MBB: Notre Dame 79, Duke 77 - Post Game Thread

[SupaDave]

Post your thoughts here.

[hurleyfor3]

Not enough commercials.

[CLW]

-11 on the glass and allowing 130.4 points per 100 possessions just isn't going to cut it for any team with legitimate deep march plans.

we are small and we aren't forcing turnovers so its going to lead to nothing but layups.

[NashvilleDevil]

Can't wait to read all the chicken little posts.

[richardjackson199]

We were having a nice little comeback at the very end. But when you have the best player in the country on your team, he needs to be in the game for the last couple minutes - I don't care what kind of game he was having. Notice they double teamed Hood on his last drive and it worked (Thornton wasn't a threat to score). Would have been nice to have Jabari in the game for that last play. 0-1 in the ACC.

[WakeDevil]

I look forward to seeing more of that great interior defense.

[heyman25]

We weren't sharp. The better team won today. Parker was ineffective both ends of the court. Sorry his dad Sonny got to see him live and just play poorly.No inside game and never got any 50/50 loose balls.

[CDu]

Killed on the glass. Killed in the post. Killed on inbounds plays. Killed off the dribble. Killed off backdoor cuts. About the only place we played well defensively was at the free throw line.

Glad to see Hood regain his shooting stroke. He had a REALLY good game, the last possession notwithstanding.

Cook also played pretty well.

Unfortunately, we didn't get much out of Parker, Jefferson, Dawkins, or Sulaimon. Tough to win when you only have two guys producing.

Apparently Parker is human after all.

Stinks to lose our first ACC game. Winning on the road is tough, but this is not a very good Notre Dame team.

Oh well, on to our next game.

[GGLC]

Can't wait to read all the chicken little posts.

lol

Yes, everything is just fine with this team.

[Bob Green]

Live by the 3, die by the 3. We started 12-22 but finished 12-28. The 0-6 killed us. Oh well, next play!

[Potato Head]

The second and third members of the "automatic win" trident had a great game, but unfortunately our most important player was missing. They did a good job on him early, but Parker just never got into the game at all. Defense wasn't that poor by our standards, credit them for making shots when they needed to. Game was ours for the taking but we didn't. On to the next one.

[Gthoma2a]

That was tough. Hopefully Jabari gets back quick and there was nothing major going on. 0-1 in the ACC. Nowhere but up to go from here.

[Dukehky]

Not really anything new. If we make 3's we're hard to beat. With the talent on the team, our defense should be better than atrocious though. It's not that I want for our pick and roll defense to be better, it's that I want it to exist.

I mean, grand scheme; when you're picking teams in the tournament, you can pretty much throw away road games, because they don't really matter, but what does matter is the fact that we can't keep guards out of the lane or prevent decent big men from scoring down low. Jabari and Rodney are just such incredible liabilities on the defensive end. Normally their offense makes up for it, but today, Jabari was probably as bad as we'll ever see him (hopefully), and we lost by 2.

I mean, just a bad end to a bad week as a Duke sports fan.

Note: proud of the football team, just a disappointing loss. Basketball team played hard, but still, god, stop a team from scoring.

[KandG]

Really odd team to follow this year. Their talent is so obvious, their flaws are so obvious. If they can't overwhelm the other team with talent, size and execution eventually bring them down or make the games more difficult than they should be, even against the Vermonts and Notre Dames of the world.

In a weird way, it makes me sympathize (to a limited degree) with Calipari. Even if he's more obviously running a pro farm team, it's tough to harness that much talent into cohesion with so much youth and limited time. I still think this team will be really good by the end of the season, but the highs and lows continue to be wild. Today was yet another example.

[wsb3]

60-50 and ND goes on a 20-4 run. I knew we would be challenged in the post area but I really thought our athletes would be so suffocating on D that it would atone for our weakness in the post.

I was wrong.

But hats off to ND. I don't think they will play that well against anyone else.

[dukelion]

We were having a nice little comeback at the very end. But when you have the best player in the country on your team, he needs to be in the game for the last couple minutes - I don't care what kind of game he was having. Notice they double teamed Hood on his last drive and it worked (Thornton wasn't a threat to score). Would have been nice to have Jabari in the game for that last play. 0-1 in the ACC.

Pretty sure Jabari was battling the flu. He looked absolutely exhausted to start the second half.

First true road game for these guys.....can't say I'm too surprised.

[heyman25]

One other point besides Duke relying on perimeter scoring way too much, Mike Brey got 150% out of his team.Brey had a much better strategy than K. They did not talk at all with the post game handshake. We played well when we had the 9 -0 run.That was about the only time we were playing well. Marshall was ok and he may have matched up better against Sherman.Learning loss I hope.

[FerryFor50]

Lose by 2 on the road with your best player having the worst game of his career?

Not the worst scenario. Would have loved to see better defense and more toughness, but plenty of season left.

[duke4ever19]

Pretty sure Jabari was battling the flu.

Wouldn't surprise me. The team has been passing it around lately.

[vick]

Not enough commercials.

The game started at 4:15, so I think it actually got in under two hours, which I wouldn't have believed myself if I didn't have a clock.

[Dukehky]

One other point besides relying on perimeter scoring way too much, Mike Brey got 150% out of his team.Brey had a much better strategy than K. They did not talk at all with the post game handshake.

I thought Brey was incredible today. K was stubborn. Maybe he keeps insisting on this extended pressure defense because he thinks we're close to having it work. If we're not close by now, it may be time for a change because it is killing us.

[CLW]

Did I miss a court storming or did the streak of court stormings with road losses also come to an end today?

[GGLC]

I'd like our team to start passing the ball in some direction other than "mechanically around the perimeter." Our angles and interior ball movement are basically nonexistent in this offense.

[rsvman]

Pretty tough start to the ACC season. I would've liked to have seen more Plumlee in the second half. They were just over whelming us in the paint. No surprise that they threw the past into Bigfoot on that key play near the end of the game; they knew that Jefferson had virtually no chance of stopping him.

There are better games ahead.

[NashvilleDevil]

lol

Yes, everything is just fine with this team.

It's one game against a team that was playing their first ACC game. Duke played bad and still had a chance to win. Oh well on to the Yellow Jackets.

[vrob90]

So much talent and yet Duke was defeated in virtually every aspect of the game. It's hard to understand.

[kAzE]

The team was noticeably rattled during ND's 20-4 run. We were taking really bad shots on offense and just not communicating on D. The only reason we were in the game at all was because they missed so many free throws, so I'm not terribly disappointed that we couldn't sneak out a win.

The entire game, we settled for outside shots WAY too much. Gotta figure out other ways to score against teams with size inside. Hoisting up 20+ shots from deep is a recipe for an early exit from March Madness. I'd like to see more Cook/Parker pick and rolls, I think that could be a really nice way to get some variety in the offense. There's just way too much "hot potato around the perimeter and take the open 3."

Still, the main issue is defense. We were playing very solidly for the past few games, and I think this was more of an aberration than a trend. ND was getting wide open cutters all game long, and the paint was left unguarded far too often. There's going to be some very tough film sessions for our guys coming up this week.

Still like the team's potential a lot. We're going to get better, this was the first road test, and it's still early. We need to learn from this experience.

[SupaDave]

Lose by 2 on the road with your best player having the worst game of his career?

Not the worst scenario. Would have loved to see better defense and more toughness, but plenty of season left.

Hey hey hey, all this logic isn't allowed around here. :)

They've got to work on their communication big time. Someone needs to yell out "PASS" on those back door cuts (ESPECIALLY on the in-bounds - YIKES).

We played a team today whose coach knows our coach's style very well. All that motion versus a man-to-man defense that had serious lapses in focus was sure to cause discomfort. Throw in a big man whose confidence grew by the moment and you start to see the chinks in the armor and the not wanting to get that next foul.

They'll talk it out and it will be great stuff for the film room - and practice.

[DevilFalcon]

Goodbye top 10 streak. Tough loss and not what I expected. Has to be a big letdown for K.

[uh_no]

Not really anything new. If we make 3's we're hard to beat.

we shot 43% from 3.....2 points higher than our season average....so we made 3's a bit above average in the first half and a bit below in the second....if the answer is that we need to shoot WELL above our season percentage to win, then that's not going to instill much confidence in me.

point is: our 3pt shooting was not the primary reason for the loss today

[NYBri]

Did not enjoy watching this game. Too many flashbacks to other poor performances. ND is not a good team, but any team can stay in the game if they are holding a game-long layup drill.

[mgtr]

I kept thinking that Jabari must be ill, that is the best hope for the future. Thanks for the performance of Cook and Hood. Sheed, at times, looked as though he didn't know why he was out there. In fact, other than Cook and Hood, and one play by Marshall, the rest of the team looked lost. Give credit to the Irish, they looked sharp for most of the game.

[GGLC]

It's one game against a team that was playing their first ACC game. Duke played bad and still had a chance to win. Oh well on to the Yellow Jackets.

What does Notre Dame playing their first ACC game have to do with absolutely anything?

[roywhite]

Did we get a loose ball? Did rebounds bounce their way, or just seem that way?

Thought Duke played pretty well in the last 3 minutes and almost came back, but couldn't get enough stops.

Let's see how the team reacts.

[chaosmage]

We weren't sharp. The better team won today. Parker was ineffective both ends of the court. Sorry his dad Sonny got to see him live and just play poorly.No inside game and never got any 50/50 loose balls.

I went to Wingate U. and Katie Laettner played for us. Met her dad couple of times, great guy. But whenever he was there, she played horribly. If he wasn't there (which wasn't often), she played lights out. I graduated before she did, iirc, so I don't think I saw her senior year. It's been over 15 years, but I do remember this. Perhaps Jabari felt extra pressure to do too much.

Next Play.

[kAzE]

Did we get a loose ball? Did rebounds bounce their way, or just seem that way?

Thought Duke played pretty well in the last 3 minutes and almost came back, but couldn't get enough stops.

Let's see how the team reacts.

They got every 50-50 ball. Seriously, every single damn one. Some weren't our fault, guys were just caught in the wrong place, so a bit of bad luck there, but that's still no excuse. They dominated the boards, controlled the tempo, and forced us into low percentage shots all game long. They deserved to win.

[NashvilleDevil]

What does Notre Dame playing their first ACC game have to do with absolutely anything?

I'm guessing they were pretty hype to play Duke at home for their first ACC game. I'm also guessing that K's former assistant Mike Brey had this game circled for quite sometime. As is the case when teams play Duke they usually bring their best effort and sometimes because you know they aren't superhuman the kids who put on the Duke uniform could not match them. Again losses happen and Duke will lose a few more this year.

[gurufrisbee]

I'm sure the refrain around will still continue that our rebounding is fine and our interior defense is fine. It's fairly obvious it actually isn't and hasn't been. We're gonna need Jefferson to play better if he's spending most of the game as our only pseudo big on the court. We're gonna need Plumlee to keep improving and warrant more time on the floor. Parker and Hood have to play like forwards and not just oversized guards.

Liked Hood's shooting mostly. Liked Cook's all around play for the most part. It's a tough road game against a very good team with a very good coach and we came close. No reason to think the season is over, but it's pretty clear where we have to improve if we're gonna keep talking about things like final fours and top ten rankings.

I also imagine it was an extremely tough game for Coach K due to it being the first one since the funeral. I'm glad for his sake it's now in his rear view mirror.

[kmspeaks]

I'll let the SPHM handle the negatives. Good game offensively by Cook and Hood. Remember in Nov/Dec when folks around here were concerned Rodney was dominating in Cameron against cupcakes but not showing up away from home against BCS opponents?

