We will not outscore everyone.

I don't know that Duke needs to go full UVA pack-line but how about backing Quinn (or whoever is on the ball up top initially) off just a step. I have never seen anyone be successful trying to play chest to chest with a ball handler 30 feet away from the basket. Keep him at arms length and then you have time to react and can stick your hands out to disrupt his dribble. The guys off the ball can still jump passing lanes to create transition opportunities and you're still making it difficult to initiate the offense but you can hopefully cut down on the blow by's we saw repeatedly last night.

[dukechem]

There have been many comments about what will happen in practice this week. There's not going to be much practice with games in NY on Wednesday and Friday. I suspect that most of the major teaching and learning will have to take place over the holiday break.

[darthur]

A few thoughts on the "new rules":

- There are not actually any NEW rules; the NCAA just instructed officials to enforce the existing rules more to the letter of the law
- The NCAA will tout that overall scoring is up, and it is. However, that's just a side effect.

Scoring is up because fouls and free throw attempts are up, mainly. Average possessions have only increased by about 1.

http://college-basketball.si.com/2013/11/13/new-foul-rules-have-so-far-increased-overall-scoring/
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the-dagger/assessing-impact-rules-college-basketball-opening-weekend-133040518--ncaab.html

The players do not know how to play with the new rules, the coaches do not know how to coach to them, and perhaps the refs do not even know how to call them. Increases in number of fouls are almost always temporary - they correspond to player expectations and habits being out of whack with the rules.

The changes were never supposed to improve watchability immediately, just eventually. The NBA made very similar changes a while back, and the rule changes have been pretty popular in retrospect. See here for the some stats:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_stats.html?redir

Hand-checking was cracked down on in the 04-05 season. FTA / FGA did go up a couple percent for a few years. Now, it is lower than it was before the rule change. eFG% and PPG went up that year and never came back down.

[CDu]

For what it is worth, I agree with whomever said earlier in the thread that it wasn't generally a lack of effort but rather a lack of awareness/understanding of what to do that was the problem defensively. We were moving around a lot, but generally were finding ourselves moving to the wrong spots (e.g., both players chasing the ball, leaving the screener free to roll to the rim).

Unfortunately, I fear that this is going to be the case whenever we play a disciplined offensive team with even decent ballhandlers. That is, unless we change our approach.

Historically, we've believed in lots of pressure on the ball, out beyond the 3 point line. The idea was to take away the 3pt shot and force teams to beat us off the dribble, with the help defense concept being to rotate to help whenever necessary (preferably not necessary, but sometimes you get beaten off the dribble). The on-ball defense included a lot of physicality as necessary, including hand-checking. This year the need for pressure defense seemed even greater, as we don't have a good rebounding team and we don't have a strong defense on the interior. So it appeared that we'd need to focus even more on tough perimeter defense.

Unfortunately, the two rules changes (no hand-checking on the perimeter, stricter rules about taking charges) actually hurt us in our previous areas of strength (physical perimeter defense; taking charges). It's now much harder to play in-your-face perimeter defense, and the penalty for getting beaten on the perimeter is a much greater likelihood of a basket or defensive foul.

I see three possible solutions, all of which have been mentioned in this thread:
1. More switching on ball screens. This approach can work as long as (a) the screener isn't able to then easily post up a small guard and (b) the ballhandler isn't then able to blow by the big who switches onto him. The switching game won't work with Hairston switching onto a guard. It won't work with a big man posting up Cook or Thornton (at least not with this year's rules limiting Thornton's physicality/fouling). But when it's guys like Parker, Jefferson, Ojeleye, Murphy and Hood picking up a guard? It might just work well enough.
2. Play zone. The obvious benefits of the zone are that you limit dribble penetration and force teams to shoot more jumpers and you have help defense on any post guys. The weaknesses of the zone are that a really good team can exploit it with quick passing, and you can frequently miss assignments on the boards (which we apparently do anyway). That, and Coach K refuses to play zone for any length of time.
3. Sag off the pressure defense up top. This would take away the effectiveness of the high-ball screen. It would reduce the instances of getting beaten off the dribble. But it would allow for more easy post entry passes, which might exploit our interior defense.
4. Improve communication on defense and hope that better communication is enough to allow us to continue to play pressure defense.