Curious that K never put Sheed on Atkins. Cook was struggling to stay in front and I think the one time Sulaimon ended up switching on to Atkins he turned the ball over. It would have been nice to see somebody else get a shot at guarding him.

[pfrduke]

Was this Coach K's first loss to a former assistant?

Anyway, that was a learning experience kind of game. Parker learned that he doesn't just get minutes, he has to earn them with his play. Everyone learns the importance of keeping intensity up. Agree with those who say we need to continue to work on interior defense and rebounding. There were several points that Notre Dame got (I think 7) after great defensive plays on our part that somehow ended up with the ball back in the Irish's hands. They made a lot more effort plays and got to more 50/50 balls than we did.

Also, it's hard to win on the road against reasonably good teams in conference play - witness Oklahoma State losing at Kansas State just shortly after our game wrapped.

[dubldvman]

Feel bad for Coach K. He has had a very tough Holiday. On post game he sounded as disappointed as I remember him sounding after a regular season loss. He knows more than any of us that this team has some serious defensive issues and I am sensing that his wheels are spinning about how to get this team to do what the coaches are wanting them to do. Cold reality is that ND is Clemsonesque relative to talent level and quality of team and that is not "chicken little" but the fact. We are seeing teams with far less ability exploit our deficiencies. I think we can get it done. Bright spot is Rodney's performance. Quinn played well but boy he can sometimes hang his head rather than be a positive floor leader. Free throws second half kept us in the game with a chance to pull one out. On to Tuesday.

[vick]

I'm sure the refrain around will still continue that our rebounding is fine and our interior defense is fine. It's fairly obvious it actually isn't and hasn't been. We're gonna need Jefferson to play better if he's spending most of the game as our only pseudo big on the court. We're gonna need Plumlee to keep improving and warrant more time on the floor. Parker and Hood have to play like forwards and not just oversized guards.

Liked Hood's shooting mostly. Liked Cook's all around play for the most part. It's a tough road game against a very good team with a very good coach and we came close. No reason to think the season is over, but it's pretty clear where we have to improve if we're gonna keep talking about things like final fours and top ten rankings.

I also imagine it was an extremely tough game for Coach K due to it being the first one since the funeral. I'm glad for his sake it's now in his rear view mirror.

The interior defense was not good, but defensive rebounding was 67%, which is far from terrible for a Duke team (more or less average over the last decade, actually).

[Edouble]

Parker looked exhausted in the second half. Not sure we were gonna get much more out of him if he'd been in the game. I agree that I would have liked to have seen Plums get another shot vs. Sherman though.

Surprised no one has mentioned the last full Duke possession. I know that Rodney and the whole team would like to have that one back. We (Rodney) seemed to really rush it with plenty of time left on the clock. I know that Coach K has a pretty heavy emphasis on end of game situations in practice, but our execution was just terrible. Hood certainly did not position himself in the best spot for the double team, but definitely had the potential for a pass and a layup if one of our guys had been in position to receive his pass. I thought that someone would have been able to cut and get open, but Quinn's man read Rodney perfectly, and some of our team hadn't gotten down court yet.

As Coach K might say, I am glad that Rodney had the courage/wanted to step up and be aggressive at the end. Hopefully that experience helps us in March. There's nothing quite like living through a failed last possession to potentially win the game, and not execute... and never want it to happen again.

[uh_no]

The team was noticeably rattled during ND's 20-4 run. We were taking really bad shots on offense and just not communicating on D. The only reason we were in the game at all was because they missed so many free throws, so I'm not terribly disappointed that we couldn't sneak out a win.

The entire game, we settled for outside shots WAY too much. Gotta figure out other ways to score against teams with size inside. Hoisting up 20+ shots from deep is a recipe for an early exit from March Madness. I'd like to see more Cook/Parker pick and rolls, I think that could be a really nice way to get some variety in the offense. There's just way too much "hot potato around the perimeter and take the open 3."

Still, the main issue is defense. We were playing very solidly for the past few games, and I think this was more of an aberration than a trend. ND was getting wide open cutters all game long, and the paint was left unguarded far too often. There's going to be some very tough film sessions for our guys coming up this week.

Still like the team's potential a lot. We're going to get better, this was the first road test, and it's still early. We need to learn from this experience.

what scares me a lot is these are the things that have doomed teams the past several years....and I don't mean to say this team is doomed, just that you could have posted this about many of the recent duke teams that have in the end been proven fatally flawed....IMO one of quinn's biggest weaknesses is losing control of the game when things don't go perfectly...resulting in lack of motion and interior ball movement and then ill-advised threes....that said, not having jabari certainly bugged the offense down the stretch i think (whether he was out because he was sick or not playing D or whatever)

also concerning is that 2 months ago we looked at a duke team that had just lost to kansas and said "well at least we have a lot of room to improve"....today IMO, we looked substantially similar to the team that lost that early november game....lack of size, poor interior defense and rebounding, and poor decisions on offense down the stretch.....yes we saw a different defense against UCLA....but it certainly did not show up tonight.

where will we be in march? who knows....but as the games chip away, and the team continues to relapse to the flawed early-season form, I start to lower my season expectations....

obviously there is time to turn it around, as the 2010 team proves....but i'm not sure this team has a zoubek......

so my outlook? not entirely hopeful....but I like to think back to a scene from the lord of the rings, when the rohirrim are riding to gondor


Gamling: Too few have come. We cannot defeat the armies of Mordor.
Theoden: No. We cannot. But we will meet them in battle nonetheless.

and you know what happened? they rolled out there and won (well...with the help of some undead guys....)

are we a pretty good team? yeah. do I think we're a top team? no. does this mean we can't win against anybody on any given night? nope.

LET'S HUNT SOME YELLOWJACKET!

[pfrduke]

Surprised no one has mentioned the last full Duke possession. I know that Rodney and the whole team would like to have that one back. We (Rodney) seemed to really rush it with plenty of time left on the clock. I know that Coach K has a pretty heavy emphasis on end of game situations in practice, but our execution was just terrible. Hood certainly did not position himself in the best spot for the double team, but definitely had the potential for a pass and a layup if one of our guys had been in position to receive his pass. I thought that someone would have been able to cut and get open, but Quinn's man read Rodney perfectly, and some of our team hadn't gotten down court yet.

As Coach K might say, I am glad that Rodney had the courage/wanted to step up and be aggressive at the end. Hopefully that experience helps us in March. There's nothing quite like living through a failed last possession to potentially win the game, and not execute... and never want it to happen again.

I was surprised that there was no time out on that last possession. In a hostile environment, I thought K would want to settle the team and draw something up. I understand the merits of trying to catch ND off guard, but K tends to err on the side of running from a set in that scenario.

[sporthenry]

Can't wait to read all the chicken little posts.

They might be somewhat justified. This team just has flaws that can't seemingly be fixed. If Plumlee is only good enough for 4 minutes, Josh 9, and Amile 21, then they are in trouble. Maybe someone has a Zoubek like turnaround but ND doesn't even strike me as a big team. Most chicken little posts are about things that can be fixed. Can't teach size. Team is probably still a top 10 team but I'm not sure they are title contenders on this date. I know the title game isn't today so that is the good news but this team has a lot of growing to do.

[rthomas]

Not enough commercials.

Now we have a lot of Saturday night to drink.

[gurufrisbee]

The interior defense was not good, but defensive rebounding was 67%, which is far from terrible for a Duke team (more or less average over the last decade, actually).

I didn't say it was terrible. But it wasn't good. I don't mind Sherman or Burgitt rebounding, but they got 16 rebounds from Vasturia, Connaughton, and Jackson - none of who are taller than 6'6" or exceptionally athletic/great rebounders. We got 30 as a full team. That bugs me.

(and I don't know exactly, but I'm guessing that percentage feels a little misleading since a handful of our defensive rebounds were after their missed free throws which were basically uncontested rebounds for us)

[FerryFor50]

They got every 50-50 ball. Seriously, every single damn one. Some weren't our fault, guys were just caught in the wrong place, so a bit of bad luck there, but that's still no excuse. They dominated the boards, controlled the tempo, and forced us into low percentage shots all game long. They deserved to win.

Yea, had a few of those gone Duke's way, we are looking at a potential win rather than a loss. Dem's the breaks....

[Ima Facultiwyfe]

What I couldn't understand was why Hood, bless his heart, was waltzing the ball down the floor at the final crunch time when there was still time to set up a play? Cook should have had the dang ball and Hood should have been working to get open.

Love, Ima

[weezie]

I'm with you Ima. I'll venture that this team is still trying to hear what K is saying when he calls plays. They have sure played tone deaf at times.

[uh_no]

They might be somewhat justified. This team just has flaws that can't seemingly be fixed. If Plumlee is only good enough for 4 minutes, Josh 9, and Amile 21, then they are in trouble. Maybe someone has a Zoubek like turnaround but ND doesn't even strike me as a big team. Most chicken little posts are about things that can be fixed. Can't teach size. Team is probably still a top 10 team but I'm not sure they are title contenders on this date. I know the title game isn't today so that is the good news but this team has a lot of growing to do.

kenpom has at us 15.....i think that's probably about right for this team. given our performance so far this year, there is little to warrant us being top 10.

0-2 against teams currently in the top 25...fortunately we get a few more chances

[Dukehky]

we shot 43% from 3.....2 points higher than our season average....so we made 3's a bit above average in the first half and a bit below in the second....if the answer is that we need to shoot WELL above our season percentage to win, then that's not going to instill much confidence in me.

point is: our 3pt shooting was not the primary reason for the loss today

No it wasn't, but if our best player has his worst game ever, we need to shoot well above our season average to win. I meant to say that we fell in love with the three which had given us the lead, and just kept shooting them late in the game. Look, offensively this game was kind of an aberration because Jabari is unlikely to play this poorly again, but the defensive issues are the same now as they were in November. That is not a particularly reassuring notion.

[wk2109]

I was hoping this would be like the Kansas game in Maui when K sat Austin during crunch time and Duke still pulled out the W.

I think Jabari's poor game forced Duke to play Hood at the 4 because we couldn't have two of Amile/Josh/Marshall on the court and still score efficiently. When Duke pushed the lead to 10, they started trading baskets for a little bit. If Duke could have gotten a couple of stops during that stretch and gotten the lead to 14-16, that could have made all the difference in the end. Just goes to show how a couple of plays that don't even happen during crunch time can help determine the outcome of a game.

[Bob Green]

...but ND doesn't even strike me as a big team.

Sherman: 6'11" 255
Auguste: 6'10" 242
Knight: 6'10" 258
Burgett: 6'9" 227
Beachem: 6'8" 187

[sporthenry]

kenpom has at us 15.....i think that's probably about right for this team. given our performance so far this year, there is little to warrant us being top 10.

0-2 against teams currently in the top 25...fortunately we get a few more chances

I'm not really talking now. I know they drop out of the top 10 but that is more the teams right behind them aren't losing b/c they haven't really played anyone. I think Duke is better than the teams right ahead of them on Kenpom or a few of the teams that will jump them like Nova, Wichita, State, Pitt, etc.

[subzero02]

Parker's game needed to start from the defensive end... If he plays solid post defense and rebounds on the defensive glass well, we win by 10 today

[Saratoga2]

Both Cook and Hood had very good offensive games and nearly won the game for us but we could not overcome ND's inside game. They out rebounded us and got a huge differential in the inside scoring. In addition, they were finding ways to penetrate. They also got wide open threes when no one bothered to cover their shooters.