Given the way things are going, my inclination is that #3 is the best option. Though #4 needs to happen regardless of what we choose to do about #1-3. But right now, with the rules really dictating that teams drive to the basket, I think we need to put an emphasis on limiting that option - even if it means opening up the post game a bit.

Basically, I'm not sure that this is ever going to be a really good defensive team this year. Hood and Parker don't appear to be great defensively, and we know they'll be on the court most of the game for offensive purposes. Hairston and Jefferson aren't any better defensively, and both commit too many fouls. Sulaimon and Cook are at times good defenders, at others not. And against teams that run high-ball screens, it doesn't matter how good they are at on-ball defense if their teammates don't prevent the ballhandler from driving. Dawkins still seems to struggle on that end of the floor (though it was great to see his shooting again last night). And with the new rules, I don't think Thornton is going to do well defensively.

We can certainly get better defensively. But it will require a collective improvement from just about everyone, because none of these guys are elite individual defenders right now.

[FerryFor50]

The players do not know how to play with the new rules, the coaches do not know how to coach to them, and perhaps the refs do not even know how to call them. Increases in number of fouls are almost always temporary - they correspond to player expectations and habits being out of whack with the rules.

The changes were never supposed to improve watchability immediately, just eventually. The NBA made very similar changes a while back, and the rule changes have been pretty popular in retrospect. See here for the some stats:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_stats.html?redir

Hand-checking was cracked down on in the 04-05 season. FTA / FGA did go up a couple percent for a few years. Now, it is lower than it was before the rule change. eFG% and PPG went up that year and never came back down.

I know the NBA changed the rules (you can thank the Pistons, Heat and Knicks for that) - but the fact is, that changed worked because the players are better overall. Talent pool is a little more diluted in the college game.

[trinity79]

:confused:
I did not have time to peruse this entire thread, so please forgive me if this has already been suggested. Perhaps Coach K needs to steal a page from Ol' Roy's playbook and take the rims down at practice for a while. 90 points? Vermont? Wait, what? I saw this score on the ESPN crawler this a.m. and just assumed it was a misprint. Vermont? 90? To paraphrase Larry the Cable Guy, that's not funny, I don't care who you are.

[roywhite]

Two things Coach K values are:
Experience in general
Seniors in particular

Part of defensive improvement IMO can be had by playing freshman Matt Jones more; K has raved about his defensive readiness and training.
Can Semi also provide some help defensively as he learns? don't know, maybe.

[CDu]

I do have one qualm -- the foul called on Rasheed on the four point play -- how do you call a foul on someone who's on the ground? It's not like he intentionally tripped him, and the contact only hapenned when the ball was swooshing through the basket. How is that a foul?

That was a foul even with the old system. Intent does not play into what is or is not a foul. When a guy goes for a block but hits the shooter's arm, did he intend to commit a foul? No. But it is still a foul.

The rules say you have to allow the shooter a chance to finish his shooting motion, which includes the landing. How many times have Duke shooters gotten a foul called when they kicked their leg out after the shot and then fell? How many times have we had a defender land on us after we hit the ground on a shot and drawn the foul? That's simply part of the game.

Also, laying on the floor is by rule not a legal guarding position. So it was either a shooting foul (1 shot given the made 3) or a player-control foul (which would have put them on the line for 2 shots as Vermont was in the double-bonus). Be happy it was a shooting foul, because the alternative was worse for us.

It's unfortunate because Sulaimon clearly wasn't trying to foul. But by rule, it was a foul.


Time for the NCAA to admit that this was an expreiment gone wrong, and go back to real basketball.

If by "real basketball" you mean "guys mugging each other as soon as they cross half-court," then I respectfully disagree. I think that the rules changes were a good idea. The game was getting to be awful to watch, so doing something to improve the fluidity was necessary. The problem is that they just went a bit overboard in either the rules changes or the enforcement of those changes. It's not an easy thing to fix, but it was definitely in need of fixing.