Hairston was too short to put up much resistance inside and Jefferson was not bulky enough to stop the move to the basket. Plumley had the size but was not trusted enough to stay in the game. In general, the defensive effort was poor for most of the game and our offense was being carried by two players with Jabari seemingly off.

Let's hope that we didn't see a blueprint for teams with big players to beat Duke. What could be done? Better communication? More Plumley? Some Jones?

Did anyone else find the flashing board at the scorers table annoying? It seemed to flash the most when Duke got the ball. It seems a major distractions to our players. Even if it only impacted a couple of plays it would have an impact in a close game like this. What are the rules regarding that kind of distracting equipment?

[vick]

I didn't say it was terrible. But it wasn't good. I don't mind Sherman or Burgitt rebounding, but they got 16 rebounds from Vasturia, Connaughton, and Jackson - none of who are taller than 6'6" or exceptionally athletic/great rebounders. We got 30 as a full team. That bugs me.

(and I don't know exactly, but I'm guessing that percentage feels a little misleading since a handful of our defensive rebounds were after their missed free throws which were basically uncontested rebounds for us)

Well, I mean look at the lineups we had on the floor for long stretches of time. If Jefferson is the only legitimate rebounder on the floor (because Parker is playing so poorly even on offense), we're not going to be even an average rebounding team. But that's not really a systemic problem--to date, this is a better defensive rebounding team than basically any of Coach K's teams for which data is available, and how often is Parker really going to be that ineffective on offense? The interior defense is, I think, a significantly more worrisome issue than rebounding.

[BlueDevilBrowns]

As Coach K might say, I am glad that Rodney had the courage/wanted to step up and be aggressive at the end. Hopefully that experience helps us in March. There's nothing quite like living through a failed last possession to potentially win the game, and not execute... and never want it to happen again.

So true. See 1992 Duke vs. Wake Forest then Duke vs. Kentucky.

Without the Grant to Christian 1st attempt in the regular season the 2nd attempt may have never been nearly as successful.

[FerryFor50]

While ND was missing their best player, they have very capable backups behind him, including a McD AA freshman in Demetrius Jackson. ND is still a solid team.

The good news is that Duke wasn't the only top 10 team to lose to an unranked team today - Oklahoma State also lost.

[uh_no]

No it wasn't, but if our best player has his worst game ever, we need to shoot well above our season average to win. I meant to say that we fell in love with the three which had given us the lead, and just kept shooting them late in the game. Look, offensively this game was kind of an aberration because Jabari is unlikely to play this poorly again, but the defensive issues are the same now as they were in November. That is not a particularly reassuring notion.

that's mostly fair. and I agree about not falling in love with the three.

I'm not sure I full agree about jabari being unlikely to play this poorly again...if he was sick? then sure, we can't count on it....but if not, then we've already shown he can have a bad game, and once some event is known to have a non-zero probability, it is "almost sure" to occur at some point again in the future....and given he only managed 12-10 against elon(lol ONLY....still far below his normal point output), such output should not be a shocking event

further, his minutes have been substantially cut the last several games....he's been over 30 minutes just once in the past 5 games, compared to 6 of the first 9 games.....now if K's call is that we can't play adequate defense with him on the floor, then we're going to need to get used to a relatively tempered output from jabari....

main point: this is our team, and I do not think saying "the events which colluded to cause us to lose today are unlikely to occur again" is a good argument for any team at any point.

[gurufrisbee]

Well, I mean look at the lineups we had on the floor for long stretches of time. If Jefferson is the only legitimate rebounder on the floor (because Parker is playing so poorly even on offense), we're not going to be even an average rebounding team. But that's not really a systemic problem--to date, this is a better defensive rebounding team than basically any of Coach K's teams for which data is available, and how often is Parker really going to be that ineffective on offense? The interior defense is, I think, a significantly more worrisome issue than rebounding.

I totally agree the lack of interior defense is much more of a problem than the rebounding, but I think in some significant ways they go together since generally your players who are good at one tend to be good at the other too. Not always, I know, but generally. I know this is just one game so I'm not assuming we'll have a lot more like it, but the problems with interior defense and lack of rebounding have already occurred multiple times this season. I'm still wishing/hopeful that if we get in a game like this where Parker, Dawkins, and Sheed are all not playing well enough to warrant being on the floor that Plumlee, Hairston, and Jefferson can be playing well enough to justify two of them out there together. In that case, the offense can't really be being hurt since the usual offensive weapons weren't playing well anyways, but maybe the rebounding and interior defense can be improved by going bigger.

Also a little curious why with Parker, Dawkins, and Sheed all struggling we never saw any shot at seeing if Semi or Matt could have stepped up today.

[sporthenry]

Sherman: 6'11" 255
Auguste: 6'10" 242
Knight: 6'10" 258
Burgett: 6'9" 227
Beachem: 6'8" 187

Fair enough, but most of those guys are role players and ND's game plan didn't really revolve around the post. Most of their points in the paint seemed to come from back cuts. Their leading rebounder was 6'5. I'm afraid to see what happens when they play UNC now.

[mgtr]

On offense, our team is a three-legged stool. Normally that is Cook, Hood, and Parker. If one of those legs is missing, then some combo of Sheed, Dawkins and Jefferson must make up the difference. If they don't then we are a two-legged stool, and we know how well that works. So, are there any additional legs (or partial legs) we could use? Well, Semi was a known scorer in HS, and can hit the three plus jump pretty well. Defense is unknown (probably poor), but that may be a plus compared to some of our key players. Or, Jabari could have the flu,, and recover soon. That would be good.

[Ima Facultiwyfe]

Okafor can't get here fast enough!
Love,Ima

[roywhite]

Duke playing on the road gets everybody's best shot.

I'm sure the team has heard that, but now this 2014 team has experienced it. It's an important lesson and sometimes learned the hard way.

[FerryFor50]

Fair enough, but most of those guys are role players and ND's game plan didn't really revolve around the post. Most of their points in the paint seemed to come from back cuts. Their leading rebounder was 6'5. I'm afraid to see what happens when they play UNC now.

The 6'5" guy was an extraordinary athlete and a lot of those boards came from weird caroms off the rim.

He was also tied for the most with Sherman, who is 6'11" and 255lbs. Sherman is also a starter that average nearly 15 points and 7.6 boards. Not a role player. ND has some talent.

[vick]

I totally agree the lack of interior defense is much more of a problem than the rebounding, but I think in some significant ways they go together since generally your players who are good at one tend to be good at the other too. Not always, I know, but generally. I know this is just one game so I'm not assuming we'll have a lot more like it, but the problems with interior defense and lack of rebounding have already occurred multiple times this season. I'm still wishing/hopeful that if we get in a game like this where Parker, Dawkins, and Sheed are all not playing well enough to warrant being on the floor that Plumlee, Hairston, and Jefferson can be playing well enough to justify two of them out there together. In that case, the offense can't really be being hurt since the usual offensive weapons weren't playing well anyways, but maybe the rebounding and interior defense can be improved by going bigger.

Also a little curious why with Parker, Dawkins, and Sheed all struggling we never saw any shot at seeing if Semi or Matt could have stepped up today.

Yeah, I think this is generally right, but I'm not sure it's right for Duke this year. Coming into this game our top defensive rebounders were:

Jefferson 24.8%
Parker 23.1%
Hood 13.5%
Sulaimon 12.7%
Thornton 11.4%
Dawkins 9.7%
Cook 8.9%
Hairston 6.8%
Jones 6.1%

(I excluded players with fewer than 100 minutes because I don't really think it's a valid measurement with so few). Hairston has terrible rebounding stats* for a big man, but is an adequate post defender, whereas Jefferson has tremendous rebounding stats but struggles defensively. We may be an unusual team where rebounding/other interior defense are not positively correlated.

* It's always hard to judge, because some part of defensive rebounding is just boxing out a man so someone else gets the rebound. I don't think Hairston is actually as awful as he looks statistically, although he certainly isn't a great rebounder.

[FerryFor50]

Yeah, I think this is generally right, but I'm not sure it's right for Duke this year. Coming into this game our top defensive rebounders were:

Jefferson 24.8%
Parker 23.1%
Hood 13.5%
Sulaimon 12.7%
Thornton 11.4%
Dawkins 9.7%
Cook 8.9%
Hairston 6.8%
Jones 6.1%

(I excluded players with fewer than 100 minutes because I don't really think it's a valid measurement with so few). Hairston has terrible rebounding stats* for a big man, but is an adequate post defender, whereas Jefferson has tremendous rebounding stats but struggles defensively. We may be an unusual team where rebounding/other interior defense are not positively correlated.

* It's always hard to judge, because some part of defensive rebounding is just boxing out a man so someone else gets the rebound. I don't think Hairston is actually as awful as he looks statistically, although he certainly isn't a great rebounder.

Yea, I think Hairston's job is simply to box out. If the board comes to him, great. But he's there to keep the opposing big off the boards as much as possible.

Btw... Amile had 9 boards in 21 min. Pretty good stats!

[JPtheGame]

A zone is an awfully good way to prevent all of those backcuts for wide open layups. It can also help with the rebounding issue.

[tteettimes]

We don't have BIGGS...".we saw it today....ND substitute Biggs dominated us down low...blue print fr the rest of the season....ESP when jp doesn't contribute.....zones will realy s l o w us down...but if the threes rain we still are in there ...go Devils

[Duke76]

On offense, our team is a three-legged stool. Normally that is Cook, Hood, and Parker. If one of those legs is missing, then some combo of Sheed, Dawkins and Jefferson must make up the difference. If they don't then we are a two-legged stool, and we know how well that works. So, are there any additional legs (or partial legs) we could use? Well, Semi was a known scorer in HS, and can hit the three plus jump pretty well. Defense is unknown (probably poor), but that may be a plus compared to some of our key players. Or, Jabari could have the flu,, and recover soon. That would be good.

some years I can see plays being called from the bench and then from the point guard…this year I see neither….I would like to see more sets
that resemble some semblance of order…any one want a crack at explaining what they are trying to do out there…..Cook is good at creating is own offense and shooting well but someone has to direct the team in crucial time and I just don't see the communication from him or anyone else for that matter

[uh_no]

A zone is an awfully good way to prevent all of those backcuts for wide open layups. It can also help with the rebounding issue.

how so? generally allowing offensive rebounds is a weakness of a zone....since you aren't necessarily near a man, with man-man, you know where the guy you have to box out is....(or if you don't, something has gone horribly wrong)

[gurufrisbee]

I'll be honest. I just really want Marshall to be a slightly taller version of Mason and I want Jefferson to be a slightly taller version of Deng. I know that's asking A LOT and I don't FULLY expect that, but I feel like if they were both closer to being those it would be highly viable to have them out there together for 10-15 minutes a game. I think this would help the interior defense and the rebounding a lot. And if they were both being more like that, it wouldn't kill us offensively to have them both out there (especially since you would probably still have Jabari or Hood and at least one of Cook, Sheed, and Dawkins). I'm just already getting real tired of 6'5 to 6'8 guys putting up big rebounding numbers and scoring a lot of points in the paint against us.

[downeastdad]

Haven't read the entire thread, but watched the game in its entirety. Brey exposed Duke's weakness, we've got no big guys, and that's going to kill us, no matter how well we fling up 3's. What was the points in the paint, something like 34-12? We're not gonna win against anybody with that stat.