[FerryFor50]

If by "real basketball" you mean "guys mugging each other as soon as they cross half-court," then I respectfully disagree. I think that the rules changes were a good idea. The game was getting to be awful to watch, so doing something to improve the fluidity was necessary. The problem is that they just went a bit overboard in either the rules changes or the enforcement of those changes. It's not an easy thing to fix, but it was definitely in need of fixing.

Yep. It needed to be fixed. They just need to reach an equilibrium at some point for foul calls.

[CDu]

I know the NBA changed the rules (you can thank the Pistons, Heat and Knicks for that) - but the fact is, that changed worked because the players are better overall. Talent pool is a little more diluted in the college game.

And yet, the NBA teams have still figured out how to play defense without fouling. That has nothing to do with dilution of talent (or lack thereof). It just takes more familiarity with the new rules and what you can and cannot do defensively.

[FerryFor50]

And yet, the NBA teams have still figured out how to play defense without fouling. That has nothing to do with dilution of talent (or lack thereof). It just takes more familiarity with the new rules and what you can and cannot do defensively.

Eh... I'd argue that officiating adjusted. When the NBA first implemented the new rules, a LOT of hand checks were called. Now you still see those hand checks, but they don't call it frequently unless it affects a play.

And I still think talent comes into play... especially in regards to the scoring. I wouldn't call the current NBA a "defense oriented" league.

[mr. synellinden]

I think it's important to point out something. All teams are playing under the same rules. There is a lot of talk in this thread about how the new rules are affecting us, but it's not like we're not getting the benefit of that on offense. We have to adapt. Duke has as much, if not more, talent than anyone in the country. We have to learn:

(1) how to play together as a group and that includes communicating; - we lost three senior starters and our two best players didn't play a second for Duke last season (not to mention 3 of our bench players who may be key parts of the rotation by the time the season ends) - the cohesiveness is going to take time; and
(2) how to play under the current rules - Josh has to stop trying to take charges; Tyler has to stop hand checking or making body contact; our guards, especially Quinn, need to drive into the lane more and take advantage of the matador defense other teams will have to play just as we do. Our offense has traditionally been a high screen, drive and dish for 3 focused motion system. That typically doesn't work well against a zone. Teams saw in our first few games how our offense shredded man to man - we were virtually unguardable. Look at our shooting percentages. We are going to see a lot zone and trick defenses this year. We will learn how to adapt to them. We have the best coach in the country in terms of making in season adjustments.

I do agree that we need to see more of Marshall and that Jefferson needs more playing time. I also think we need to get more minutes out of Semi and Matt and encourage them to play offense, not just shoot 3's. I think we have enough athletic players to throw in a full or half court press occasionally - I'd like to see some of that. Even if it results in an open layup or dunk from time to time - we are already giving those up. Go back and look at one of Vermont's first possessions - they have an open man standing under the basket wide open (nobody from Duke is even in the lane) for long enough to get a 3 second call against him - that's not a new rules issue. It's a team defense and communication issue. I don't think Rodney and Jabari are bad defenders. They are too athletic and talented to be bad defenders. What they are - right now - is bad team defenders. That will improve vastly by the time the ACC schedule rolls around.

[CDu]

Two things Coach K values are:
Experience in general
Seniors in particular

Part of defensive improvement IMO can be had by playing freshman Matt Jones more; K has raved about his defensive readiness and training.
Can Semi also provide some help defensively as he learns? don't know, maybe.

It will be interesting to see if Ojeleye can figure things out well enough to supplant Hood's minutes at PF (keeping him at SF) and/or cut into Hairston's minutes at PF/C. He certainly brings more athleticism, more rebounding, and better offense than Hairston, and pushing Hood back to SF helps us defensively. It's just a question of whether he can get good enough defensively to earn Coach K's trust. Hairston has a ceiling on both ends of the floor, but his floor is higher (at the very least in Coach K's eyes) than Ojeleye's floor.

As for Jones, his minutes are tied to those of Sulaimon, Dawkins, and possibly Hood (especially if our frontcourt minutes shift).