[Duvall]

I'll be honest. I just really want Marshall to be a slightly taller version of Mason and I want Jefferson to be a slightly taller version of Deng. I know that's asking A LOT and I don't FULLY expect that, but I feel like if they were both closer to being those it would be highly viable to have them out there together for 10-15 minutes a game. I think this would help the interior defense and the rebounding a lot. And if they were both being more like that, it wouldn't kill us offensively to have them both out there (especially since you would probably still have Jabari or Hood and at least one of Cook, Sheed, and Dawkins). I'm just already getting real tired of 6'5 to 6'8 guys putting up big rebounding numbers and scoring a lot of points in the paint against us.

If Marshall were a taller version of Mason and Jefferson were a taller version of Deng I think Duke would have them on the floor together for 35 minutes a game. But they ain't.

[uh_no]

Haven't read the entire thread, but watched the game in its entirety. Brey exposed Duke's weakness, we've got no big guys, and that's going to kill us, no matter how well we fling up 3's. What was the points in the paint, something like 34-12? We're not gonna win against anybody with that stat.

to be fair, I don't think brey exposed anything....he effectively exploited a quite well known weakness.

[sagegrouse]

Sherman: 6'11" 255
Auguste: 6'10" 242
Knight: 6'10" 258
Burgett: 6'9" 227
Beachem: 6'8" 187

I will give Sherman credit for one superlative. I thought Kyle Singler had the worst haircut I had ever seen on a college basketball court. But he was bettered (worsed?) by Sherman's beard. Holy cow! Was that ugly? I feel for his poor mom. I mean, attacking it with hedge clippers would make it look better.

[CDu]

I'll be honest. I just really want Marshall to be a slightly taller version of Mason and I want Jefferson to be a slightly taller version of Deng. I know that's asking A LOT and I don't FULLY expect that, but I feel like if they were both closer to being those it would be highly viable to have them out there together for 10-15 minutes a game. I think this would help the interior defense and the rebounding a lot. And if they were both being more like that, it wouldn't kill us offensively to have them both out there (especially since you would probably still have Jabari or Hood and at least one of Cook, Sheed, and Dawkins). I'm just already getting real tired of 6'5 to 6'8 guys putting up big rebounding numbers and scoring a lot of points in the paint against us.

Deng was one of the best players to ever wear a Duke uniform. I think it's a bit unfair to compare Jefferson to Deng, because Jefferson is NEVER going to be a Deng-like player. That's no knock on Jefferson. Deng was exceptionally good.

And Marshall is just not nearly as skilled as Mason was. Nor is he nearly as athletic as Mason was.

So I guess my point is that if you really want Marshall to be Mason (or even anything close to Mason) and Jefferson to be Deng (or even anything close to Deng), well, then to quote one of my favorite movies "get used to disappointment."

[CDu]

If Marshall were a taller version of Mason and Jefferson were a taller version of Deng I think Duke would have them on the floor together for 35 minutes a game. But they ain't.

Yes. If they were that good, they'd play a TON. And we'd be unquestionably the best team in the country (and probably on the short list of best teams ever). But, as you said, they ain't.

[burnspbesq]

Stuff happens, only one data point, still early, we get everybody's 99th-percentile effort, etc., etc.

That said ...

I hope we have a much more diversified zone offense in place in four weeks. If not, our three games against Cuse are going to be no fun at all.

[pfrduke]

I'll be honest. I just really want Marshall to be a slightly taller version of Mason and I want Jefferson to be a slightly taller version of Deng. I know that's asking A LOT and I don't FULLY expect that, but I feel like if they were both closer to being those it would be highly viable to have them out there together for 10-15 minutes a game.

So you want our 7th man and 10th man to approximate a 2nd team All-American and a 3rd team All-ACC player. At least you appreciate that those are unrealistic requests.

[FerryFor50]

And Hairston's job is to simply box out, and he starts for the #7 team in the country, doesn't score and doesn't rebound? Come on....

Starting isn't always about stats. It's about leadership and doing the little things, sometimes. And, if you haven't noticed, Hairston's minutes have plummeted as the season has progressed.

[uh_no]

Stuff happens, only one data point, still early, we get everybody's 99th-percentile effort, etc., etc.

That said ...

I hope we have a much more diversified zone offense in place in four weeks. If not, our three games against Cuse are going to be no fun at all.

we have got 4 through 14 games, though.


and

three games?

[Troublemaker]

What actually beat us in this game was Notre Dame's small lineup.

Duke was up 60-50, Notre Dame hit a 3 to make it 60-53, and Brey called a timeout. He subbed in Vasturia (6-6, 207) for Sherman. Vasturia played the 4 and Burgett (6-9, 227) played the 5 and Notre Dame beat our butts good from then on using 5-out motion (both Vasturia and Burgett can shoot from outside) that emphasized penetration and backdoor cuts.

Now, Sherman did check back into the game with 90 secs left and made a bucket over Amile, but he didn't play at all during the segment of the game where Notre Dame took control. Neither did Auguste nor Knight. (Knight didn't play at all in the 2nd half and Auguste only played the first 4 minutes. See the play-by-play here:http://www.und.com/sports/m-baskbl/stats/2013-2014/game-14.html )

Duke just hasn't done a good job defending small lineups this season. This game was very much a flashback to ECU and Vermont in that regard. And even Kansas broke open our game with them after Wiggins started playing the 4 for the first time with four minutes left.

That doesn't make it better for our defense or anything. Obviously Duke has to defend well against all types of lineups, big or small, but I just wanted to get the facts straight.

Notre Dame's big lineup was effective, too, but what really killed us was when they went small. I would say the story of this game from a lineup perspective (and this is only one of many, many ways to slice a game): (1) ND played better than Duke when both teams were using big lineups at the beginning of the game, (2) then Duke went small, and our smallball outplayed ND's big lineup in the middle section of the game, and finally (3) ND went small to match our smallball and kicked our butts.

[uh_no]

What actually beat us in this game was Notre Dame's small lineup.

Duke was up 60-50, Notre Dame hit a 3 to make it 60-53, and Brey called a timeout. He subbed in Vasturia (6-6, 207) for Sherman. Vasturia played the 4 and Burgett (6-9, 227) played the 5 and Notre Dame beat our butts good from then on using 5-out motion (both Vasturia and Burgett can shoot from outside) that emphasized penetration and backdoor cuts.

I think this is one of the few times that it would be interesting to see the +/- for the opposition. It would certainly give us a very good picture of which lineups beat us over the course of the game.

[Kfanarmy]

I think this was a truly poor performance in virtually every aspect of the game. Giving up a 20-4 run to ND? There were a couple of bright spots as folks have pointed out -- QC and RH, and the team didn't quit, but this team hasn't shown any ability to get a stop when a stop MUST be made.

On offense, no one could score inside. Duke had several opportunities with players cutting to the basket, but the ball was never passed on time to take advantage. This has become a Duke hallmark. Seemed like every inside attempt was based on someone dribbling into the defense...only a few fell. Duke had no interior passing at all. Duke has been scoring a lot of points, but the assists were simply not there today, largely because Duke relied on the athleticism of the players and wasn't running any precise orchestrated plays. As some have noted, Duke quickly got to the habit of passing the ball around the exterior and relied on the three. When that went away in the second half, they were done. Its great to have Jabari score 20, but when the other team plays good D, there has to be some method to get him or someone else the ball with an opportunity to score. I miss the days when the PG would actually call a play and Duke would execute something purposeful. Can anyone reliably shoot a mid-range shot, aside from JP?

Duke has ONE big man who isn't allowed to play. I thought MP3 was effective in his few minutes; at least he could challenge the big men inside. Its unclear to me what Duke was trying to do on interior defense; playing under the basket behind a big who has height and a lot of weight advantage just isn't going to work, unless your hoping he can't lay the ball in. MP3 has got to become a part of the defense when Duke is facing an effective big man, either that or they've got to deny him the ball. There was no effective adjustment to ND's post play. Play Marshall now if you expect him to compete later.

Not sure why Duke has so much difficulty staying in defensive position. Are they just not quick footed enough or are there just that many attention lapses? I'd like to see them simply focus on staying between their man and the rim rather than trying to double team and overplay the ball...apparently the length and speed are not there to get steals as some teams have been able to do in the past. Not being in position on D against ND I don't get.

If ND had been able to take the ball out of bonds on every offensive position, they could have scored 100. Wow, Duke made ND look like professionals on out-of-bounds plays.

Given what I believe the disparity in talent to be, it was clear that ND was the better team today. I am hoping this version of Duke BB will become a great team, today they weren't very good in most aspects of the game. Against a top ten team, they would have been blown out. I know. I know. They only got beat by two...without the three point shot, they wouldn't have been in the game.

Who is Duke's go-to guy down two with 30 seconds to go? Does RH have a good enough handle to be that guy? He is a great player so perhaps he'll get there, but you can't dribble into a double team with the clock winding down.

Maybe ND just wanted it more...I don't buy the whole other teams circle Duke on their calendar as the reason for every Duke loss. If that's the case the coaches need to start getting out their pens and do some of their own circling. 0-1 in the ACC. Losing the ACC opener to ND after being up ten half way through the half...not good.

as an aside, I believe all of the recent additions to the ACC won today? Makes me wonder if perhaps the ACC wasn't really much weaker that the Big East, something I'd been arguing against for years. Once again, I think this was a bad loss to an average team.

[burnspbesq]

three games?

2/1 at the Dome, 2/22 at Cameron, and 3/16 in Greensboro.

[miramar]

I will give Sherman credit for one superlative. I thought Kyle Singler had the worst haircut I had ever seen on a college basketball court. But he was bettered (worsed?) by Sherman's beard. Holy cow! Was that ugly? I feel for his poor mom. I mean, attacking it with hedge clippers would make it look better.

I guess I'm too old to understand it, but for some reason the Hatfields and McCoys look seems to be making a minor resurgence. And it's not just Duck Dynasty since hipsters are also doing it:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tabathaleggett/23-incredible-hipster-beards

But getting back to the game, I thought that Rasheed had a chance to step up, but...

[uh_no]

2/1 at the Dome, 2/22 at Cameron, and 3/16 in Greensboro.

i think that's getting a bit ahead of ourselves....

there's no guarantee that

a) duke and syracuse will be on opposite sides of the ACC bracket

or

b) duke and syracuse will win enough to reach each other in the tournament

it's like saying we're looking forward to knocking off arizona in the national championship game in april....lets worry about the games that are actually on our schedule

[CDu]

2/1 at the Dome, 2/22 at Cameron, and 3/16 in Greensboro.

You're being awfully presumptive on that last one.

[FerryFor50]

Decision to leave Jabari benched already being discussed:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaab-the-dagger/jabari-parker-left-bench-during-pivotal-stretch-duke-003325371--ncaab.html

Sounds like he was just benched for not playing well.

[Duke76]

I think this was a truly poor performance in virtually every aspect of the game. Giving up a 20-4 run to ND? There were a couple of bright spots as folks have pointed out -- QC and RH, and the team didn't quit, but this team hasn't shown any ability to get a stop when a stop MUST be made.

On offense, no one could score inside. Duke had several opportunities with players cutting to the basket, but the ball was never passed on time to take advantage. This has become a Duke hallmark. Seemed like every inside attempt was based on someone dribbling into the defense...only a few fell. Duke had no interior passing at all. Duke has been scoring a lot of points, but the assists were simply not there today, largely because Duke relied on the athleticism of the players and wasn't running any precise orchestrated plays. As some have noted, Duke quickly got to the habit of passing the ball around the exterior and relied on the three. When that went away in the second half, they were done. Its great to have Jabari score 20, but when the other team plays good D, there has to be some method to get him or someone else the ball with an opportunity to score. I miss the days when the PG would actually call a play and Duke would execute something purposeful. Can anyone reliably shoot a mid-range shot, aside from JP?

Duke has ONE big man who isn't allowed to play. I thought MP3 was effective in his few minutes; at least he could challenge the big men inside. Its unclear to me what Duke was trying to do on interior defense; playing under the basket behind a big who has height and a lot of weight advantage just isn't going to work, unless your hoping he can't lay the ball in. MP3 has got to become a part of the defense when Duke is facing an effective big man, either that or they've got to deny him the ball. There was no effective adjustment to ND's post play. Play Marshall now if you expect him to compete later.

Not sure why Duke has so much difficulty staying in defensive position. Are they just not quick footed enough or are there just that many attention lapses? I'd like to see them simply focus on staying between their man and the rim rather than trying to double team and overplay the ball...apparently the length and speed are not there to get steals as some teams have been able to do in the past. Not being in position on D against ND I don't get.

If ND had been able to take the ball out of bonds on every offensive position, they could have scored 100. Wow, Duke made ND look like professionals on out-of-bounds plays.

Given what I believe the disparity in talent to be, it was clear that ND was the better team today. I am hoping this version of Duke BB will become a great team, today they weren't very good in most aspects of the game. Against a top ten team, they would have been blown out. I know. I know. They only got beat by two...without the three point shot, they wouldn't have been in the game.

Who is Duke's go-to guy down two with 30 seconds to go? Does RH have a good enough handle to be that guy? He is a great player so perhaps he'll get there, but you can't dribble into a double team with the clock winding down.

Maybe ND just wanted it more...I don't buy the whole other teams circle Duke on their calendar as the reason for every Duke loss. If that's the case the coaches need to start getting out their pens and do some of their own circling. 0-1 in the ACC. Losing the ACC opener to ND after being up ten half way through the half...not good.

as an aside, I believe all of the recent additions to the ACC won today? Makes me wonder if perhaps the ACC wasn't really much weaker that the Big East, something I'd been arguing against for years. Once again, I think this was a bad loss to an average team.

well written, as I said before…I don't see any plays being called they are just working off reads…but it just seems to me we always play better when we runs set plays…haven't seen a tug on a shirt play…or a finger or two risen by anyone…don't see anyone looking to the bench for a call either….sometimes it doesn't bother Coach K much when they lose,,,,lose the battle, win the war I guess

[gurufrisbee]

Deng was one of the best players to ever wear a Duke uniform. I think it's a bit unfair to compare Jefferson to Deng, because Jefferson is NEVER going to be a Deng-like player. That's no knock on Jefferson. Deng was exceptionally good.

And Marshall is just not nearly as skilled as Mason was. Nor is he nearly as athletic as Mason was.

So I guess my point is that if you really want Marshall to be Mason (or even anything close to Mason) and Jefferson to be Deng (or even anything close to Deng), well, then to quote one of my favorite movies "get used to disappointment."

I know they aren't those guys and I even said I don't expect them to become those guys, but if they were improving and playing more like those guys then you could see them earning time together on the floor. And that would be nice.

It would certainly be better than watching the games this season and thinking that one of the greatest blunders was going into a college basketball game with only one power forward on the floor or making the sound of ultimate suffering as 6'6" guys dominate us in the paint over and over.

[jipops]

I have zero concerns or qualms with how our offense looked today... well maybe except for that last play with Hood. Every team has occasional games like that on offense, especially on the road. It's that other end that doesn't seem to be very dependable. I also don't think rebounding is that big of an issue either.

The way Notre Dame has played so far this season, this just seems like a bad loss against a very mediocre team. But who knows, maybe the Irish will show themselves to be respectable by season's end.

For those that think we should play zone, that would just make a bad problem even worse. With communication and positioning being such a deficiency with this team how would that remotely be solved by going to a zone? If you think our rebounding is subpar, it would be way worse.

Seemed like Notre Dame scored on 100% of their inbound plays.

I'm trying to find some positives out of today's game, so here it goes...

[uh_no]

I have zero concerns or qualms with how our offense looked today... well maybe except for that last play with Hood. Every team has occasional games like that on offense, especially on the road. It's that other end that doesn't seem to be very dependable. I also don't think rebounding is that big of an issue either.

The way Notre Dame has played so far this season, this just seems like a bad loss against a very mediocre team. But who knows, maybe the Irish will show themselves to be respectable by season's end.

For those that think we should play zone, that would just make a bad problem even worse. With communication and positioning being such a deficiency with this team how would that remotely be solved by going to a zone? Seemed like Notre Dame scored on 100% of their inbound plays.

I'm trying to find some positives out of today's game, so here it goes...

we performed a few points better than our adjusted offensive efficiency for the year.....given ND's defense is not good....but yeah, while there are some things we would have liked to see done better, especially down the stretch, on the whole the other end of the floor was a much bigger problem

[FerryFor50]

we performed a few points better than our adjusted offensive efficiency for the year.....given ND's defense is not good....but yeah, while there are some things we would have liked to see done better, especially down the stretch, on the whole the other end of the floor was a much bigger problem

To be fair, Duke still had a 10 point lead at one point. Then the offense just went south. If they play offense at a normal rate, Duke doesn't lose this game. 20-4 runs are not all due to poor defense.

[jipops]

To be fair, Duke still had a 10 point lead at one point. Then the offense just went south. If they play offense at a normal rate, Duke doesn't lose this game. 20-4 runs are not all due to poor defense.

To be fair, get a couple stops in the last 5 minutes and Duke is 1-0 in the ACC.

[FerryFor50]

To be fair, get a couple stops in the last 5 minutes and Duke is 1-0 in the ACC.

Shouldn't even have come to that. Keep scoring and you maintain a 10 pt lead and don't need to get stops in the last 5 min. It's obvious the defense is a work in progress, so the offense needs to be efficient to win games. If the defense solidifies, which I think it will get better as the year goes on, then Duke will be in good shape in March.

[CDu]

Shouldn't even have come to that. Keep scoring and you maintain a 10 pt lead and don't need to get stops in the last 5 min. It's obvious the defense is a work in progress, so the offense needs to be efficient to win games. If the defense solidifies, which I think it will get better as the year goes on, then Duke will be in good shape in March.

Yeah, we went 4:20 without scoring a point during the critical juncture of the second half.

Obviously, the defense was awful. But the offense picked a bad time to go AWOL.

[FerryFor50]

Yeah, we went 4:20 without scoring a point during the critical juncture of the second half.

Obviously, the defense was awful. But the offense picked a bad time to go AWOL.

Also, people are ignoring some of the sequences where Duke forced a loose ball on defense, but got a bad bounce or two and ND got some gift points. I can think of at least 3 possessions where that happened - a Duke player poked the ball away and it bounced right to a ND player. How bad does the defense look if the 50/50 balls go Duke's way? Probably a lot better.

[jipops]

Shouldn't even have come to that. Keep scoring and you maintain a 10 pt lead and don't need to get stops in the last 5 min. It's obvious the defense is a work in progress, so the offense needs to be efficient to win games. If the defense solidifies, which I think it will get better as the year goes on, then Duke will be in good shape in March.

Yea, it would have been nice if it hadn't come to that. Problem is our defense is so unreliable we were just about hosed at that point.

I hope it's a work in progress. Today it looked more like a feeble work in.

[FerryFor50]

Yea, it would have been nice if it hadn't come to that. Problem is our defense is so unreliable we were just about hosed at that point.

I hope it's a work in progress. Today it looked more like a feeble work in.

Well, today was bad. But the defense had been looking good in the past few weeks, especially against UCLA.

There will be more tweaks and adjustments. I felt like the team looked a little lethargic overall most of the game.

[roywhite]

Boxscore (http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=22724&SPID=1845&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=4200&ATCLID=209359542)

ND was 15-24 from the field in 2nd half.
Duke was 10-24 from the field in 2nd half.

Duke made it close by hitting 16-17 FT in 2nd half.

Each team had only 6 turnovers.
ND had 6 blocks, with Burgett getting 5 of them.

Atkins was terrific with 38 minutes played, 19 points, 11 assists and only 2 turnovers.

[Gthoma2a]

If we didn't lose, Hood gets man of the match, despite being part of our interior D problem. We may want to just put Marshall out there and see if he can figure it out more often. He could be our best option to fix the problems of defense and rebounding (long shot, but I'd take it).

[FerryFor50]

Boxscore (http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=22724&SPID=1845&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=4200&ATCLID=209359542)

ND had 6 blocks, with Burgett getting 5 of them.

Yea, where the heck did that come from?

The kid had just 8 blocks on the year in 13 games for a .6 bpg average prior to tonight. It's like the defensive Bootsy Thornton.

[Billy Dat]

It feels like getting this team to reach its potential is going to be a season long process. Today was a step back, but we still could have won a true road conference game with far from our best effort, when our best player stunk and during a weird emotional week when we didn't have K.

I think the 3s that we were hitting were a bit of fools gold in that we didn't seem worthy of holding that halftime lead. Still, when we went up 10 in the second, I thought we'd shaken off the rust and would cruise home. Then, the roof caved in.

It was nice to see Rodney carry us on offense, I think that effort will boost his confidence. It would have been nice to get a road win against a good conference opponent without our best stuff - we're not there yet. This team still has upside.

I am worried, though, about the impact of K's brother's death. He may be the G.O.A.T, but he's a very emotional human and I think it will be hard to compartmentalize something that personal. It's got to be very tough to stay focused at a time of year when everything is happening at 100 mph. I feel really bad that he's got to try and absorb that kind of blow in the heart of the season.

[dukelifer]

Shouldn't even have come to that. Keep scoring and you maintain a 10 pt lead and don't need to get stops in the last 5 min. It's obvious the defense is a work in progress, so the offense needs to be efficient to win games. If the defense solidifies, which I think it will get better as the year goes on, then Duke will be in good shape in March.

Basketball at this level is about making plays in critical situations. Duke did not make the plays on D or O and against a team that has less talent. Close games are are part if basketball and Duke is going to get a focused opponent every time. ND played well but Duke missed a chance to get an important ACC win. Every team is flawed- but even a flawed team can win if they execute. Flawed ND executed and flawed Duke did not - particularly on D. Very frustrating. The coaching staff need to help this team figure this out or this will be a very difficult season.

[jipops]

Well, today was bad. But the defense had been looking good in the past few weeks, especially against UCLA.

There will be more tweaks and adjustments. I felt like the team looked a little lethargic overall most of the game.

Yea, i think this makes today more disappointing. We seemed to be on an upward trajectory on D. UCLA was one of the more efficient offenses at the time. Instead this looked like the same team that played Vermont. We took a few steps back today. These weren't highly skilled players that broke us down. Our guys were broken down repeatedly by execution.

[FerryFor50]

Yea, i think this makes today more disappointing. We seemed to be on an upward trajectory on D. UCLA was one of the more efficient offenses at the time. Instead this looked like the same team that played Vermont. We took a few steps back today. These weren't highly skilled players that broke us down. Our guys were broken down repeatedly by execution.

I think we're not giving ND enough credit. They're not as bad a team as people think. They have some talent, and a lot of the points Sherman had were on tough to defend hook shots.

Granted, they don't have Duke-type talent, but I think ND will be better than advertised. They took Ohio State down to the wire and beat Indiana (who, admittedly, is having a bit of a down year, but will probably still make the tourny).