What I'd like to see is this:
PG: Cook (30-35 mpg), Thornton (5-10 mpg)
SG: Sulaimon (25 mpg), Dawkins/Jones (10 mpg), Thornton (5 mpg)
SF: (30-35 mpg), Dawkins/Jones (5-10 mpg)
PF/C: Parker (30-35 mpg), Jefferson (20 mpg), Ojeleye (10-15 mpg), Hairston/Murphy/Plumlee (5-10 mpg)

Basically, I think we're close in the backcourt, but a little high on minutes for Thornton (due to us playing Hood a good bit at PF). If Ojeleye (or Murphy or Plumlee) could step up, we could push Hood back to exclusively SF, and we'd look good.

All offseason everyone talked about how we'd be this really long, athletic team, with a 6'8" SF on the floor for almost the entire game. Well, so far we've spent probably 15-20 mpg (or more) with a three guard lineup and a perimeter guy at the PF spot. That probably needs to change. But in order for that change to occur, we need to have one of the three guys on the outside of the regular minutes (Murphy/Ojeleye/Plumlee) to step up and earn it.

[Matches]

I think it's important to point out something. All teams are playing under the same rules. There is a lot of talk in this thread about how the new rules are affecting us, but it's not like we're not getting the benefit of that on offense. We have to adapt. Duke has as much, if not more, talent than anyone in the country. We have to learn:



This is a great point. Currently we are ranked behind 175 D1 teams who are all playing under the same set of rules as we are. Whatever limitations we may have personnel-wise, there is no way we should be that low given the level of talent we have. Hopefully this is just part of an adjustment period - we may never be a great defensive team but our ceiling HAS to be higher than this.

[Orange&BlackSheep]

This was precisely how the game was called back in the 80's. You could not put your hands on a guy driving to the basket.

Watch the highlights of BH ....

BH - Don't Sweat The Technique (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWehBWJWGKY)

*way* less hand checking going on. Once people start defending that way, there will not be 1,000,000 fouls called. This is not a ref/NCAA rules committee problem. This is allowing basketball to be more free flowing as it always was. I certainly hope that incidental hands that do not affect the play are not called. But anything beyond that should be.

O&B Sheep

[Saratoga2]

We have enough offensive firepower to punt one of the positions when on O.

We already are when Tyler is in the game. His offensive numbers were poor last night and his defense was nothing to write home about. Where is the leadership coming from on this team? Can we say that substituting Marshall into the game and removing Tyler would be a negative when we are getting pounded inside?

[Dopeshop]

At the end of last night's game ,I was rooting for the Catamounts ! They really deserved it .

I am Duke to the core ,but that one had the wrong ending .

Also , my anxiety level goes way up when Josh H is in the lineup,especially when he takes a jump shot --- How does he get the okay for those ?

I have the same vibes (all Bad ) when Marshall P is in---A turnover waiting to happen.

my therapist and I am working on these issues..

[MChambers]

For what it is worth, I agree with whomever said earlier in the thread that it wasn't generally a lack of effort but rather a lack of awareness/understanding of what to do that was the problem defensively. We were moving around a lot, but generally were finding ourselves moving to the wrong spots (e.g., both players chasing the ball, leaving the screener free to roll to the rim).

Unfortunately, I fear that this is going to be the case whenever we play a disciplined offensive team with even decent ballhandlers. That is, unless we change our approach.

Historically, we've believed in lots of pressure on the ball, out beyond the 3 point line. The idea was to take away the 3pt shot and force teams to beat us off the dribble, with the help defense concept being to rotate to help whenever necessary (preferably not necessary, but sometimes you get beaten off the dribble). The on-ball defense included a lot of physicality as necessary, including hand-checking. This year the need for pressure defense seemed even greater, as we don't have a good rebounding team and we don't have a strong defense on the interior. So it appeared that we'd need to focus even more on tough perimeter defense.

Unfortunately, the two rules changes (no hand-checking on the perimeter, stricter rules about taking charges) actually hurt us in our previous areas of strength (physical perimeter defense; taking charges). It's now much harder to play in-your-face perimeter defense, and the penalty for getting beaten on the perimeter is a much greater likelihood of a basket or defensive foul.