Now, losing to Vermont.... that would have sucked.

[roywhite]

I think we're not giving ND enough credit. They're not as bad a team as people think. They have some talent, and a lot of the points Sherman had were on tough to defend hook shots.

Granted, they don't have Duke-type talent, but I think ND will be better than advertised.

Now, losing to Vermont.... that would have sucked.

Yeah, I agree that ND deserves credit; they played well and with emotion. (Duke didn't really do either, at least viewing from my couch).

One disturbing thing is the similar fashion of ND and Vermont's offensive efficiency -- both handled the ball well with plenty of dribbling, didn't turn it over, spread the floor, worked patiently, and got high quality shots, sometimes layups or dunks on back door cuts. We don't have a defender who can guard the rim well, so somehow we've got to find an answer to this type approach.

[jipops]

I think we're not giving ND enough credit. They're not as bad a team as people think. They have some talent, and a lot of the points Sherman had were on tough to defend hook shots.

Granted, they don't have Duke-type talent, but I think ND will be better than advertised. They took Ohio State down to the wire and beat Indiana (who, admittedly, is having a bit of a down year, but will probably still make the tourny).

Now, losing to Vermont.... that would have sucked.

As I posted earlier, time may tell how bad/not so bad this loss was.

I still think of Vermont as a loss. Not that it does much good to look back.

[cbarry]

I was yelling at the Tv for a timeout. When ND was shooting FTs, Coach K motioned to bring the ball to mid court and call a TO. But this was not done. I don't know why not. That might have given us a better chance to win.

Agree with all other posters this was a horrible loss for us (against a vastly inferior opponent), and does not give me confidence for a deep NCAA Tourney run. I think anything more than 2 wins in the NCAAs will be a big surprise to me. Defense wins games, and we don't have it.


I was surprised that there was no time out on that last possession. In a hostile environment, I thought K would want to settle the team and draw something up. I understand the merits of trying to catch ND off guard, but K tends to err on the side of running from a set in that scenario.

[jipops]

Yeah, I agree that ND deserves credit; they played well and with emotion. (Duke didn't really do either, at least viewing from my couch).

One disturbing thing is the similar fashion of ND and Vermont's offensive efficiency -- both handled the ball well with plenty of dribbling, didn't turn it over, spread the floor, worked patiently, and got high quality shots, sometimes layups or dunks on back door cuts. We don't have a defender who can guard the rim well, so somehow we've got to find an answer to this type approach.

And they also used a lot of the shot clock. Which led to some probable impatience and lack of attention on D as well as minimizing our offensive possessions.

[Troublemaker]

While defense was more to blame, I was definitely annoyed by certain things on offense.

First, we really need Amile to look for his offense more. On possessions where ND was playing m2m, it was very annoying that Amile didn't even look to drive guys like Sherman off the dribble. That's one of the strengths to his game and needs to be utilized; if he is to be an effective 5, he has to hurt opposing centers on offense to help balance out the times when they may hurt him on offense. Amile can't be Mr. Dribble Handoff all day long. We need some of the Kansas game Amile to return (the offense, but keep the current rebounding).

Second, we did look for the 3-pt shot too much. Often, I feel like that criticism of us is unfair, but I didn't think so in this game. Especially when Notre Dame was going smallball to take control of the game, we needed to go inside more. I believe there was ONE attempt to post up Jabari in the 2nd half that led to two points on free throws from him and it felt like, "Finally!" but we didn't really go back to it. Also, when ND was playing smallball, Rodney would have either 6'6" Vasturia or 6'5" Connaughton guarding him. He's a great option to postup under those circumstances as well.

[Troublemaker]

Post game quotes: http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?KEY=WJWXQWPRPVNEKEG.2014010420372 6&SPSID=22724&SPID=1845&DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=4200&ATCLID=209359556

Brey on how smallball helped ND both offensively and defensively:


On going with a small lineup:
“After about the fourth three that we didn’t hedge on? We got Garrick Sherman out of there and we got [Austin] Burgett in there and played small and that lineup did two things, really. We switched everything, which helped us, but they were hard to guard too. Our lineup was very hard to guard. We had that floor spread and we really moved without the ball and got great stuff at the end of the clock. We had some young guys in there again. Demetrius [Jackson], I thought, took another step forward there, Steve Vasturia—his shot may be the shot of the game. That was a huge shot right there to really make us believe. I told them in the locker room that it could be a different group finishing the game on Tuesday night.”

Note: Brey actually got the substitution wrong. He subbed in Vasturia for Sherman. Burgett was already in the game and shifted up to the 5.

[Dukehky]

44-16 in the paint. All our talent and we score 16 points in the paint? I know the zone helps eliminate that, but 16 points isn't very good...

[NashvilleDevil]

44-16 in the paint. All our talent and we score 16 points in the paint? I know the zone helps eliminate that, but 16 points isn't very good...

Duke did miss a ton of easy shots from close.

[MCFinARL]

You're being awfully presumptive on that last one.

I agree with you, except I think you may mean presumptuous rather than presumptive.... (can't help myself).

Saw the first half, not the second, as I had to go out. Had the following thoughts, some of which agree with other comments in this thread that I should quote but at this moment feel too tired to.
1. Jabari's bad game may have had a physical illness-related cause, as some have speculated. And if he looked exhausted in the second half, that adds some credence to that theory. But based on what I saw in the first half, some of the issue related to decision-making--there were a lot of times when Jabari got the ball in his hands and seemed to rule out any option that involved giving the ball to someone else. I think someone has already said this game will be a learning opportunity for the team, and maybe for Jabari in particular--and what I hope Jabari learns is that, on the road, it is easy to slip into the mindset that you are the guy and the team's fate rides on you--and falling into that mindset is to be avoided. It looked to me like Parker was trying to take much too much on himself and forcing things on his own instead of working for the best team play.

This leads into 2.) According to the early (thus perhaps not perfectly accurate) box score I saw, the team had 8 assists to ND's 18--and Jabari had 0. I'm kind of surprised no one, as far as I can tell, has mentioned this dearth of assists so far in this thread. I'm not sure whether this is primarily a strategic issue or a communication issue, but either way it significantly limits the team when the designated star is not having a good night.

3) As someone else noted, it's a bit nervous-making to see so many three-point shots, not because Duke didn't make those shots at a reasonable rate, but because the need to rely on so many threes suggests that other options aren't working effectively. And they weren't, especially, but maybe they could have been tried a bit more often.

4) It didn't seem like Coach K was at his best today, and understandably so. Someone mentioned not taking a time out at the end of the game, others have mentioned not playing Marshall much in the second half; others suggested other issues (including one of my faves because bearing a bit more than a germ of truth, "K is stubborn").

[jv001]

Yeah, I agree that ND deserves credit; they played well and with emotion. (Duke didn't really do either, at least viewing from my couch).

One disturbing thing is the similar fashion of ND and Vermont's offensive efficiency -- both handled the ball well with plenty of dribbling, didn't turn it over, spread the floor, worked patiently, and got high quality shots, sometimes layups or dunks on back door cuts. We don't have a defender who can guard the rim well, so somehow we've got to find an answer to this type approach.

I agree with you. ND had very good ballhandlers that spread us out and once again we were beaten off the dribble. Quinn played a very good game on the offensive end, but his defense was just bad. He was beaten off the dribble and he lost his man several times. Like you say, we don't have a rim protector on this team. For our defense to be average to above average, our guys have to talk on defense. Tonight we didn't talk and we paid the price with a 0-1 start in ACC play. It seemed that our guys got their hands on a rebound or loose ball and couldn't manage to take possession. We were out rebounded by 9 and the only player with more than 4 boards was Amile. We got 21 points out of 6 players(TT, Josh, Sheed, MP3, Amile & Andre). Cook and Hood carried us on offense. Jabari's 2/10 fgs and 1/5 on 3s really hurt. He definitely looked like he was under the weather. I guess even he's not immune to the first road game blues. We had 8 assists and 6 turnovers. We need more assists than that to be a very good Duke team. Well, next play! GoDuke!

[FerryFor50]

I agree with you, except I think you may mean presumptuous rather than presumptive.... (can't help myself).

Saw the first half, not the second, as I had to go out. Had the following thoughts, some of which agree with other comments in this thread that I should quote but at this moment feel too tired to.
1. Jabari's bad game may have had a physical illness-related cause, as some have speculated. And if he looked exhausted in the second half, that adds some credence to that theory. But based on what I saw in the first half, some of the issue related to decision-making--there were a lot of times when Jabari got the ball in his hands and seemed to rule out any option that involved giving the ball to someone else. I think someone has already said this game will be a learning opportunity for the team, and maybe for Jabari in particular--and what I hope Jabari learns is that, on the road, it is easy to slip into the mindset that you are the guy and the team's fate rides on you--and falling into that mindset is to be avoided. It looked to me like Parker was trying to take much too much on himself and forcing things on his own instead of working for the best team play.

This leads into 2.) According to the early (thus perhaps not perfectly accurate) box score I saw, the team had 8 assists to ND's 18--and Jabari had 0. I'm kind of surprised no one, as far as I can tell, has mentioned this dearth of assists so far in this thread. I'm not sure whether this is primarily a strategic issue or a communication issue, but either way it significantly limits the team when the designated star is not having a good night.

3) As someone else noted, it's a bit nervous-making to see so many three-point shots, not because Duke didn't make those shots at a reasonable rate, but because the need to rely on so many threes suggests that other options aren't working effectively. And they weren't, especially, but maybe they could have been tried a bit more often.

4) It didn't seem like Coach K was at his best today, and understandably so. Someone mentioned not taking a time out at the end of the game, others have mentioned not playing Marshall much in the second half; others suggested other issues (including one of my faves because bearing a bit more than a germ of truth, "K is stubborn").

It wasn't just the 3 point shots - it was the type of 3 point shots. A lot of them were guarded, without any passes. Just dribble, dribble, shoot.

Hero ball.

The lack of passing is a concern. They were clicking when they were letting Sheed drive and kick out to wide open guys. Or having a big screen and hand off. They should do more of that to get open shots.

[jipops]

While defense was more to blame, I was definitely annoyed by certain things on offense.

First, we really need Amile to look for his offense more. On possessions where ND was playing m2m, it was very annoying that Amile didn't even look to drive guys like Sherman off the dribble. That's one of the strengths to his game and needs to be utilized; if he is to be an effective 5, he has to hurt opposing centers on offense to help balance out the times when they may hurt him on offense. Amile can't be Mr. Dribble Handoff all day long. We need some of the Kansas game Amile to return (the offense, but keep the current rebounding).

Second, we did look for the 3-pt shot too much. Often, I feel like that criticism of us is unfair, but I didn't think so in this game. Especially when Notre Dame was going smallball to take control of the game, we needed to go inside more. I believe there was ONE attempt to post up Jabari in the 2nd half that led to two points on free throws from him and it felt like, "Finally!" but we didn't really go back to it. Also, when ND was playing smallball, Rodney would have either 6'6" Vasturia or 6'5" Connaughton guarding him. He's a great option to postup under those circumstances as well.

Actually, ND was fronting Parker with 2 guys in the post in that stretch. This led to Parker popping out more. Though I agree, it would have been nice to see Amile look for his shot more in those circumstances.

[Newton_14]

Hey hey hey, all this logic isn't allowed around here. :)

They've got to work on their communication big time. Someone needs to yell out "PASS" on those back door cuts (ESPECIALLY on the in-bounds - YIKES).