I see three possible solutions, all of which have been mentioned in this thread:
1. More switching on ball screens. This approach can work as long as (a) the screener isn't able to then easily post up a small guard and (b) the ballhandler isn't then able to blow by the big who switches onto him. The switching game won't work with Hairston switching onto a guard. It won't work with a big man posting up Cook or Thornton (at least not with this year's rules limiting Thornton's physicality/fouling). But when it's guys like Parker, Jefferson, Ojeleye, Murphy and Hood picking up a guard? It might just work well enough.
2. Play zone. The obvious benefits of the zone are that you limit dribble penetration and force teams to shoot more jumpers and you have help defense on any post guys. The weaknesses of the zone are that a really good team can exploit it with quick passing, and you can frequently miss assignments on the boards (which we apparently do anyway). That, and Coach K refuses to play zone for any length of time.
3. Sag off the pressure defense up top. This would take away the effectiveness of the high-ball screen. It would reduce the instances of getting beaten off the dribble. But it would allow for more easy post entry passes, which might exploit our interior defense.
4. Improve communication on defense and hope that better communication is enough to allow us to continue to play pressure defense.

Given the way things are going, my inclination is that #3 is the best option. Though #4 needs to happen regardless of what we choose to do about #1-3. But right now, with the rules really dictating that teams drive to the basket, I think we need to put an emphasis on limiting that option - even if it means opening up the post game a bit.

Basically, I'm not sure that this is ever going to be a really good defensive team this year. Hood and Parker don't appear to be great defensively, and we know they'll be on the court most of the game for offensive purposes. Hairston and Jefferson aren't any better defensively, and both commit too many fouls. Sulaimon and Cook are at times good defenders, at others not. And against teams that run high-ball screens, it doesn't matter how good they are at on-ball defense if their teammates don't prevent the ballhandler from driving. Dawkins still seems to struggle on that end of the floor (though it was great to see his shooting again last night). And with the new rules, I don't think Thornton is going to do well defensively.

We can certainly get better defensively. But it will require a collective improvement from just about everyone, because none of these guys are elite individual defenders right now.
I think this sums it up very well. I do think substantial improvement is possible, given the relative youth and inexperience of the personnel, but even substantial improvement won't make this the strong defensive team I foresaw before the season.

[OldPhiKap]

This was precisely how the game was called back in the 80's. You could not put your hands on a guy driving to the basket.

Watch the highlights of BH ....

BH - Don't Sweat The Technique (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWehBWJWGKY)

*way* less hand checking going on. Once people start defending that way, there will not be 1,000,000 fouls called. This is not a ref/NCAA rules committee problem. This is allowing basketball to be more free flowing as it always was. I certainly hope that incidental hands that do not affect the play are not called. But anything beyond that should be.

O&B Sheep

I was thinking about this point this morning.

In the 1980's the ACC was known as a touch-foul league. The Big East, by contrast, was known for physical play and even went to six fouls per game for a short period of time. As the refs started letting more physical play go in national and tournament games, teams adjusted that way.

I am not sure that the new rules out front are that much different than they were back in the heyday of the ACC. The difference, though, was that if your guy got beat up top the second defender could slide over and take a charge. So far this year, you can't touch on top and you cannot take a charge even if planted. And, on top of that, they do not seem to be tightening up on the five second call. So everything is stacked against the defender.

Having said all of that, we would not be having this conversation in this thread if we had communicated switches and beats more effectively last night. We didn't. We should have lost. But that is a correctable thing; everyone has to play by the same rules.

(And for those calling for a zone -- as K said in his press conference last night, it's like revisiting his first three years at Duke. It's not going to happen. K has won 960+ games with man-to-man, it's not going to change now. We played with similar rules in the 1980's, we can do so again).

[flyingdutchdevil]

I was thinking about this point this morning.

In the 1980's the ACC was known as a touch-foul league. The Big East, by contrast, was known for physical play and even went to six fouls per game for a short period of time. As the refs started letting more physical play go in national and tournament games, teams adjusted that way.

I am not sure that the new rules out front are that much different than they were back in the heyday of the ACC. The difference, though, was that if your guy got beat up top the second defender could slide over and take a charge. So far this year, you can't touch on top and you cannot take a charge even if planted. And, on top of that, they do not seem to be tightening up on the five second call. So everything is stacked against the defender.

Having said all of that, we would not be having this conversation in this thread if we had communicated switches and beats more effectively last night. We didn't. We should have lost. But that is a correctable thing; everyone has to play by the same rules.

(And for those calling for a zone -- as K said in his press conference last night, it's like revisiting his first three years at Duke. It's not going to happen. K has won 960+ games with man-to-man, it's not going to change now. We played with similar rules in the 1980's, we can do so again).

Coach K also hated one-and-dones (or two-and-dones), but he modified his strategy to win. If Coach K is really the best, then he'll figure out a way to modify the D. I find it really hard to believe that Coach K is not going to implement the zone if he thinks it's the best. The question is whether Coach K thinks it's the best.

Basketball programs, like companies, need to adapt to stay competitive.

[OldPhiKap]

Coach K also hated one-and-dones (or two-and-dones), but he modified his strategy to win. If Coach K is really the best, then he'll figure out a way to modify the D. I find it really hard to believe that Coach K is not going to implement the zone if he thinks it's the best. The question is whether Coach K thinks it's the best.

Basketball programs, like companies, need to adapt to stay competitive.

I wholly agree. But I do not think K is going to believe that abandoning man-to-man is the best route. In many ways, K is more flexible about zone than Knight ever was. We have employed a variation of the amoeba zone he modified from Vegas in '92-'92; we've used zone press, we have played zone in a game earlier this year. But it is mainly as a change of pace or curve ball to the opponent.

I seem to recall years ago, K saying something to the effect that in order to play zone well, you have to believe in it -- and he didn't.

Not saying that's right or wrong. I'm saying that after watching this guy for over 30 years, and listening to him speak on the topic, the chances of going to a zone-based defense are as close to zero as possible. As he said last night, it doesn't matter what you're running if you are playing poorly and we played poorly.

[InSpades]

There's 2 ways to play good defense. Force the opponent to take difficult shots. Force the opponent to turn the ball over. That's it really. Duke is doing neither of these things. I guess K hopes we will eventually get better at what we are doing... however in the present we would be better off doing just about anything other than what we are doing.

We don't protect the rim at all. What good is covering 4 men if the 5th man is shooting a layup under your basket?

Far be it from me to criticize K, he's the best, but we would have crushed Vermont if we just forced them to shoot jumpers. They weren't very good at jumpers. Even if they hit 50% of their jumpers (unlikely) they would have lost miserably. We probably could have fouled them every time they had the ball and as long as we didn't lose any offensive power to fouling out, we still would have won.

Whatever we are doing isn't working at all. We need to either fix it very quickly or come up with something else. I trust K to do that... but it would be nice if he could get it done before I see them in the Garden this week :).

Last year our opponents shot 42% from the field w/ almost 14 turnovers per game. If we came anywhere near that this year we would be extremely difficult to beat.

[BlueDevilBrowns]

Tactically, the only solution I see is laying off the pressure and taking our chances with a few more 3's allowed per game. At least a 3 pointer is a lower percentage shot than a layup or dunk. I'm not sure if increased switching would help as this would require even more communication, which our team isn't doing well at the moment.

Personnel-wise, I'd like to see Hood slide over to the SG spot and use Semi at SF with Parker and Amile in the paint. This way, even though we would "sag" on defense, the length of Hood and Semi could still cause disruptions for smaller guards while their size could also prevent more offensive rebounds, hopefully.


Providing more minutes for Matt and MP3 while reducing Josh and Tyler's minutes could be helpful, as well. I certainly don't think it would hurt.

[MChambers]

I was thinking about this point this morning.

In the 1980's the ACC was known as a touch-foul league. The Big East, by contrast, was known for physical play and even went to six fouls per game for a short period of time. As the refs started letting more physical play go in national and tournament games, teams adjusted that way.