We played a team today whose coach knows our coach's style very well. All that motion versus a man-to-man defense that had serious lapses in focus was sure to cause discomfort. Throw in a big man whose confidence grew by the moment and you start to see the chinks in the armor and the not wanting to get that next foul.

They'll talk it out and it will be great stuff for the film room - and practice.
I agree. On one of the 5 times ND scored off of one pass on the baseline inbounds play, two Duke defenders, one being Hood, and the other being Tyler, both jumped to cover the same guy, and it left a wide open player for a layup. Just really poor communication there. I could rattle off 5 to 10 other times something similar happened, once being where Andre rotated off his man in the corner to cover the open wing player. ND threw a skip pass to the corner guy that Andre had released to Jabari, and Jabari was two to three steps slow getting there, so much so that Andre actually shoved him towards the open man (who caught the pass and hit the open 3).

Disappointing because they had shown a lot of improvement in total defense and communication since the Gardner-Webb game. So two steps backwards in the defense today, and we certainly did not get out talented. ND was just really sharp with their offense, spreading us out, and taking huge advantage of the poor communication, poor defense on the dribble drive, and poor rotations.

On offense we did fall in love with the 3, but I have to give ND credit here. I thought their team defense was really superb. I was a bit surprised though I admit I had not seen them play this year. They just played outstanding defense, withstood the onslaught of Hood/Cook, and contained our attempts at attacking the paint. Outside of Hood and to a lesser extent, Quinn, no other Duke player had success attacking the paint.

Unfortunately with all that going on, Jabari had the worst all around game of his young career, which was going to happen at some point. We almost covered him, but we just were not sharp enough. I agree that Jabari was likely impacted by the flu or some sort of ailment. Notice too that for the second time in a couple of weeks, Hood missed the start of a half with some type of issue, which I assume was stomach or flu related or both.

I do think there are two important things to remember on a day like today. One is the great article Al Featherson wrote a short time ago about the danger of "living in the moment" with each and every game. Regressing on defense, having your best player lay an egg, and losing by two points to an inspired team executing really well, in the first conference road game of the season, does not mean we are doomed to exiting the NCAA in the first round, anymore than blowing ND out today (and we will likely blow them out in Cameron) would have meant we are a lock for the Final Four.

Two is taking a conference road game for granted. I always cringe when we get the posts stating "we are going to smoke these guys today" in a pre-game thread for a conference game, especially a conference road game. "Well, Canisius took them to double overtime so that means they suck and can't possibly beat us" is just a dangerous mentality to have. Like I said in the Phase thread, we have seen this movie time and time again with even the best Duke an UNC teams where Va Tech or Clemson or Ga Tech (or Notre Dame now) loses to Nobody U, and UVA loses to Nobody U, Nobody U State, and Nobody U Mid-Western, and then plays out of their minds in their home games against Duke or UNC and win.

I thought we were toast at the 4 minute mark, then thought we were actually going to pull out the win with about 2 minutes to go. I do wonder if there was confusion on the possession where Hood drove too deep and then turned it over, or K changed his mind, cause after the ND guy missed the first free throw, the camera caught K instructing them to get it to halfcourt and call timeout. It was strange because first, after the ND player makes the second free throw, instead of inbounding quickly and driving it up court quickly, Tyler throws the ball to the ref, then waits, and it allowed ND to set up their press. Rodney then caught the inbounds pass, and took it all the way with no timeout. Either K changed his mind, or debated and told them to wait on the inbounds pass while the staff discussed it or something, but either way, I liked the original strategy of calling the timeout better. K could have them set up a play for Andre, Hood, or Quinn to take the 3 and win the game at the buzzer. Just seemed like there was a lot of confusion there with the long delay on inbounding the ball and then no timeout.

At any rate, on to Gatech at home. The Duke team we saw today isn't the finished product. Long season ahead of us. Next Play.

[jv001]

It wasn't just the 3 point shots - it was the type of 3 point shots. A lot of them were guarded, without any passes. Just dribble, dribble, shoot.

Hero ball.

The lack of passing is a concern. They were clicking when they were letting Sheed drive and kick out to wide open guys. Or having a big screen and hand off. They should do more of that to get open shots.

I presume you're talking about the previous games where Sheed did penetrate and kick our for open shots. This game Rasheed didn't have an assist, but part of that problem was he was not involved in driving the ball to the basket. I don't know if that was by design or he just didn't feel comfortable trying it. I like it when he's involved in creating the offense for others as well as himself. GoDuke!

[FerryFor50]

I presume you're talking about the previous games where Sheed did penetrate and kick our for open shots. This game Rasheed didn't have an assist, but part of that problem was he was not involved in driving the ball to the basket. I don't know if that was by design or he just didn't feel comfortable trying it. I like it when he's involved in creating the offense for others as well as himself. GoDuke!

Yea, that's what I meant. They didn't do that this game.

[jv001]

I agree. On one of the 5 times ND scored off of one pass on the baseline inbounds play, two Duke defenders, one being Hood, and the other being Tyler, both jumped to cover the same guy, and it left a wide open player for a layup. Just really poor communication there. I could rattle off 5 to 10 other times something similar happened, once being where Andre rotated off his man in the corner to cover the open wing player. ND threw a skip pass to the corner guy that Andre had released to Jabari, and Jabari was two to three steps slow getting there, so much so that Andre actually shoved him towards the open man (who caught the pass and hit the open 3).

Disappointing because they had shown a lot of improvement in total defense and communication since the Gardner-Webb game. So two steps backwards in the defense today, and we certainly did not get out talented. ND was just really sharp with their offense, spreading us out, and taking huge advantage of the poor communication, poor defense on the dribble drive, and poor rotations.

On offense we did fall in love with the 3, but I have to give ND credit here. I thought their team defense was really superb. I was a bit surprised though I admit I had not seen them play this year. They just played outstanding defense, withstood the onslaught of Hood/Cook, and contained our attempts at attacking the paint. Outside of Hood and to a lesser extent, Quinn, no other Duke player had success attacking the paint.

Unfortunately with all that going on, Jabari had the worst all around game of his young career, which was going to happen at some point. We almost covered him, but we just were not sharp enough. I agree that Jabari was likely impacted by the flu or some sort of ailment. Notice too that for the second time in a couple of weeks, Hood missed the start of a half with some type of issue, which I assume was stomach or flu related or both.

I do think there are two important things to remember on a day like today. One is the great article Al Featherson wrote a short time ago about the danger of "living in the moment" with each and every game. Regressing on defense, having your best player lay an egg, and losing by two points to an inspired team executing really well, in the first conference road game of the season, does not mean we are doomed to exiting the NCAA in the first round, anymore than blowing ND out today (and we will likely blow them out in Cameron) would have meant we are a lock for the Final Four.

Two is taking a conference road game for granted. I always cringe when we get the posts stating "we are going to smoke these guys today" in a pre-game thread for a conference game, especially a conference road game. "Well, Canisius took them to double overtime so that means they suck and can't possibly beat us" is just a dangerous mentality to have. Like I said in the Phase thread, we have seen this movie time and time again with even the best Duke an UNC teams where Va Tech or Clemson or Ga Tech (or Notre Dame now) loses to Nobody U, and UVA loses to Nobody U, Nobody U State, and Nobody U Mid-Western, and then plays out of their minds in their home games against Duke or UNC and win.

I thought we were toast at the 4 minute mark, then thought we were actually going to pull out the win with about 2 minutes to go. I do wonder if there was confusion on the possession where Hood drove too deep and then turned it over, or K changed his mind, cause after the ND guy missed the first free throw, the camera caught K instructing them to get it to halfcourt and call timeout. It was strange because first, after the ND player makes the second free throw, instead of inbounding quickly and driving it up court quickly, Tyler throws the ball to the ref, then waits, and it allowed ND to set up their press. Rodney then caught the inbounds pass, and took it all the way with no timeout. Either K changed his mind, or debated and told them to wait on the inbounds pass while the staff discussed it or something, but either way, I liked the original strategy of calling the timeout better. K could have them set up a play for Andre, Hood, or Quinn to take the 3 and win the game at the buzzer. Just seemed like there was a lot of confusion there with the long delay on inbounding the ball and then no timeout.

At any rate, on to Gatech at home. The Duke team we saw today isn't the finished product. Long season ahead of us. Next Play.

I agree with your entire post. It was evident that Coach K gave the instructions to bring the ball up court and then call timeout. TT did take a long time to get the ball in play. I love TT but he is not a playmaker or consistent scorer. Why Hood tried to pass the ball to him on the last play of the game is mind boggling. Well be Tech. GoDuke!

[azzefkram]

Well that wasn't the outcome I was looking for, but it wasn't a complete disaster. We lost our first true road game by two points (with a good chance but bad execution to tie) with our best player having a craptacular game. Rodney had a pretty good game after a few somewhat quiet ones. Quinn had a good offensive game. Amile got 9 boards in 21 minutes. The not so good stuff was getting destroyed in the paint to the tune of 42 pts on 62% shooting. We did not have a dunk and only 12 pts off of lay-ups on 32%. Yikes. Considering who we ran out there the fact that we were out-rebounded by only 9 is somewhat of a moral victory. The luck of the Irish seemed to be in full effect as several bounces went their way.

This team is a bit of a puzzle. We definitely have an abundance of talent, enough in my opinion to be a contender for the national championship. I don't know if we'll get there and we have some heavy lifting to do to even put ourselves in the position to contend. It's still early in my book.

[FerryFor50]

I agree with your entire post. It was evident that Coach K gave the instructions to bring the ball up court and then call timeout. TT did take a long time to get the ball in play. I love TT but he is not a playmaker or consistent scorer. Why Hood tried to pass the ball to him on the last play of the game is mind boggling. Well be Tech. GoDuke!

Because Hood drove in too far on a double team and panicked and tried to bail out. That last play was not TT's fault.

[Dukehky]

Duke did miss a ton of easy shots from close.

Is that supposed to make it better or worse?

[rhcpflea99]

Can't wait until the defensive rotation get better.

[jipops]

I guess one silver lining is we're not seeing a crazy message board meltdown here. Just bummed.

Should I give it more time?

[vick]

I agree. On one of the 5 times ND scored off of one pass on the baseline inbounds play, two Duke defenders, one being Hood, and the other being Tyler, both jumped to cover the same guy, and it left a wide open player for a layup. Just really poor communication there. I could rattle off 5 to 10 other times something similar happened, once being where Andre rotated off his man in the corner to cover the open wing player. ND threw a skip pass to the corner guy that Andre had released to Jabari, and Jabari was two to three steps slow getting there, so much so that Andre actually shoved him towards the open man (who caught the pass and hit the open 3).

Disappointing because they had shown a lot of improvement in total defense and communication since the Gardner-Webb game. So two steps backwards in the defense today, and we certainly did not get out talented. ND was just really sharp with their offense, spreading us out, and taking huge advantage of the poor communication, poor defense on the dribble drive, and poor rotations.

On offense we did fall in love with the 3, but I have to give ND credit here. I thought their team defense was really superb. I was a bit surprised though I admit I had not seen them play this year. They just played outstanding defense, withstood the onslaught of Hood/Cook, and contained our attempts at attacking the paint. Outside of Hood and to a lesser extent, Quinn, no other Duke player had success attacking the paint.

Unfortunately with all that going on, Jabari had the worst all around game of his young career, which was going to happen at some point. We almost covered him, but we just were not sharp enough. I agree that Jabari was likely impacted by the flu or some sort of ailment. Notice too that for the second time in a couple of weeks, Hood missed the start of a half with some type of issue, which I assume was stomach or flu related or both.