I am not sure that the new rules out front are that much different than they were back in the heyday of the ACC. The difference, though, was that if your guy got beat up top the second defender could slide over and take a charge. So far this year, you can't touch on top and you cannot take a charge even if planted. And, on top of that, they do not seem to be tightening up on the five second call. So everything is stacked against the defender.

Having said all of that, we would not be having this conversation in this thread if we had communicated switches and beats more effectively last night. We didn't. We should have lost. But that is a correctable thing; everyone has to play by the same rules.

(And for those calling for a zone -- as K said in his press conference last night, it's like revisiting his first three years at Duke. It's not going to happen. K has won 960+ games with man-to-man, it's not going to change now. We played with similar rules in the 1980's, we can do so again).

Johnny Dawkins, Tommy Amaker, and Billy King managed to play amazing perimeter defense under the old rules and interpretations, so it can be done. K said something recently about having practice drills where you defended with your hands by your side. Maybe they need to try that.

However, as you point out, the abolition of the charge call is a major change from the 1980s and makes defending dribble penetration a lot harder.

The 2010 version of Duke's man-to-man had a lot of zone principles in it. I keep thinking that's where we'll end up.

[OldPhiKap]

Johnny Dawkins, Tommy Amaker, and Billy King managed to play amazing perimeter defense under the old rules and interpretations, so it can be done. K said something recently about having practice drills where you defended with your hands by your side. Maybe they need to try that.

However, as you point out, the abolition of the charge call is a major change from the 1980s and makes defending dribble penetration a lot harder.

The 2010 version of Duke's man-to-man had a lot of zone principles in it. I keep thinking that's where we'll end up.

Agreed 100%. And in many respects, as you indicate, switching screens has zone-like principles.

[azzefkram]

SF: (30-35 mpg), Dawkins/Jones (5-10 mpg)

Is Hood disappearing like he does on the defensive boards or are we hoping that ( ) can play significant minutes for us? Before anyone gets their panties in a twist, I am just joking around.

[flyingdutchdevil]

I wholly agree. But I do not think K is going to believe that abandoning man-to-man is the best route. In many ways, K is more flexible about zone than Knight ever was. We have employed a variation of the amoeba zone he modified from Vegas in '92-'92; we've used zone press, we have played zone in a game earlier this year. But it is mainly as a change of pace or curve ball to the opponent.

I seem to recall years ago, K saying something to the effect that in order to play zone well, you have to believe in it -- and he didn't.

Not saying that's right or wrong. I'm saying that after watching this guy for over 30 years, and listening to him speak on the topic, the chances of going to a zone-based defense are as close to zero as possible. As he said last night, it doesn't matter what you're running if you are playing poorly and we played poorly.

I think we're on the same page. Honestly, I could care less what defensive strategy Coach K implements. All I know is that is needs to incorporate the following:

1) Prevent penetration as much as possible
2) Foster communication
3) Prevent our 1-2 guards from guarding the 5 (and possibly the 4)
4) Mitigate backdoor cuts
5) Mitigate second chance points

I know that is a lot, but it can be done with this group. We are athletic, the players are interchangeable, and they can be taught anything in this young season.

Let's see Coach K get it done.

[CharlestonDevil]

Just saw this quote in the N&O and it's accuracy was pretty shocking. I do not want a team with our level of talent pulling another Lehigh on us.

"The last Duke team to not be led on the floor by strong senior players didn’t last long come March (Lehigh took care of that, shredding the Blue Devils’ terrible perimeter defense)."

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/11/24/3405444/postgame-thoughts-from-dukes-91.html

[freshmanjs]

Just saw this quote in the N&O and it's accuracy was pretty shocking. I do not want a team with our level of talent pulling another Lehigh on us.

"The last Duke team to not be led on the floor by strong senior players didn’t last long come March (Lehigh took care of that, shredding the Blue Devils’ terrible perimeter defense)."

http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/11/24/3405444/postgame-thoughts-from-dukes-91.html

why is that shocking? i think we all know about the lehigh loss 2 seasons ago. it certainly doesn't imply anything about the outlook for this team. that team was very weak defensively. hopefully this one won't be by march. in either case, this team is far superior to that one (especially the ryan kelly less version) offensively.