I do think there are two important things to remember on a day like today. One is the great article Al Featherson wrote a short time ago about the danger of "living in the moment" with each and every game. Regressing on defense, having your best player lay an egg, and losing by two points to an inspired team executing really well, in the first conference road game of the season, does not mean we are doomed to exiting the NCAA in the first round, anymore than blowing ND out today (and we will likely blow them out in Cameron) would have meant we are a lock for the Final Four.

Two is taking a conference road game for granted. I always cringe when we get the posts stating "we are going to smoke these guys today" in a pre-game thread for a conference game, especially a conference road game. "Well, Canisius took them to double overtime so that means they suck and can't possibly beat us" is just a dangerous mentality to have. Like I said in the Phase thread, we have seen this movie time and time again with even the best Duke an UNC teams where Va Tech or Clemson or Ga Tech (or Notre Dame now) loses to Nobody U, and UVA loses to Nobody U, Nobody U State, and Nobody U Mid-Western, and then plays out of their minds in their home games against Duke or UNC and win.

I thought we were toast at the 4 minute mark, then thought we were actually going to pull out the win with about 2 minutes to go. I do wonder if there was confusion on the possession where Hood drove too deep and then turned it over, or K changed his mind, cause after the ND guy missed the first free throw, the camera caught K instructing them to get it to halfcourt and call timeout. It was strange because first, after the ND player makes the second free throw, instead of inbounding quickly and driving it up court quickly, Tyler throws the ball to the ref, then waits, and it allowed ND to set up their press. Rodney then caught the inbounds pass, and took it all the way with no timeout. Either K changed his mind, or debated and told them to wait on the inbounds pass while the staff discussed it or something, but either way, I liked the original strategy of calling the timeout better. K could have them set up a play for Andre, Hood, or Quinn to take the 3 and win the game at the buzzer. Just seemed like there was a lot of confusion there with the long delay on inbounding the ball and then no timeout.

At any rate, on to Gatech at home. The Duke team we saw today isn't the finished product. Long season ahead of us. Next Play.

Great post, but I think I have to quibble a bit with the bolded part. I thought our offensive execution was fairly good. Pomeroy predicted 79 points on 70 possessions (1.13 per possession), and we wound up with 77 points on 64 possessions (1.20 per possession). In other words, we outperformed the projection of a system that has us as the third best offense in the country, so while clearly there is room for improvement, it can't really get all that much better on the offensive end, whereas the defense has loads of room to improve.

[sagegrouse]

Annhhh! A few inside shots we normally would have made; a few easy baskets by Notre Dame that we would normally have defended. Offset by an artificially high FT shooting edge. This could have been a win.

sage

[Newton_14]

what scares me a lot is these are the things that have doomed teams the past several years....and I don't mean to say this team is doomed, just that you could have posted this about many of the recent duke teams that have in the end been proven fatally flawed....IMO one of quinn's biggest weaknesses is losing control of the game when things don't go perfectly...resulting in lack of motion and interior ball movement and then ill-advised threes....that said, not having jabari certainly bugged the offense down the stretch i think (whether he was out because he was sick or not playing D or whatever)

also concerning is that 2 months ago we looked at a duke team that had just lost to kansas and said "well at least we have a lot of room to improve"....today IMO, we looked substantially similar to the team that lost that early november game....lack of size, poor interior defense and rebounding, and poor decisions on offense down the stretch.....yes we saw a different defense against UCLA....but it certainly did not show up tonight.

where will we be in march? who knows....but as the games chip away, and the team continues to relapse to the flawed early-season form, I start to lower my season expectations....

obviously there is time to turn it around, as the 2010 team proves....but i'm not sure this team has a zoubek......

so my outlook? not entirely hopeful....but I like to think back to a scene from the lord of the rings, when the rohirrim are riding to gondor



and you know what happened? they rolled out there and won (well...with the help of some undead guys....)

are we a pretty good team? yeah. do I think we're a top team? no. does this mean we can't win against anybody on any given night? nope.

LET'S HUNT SOME YELLOWJACKET!

I am a bit surprised by your post here to be honest (and certainly not attacking, just conversing). I think we are a totally different team now than against Kansas. We are deeper, playing a much different rotation, and offense is way ahead of where it was then. Despite the setback today, the defense is still better on the whole than it was at that point in the season. I saw this game totally different, actually more similar to the Gatech road game in 2010 for example. First Conference road game, less talented opponent playing at a very high level, and Duke is off their game. In that game, Scheyer had 25,(simiar to Hood today) and got no help from Nolan or Kyle (each had 9) Mason was the second leading scorer with 10. Duke had control at one point but Gatech outscores them by 10 in the second half to win by 4. We got killed in the post with Gani Lawal going for 21 and 9 boards, lost the rebounding battle 38-32, (39-30 today) and shot the ball subpar as a team (43%) (41% today). GaTech finished 23-13 overall and 7-9 in the ACC. I could see this Notre Dame team matching that record. The 2010 Duke team went 5-5 in road games. Not saying 2014 team wins the title, but do think they will be a player and have a say in the matter.

Same for the "games are ticking by" thought. Today was the first conference game of the year. We have 17 conference games left before even getting to the ACC Tourney. It is way way early in the season. Plenty of time for this team to continue working out the kinks. Were they not talented, it would be different, but this is still a very talented team. MP3 gave some decent minutes today.

One stinker in the conference does not make or break the season. Don't give up on these guys is my point I guess. Long way to go here.

[NashvilleDevil]

Is that supposed to make it better or worse?

Was saying that the points in the paint would have been closer and Duke wins if they make some of the easy shots they had at the basket.

[DevilYouthCoach]

It feels like getting this team to reach its potential is going to be a season long process. Today was a step back, but we still could have won a true road conference game with far from our best effort, when our best player stunk and during a weird emotional week when we didn't have K.

I think the 3s that we were hitting were a bit of fools gold in that we didn't seem worthy of holding that halftime lead. Still, when we went up 10 in the second, I thought we'd shaken off the rust and would cruise home. Then, the roof caved in.

It was nice to see Rodney carry us on offense, I think that effort will boost his confidence. It would have been nice to get a road win against a good conference opponent without our best stuff - we're not there yet. This team still has upside.

I am worried, though, about the impact of K's brother's death. He may be the G.O.A.T, but he's a very emotional human and I think it will be hard to compartmentalize something that personal. It's got to be very tough to stay focused at a time of year when everything is happening at 100 mph. I feel really bad that he's got to try and absorb that kind of blow in the heart of the season.



I have to admit that I didn't at first have any idea what GOAT stood for, but now that I've googled it, I agree -- K's certainly one of the greatest of all time. But of course, even K. makes mistakes, gets confused, and has difficult emotions to deal with. We've all seen that occur during his coaching tenure. He's human, and it's a tremendous tribute to him that he has been able to be so darn successful so consistently for so long. What happened today seems to me to be indicative of what is likely to happen when K retires. Duke will very likely have a bunch of talent for a while, but we won't be able to win so regularly. In a game like today, a road game against a quality team, very often everything comes down to the end of the game. Whoever makes shots at the end (or prevents the others from making them) wins.

K has been a master at winning the endgames -- over and over again. Today he couldn't, and hence, Duke couldn't pull it off. If I had just lost my best friend, I would definitely not be functioning at my best -- who would be? Part of K's great strength is his competitive passion and pure will, which he usually demonstrates moment by moment throughout the game. It wasn't quite there today. I feel pretty sure that he is going to regroup and pull this team back the greatness that its potential suggests, and I do hope that it's very soon. But who knows. I feel certain, however, that none of the present group of assistants and associates can do what he does -- definitely not this year.

So, as someone else said above, this week was one of loss. Bill K. seems to have been a wonderful person. So sorry, Coach K.

[g-money]

A couple of comments from the cheap seats:

- This was probably our worst defensive performance since the Vermont game. In the spirit of the NFL playoffs, there was lots of "blown coverage" on inbounds plays, pick-and-rolls, etc.

- As one of the bigger Andre fans on this board, I was pleased (or perhaps relieved might be a better word) that of all of Duke's defensive lapses, I only saw one that was really on him. In addition, his on-ball defense actually looked pretty good.

- Unfortunately tough, that leaves approximately 27 lapses by the other guys. Jabari in particular looked pretty lost on D. The youngblood's got some work to do on that end before he can be a star at the next level.

- I hate to pick on Jabari, but his shot looked flat today. It's normally a slightly flat shot to begin with, but today he was really lining them. A little more arc would get that acceptance angle up.

- How about Hairston's 17' jumper? How come nobody's criticizing his shot selection today? :p

- I don't think the refs cost us the game by any stretch, but the game was definitely called more loosely today than what we were seeing earlier in the year. I honestly think that by NCAA tournament time, the play will be just as physical as it has been in years past, with the exception that the charge call will be virtually non-existent.

[luburch]

Had a nice five hour car drive home from South Bend to think about this loss. Sorry if I echo some of the earlier posts, I have yet to read them all.

To begin, Jabari had an off night. As K said, he's human. It was only a matter of time until it happened anyway. I also can't blame K for not having him in at the end of the game.

The defense was atrocious. They got pounded inside, left men wide open, and got back cut consistently.

For the most part, Duke did not get easy looks. They had to work for each basket and took a lot of threes. Credit ND for that, they defended the drive pretty well. The lack of a post presence really hurt today.

Hood showed up to play. I hope people can stop questioning if he's a big game player. Also, Cook had better numbers than I realized during the game.

On a side note, I thought the Joyce Center was fantastic. Nice look, comfortable seating, nice sound system.

[uh_no]

I am a bit surprised by your post here to be honest (and certainly not attacking, just conversing). I think we are a totally different team now than against Kansas. We are deeper, playing a much different rotation, and offense is way ahead of where it was then. Despite the setback today, the defense is still better on the whole than it was at that point in the season.
While the eye test may appear so, I'm not sure I can agree.

Kansas put up 130.6 on us
notredame put up 130.4

per kenpom, kansas' ought to put up 117.6 against an average defense, and ND, 112.8

so despite kansas being about 5 points better than ND offensively, notre dame still managed to put up the same efficiency as kansas did two months ago. We can debate about what constitutes the defense being better or worse, but I must side with the numbers in this case, and in my view, there was no improvement in the bottom line.

I tend to agree, though, that the offense is largely ahead of where it was, not the least because of the resurgence of sheed and dre. Despite going completely dry down the stretch, we still managed to put up the offensive numbers we "should" have today. Had jabari remained in the game, and we been able to continue to run the offense we've practiced, it's likely we would have exceeded our expected efficiency.

In both cases, we will have much more frequent data points (read: games against decent competition) now that the conference season is going, and it will be interesting to see how we respond. Ideally we'll come out and completely shut down GT next week...but on the flip side, we don't face an offense nearly as potent as NDs until the Pitt game in 3 weeks...which will be the real test of whether we have made progress over this game.



Same for the "games are ticking by" thought. Today was the first conference game of the year. We have 17 conference games left before even getting to the ACC Tourney. It is way way early in the season. Plenty of time for this team to continue working out the kinks. Were they not talented, it would be different, but this is still a very talented team. MP3 gave some decent minutes today.

One stinker in the conference does not make or break the season. Don't give up on these guys is my point I guess. Long way to go here.

I don't argue that there is still plenty of time left, only that as time goes on, we need to show improvement, and as I argue (and you disagree) we have yet to see it in any permanent sense. Might it click? sure. but right now the regression looks pretty flat. SCACC gives a nice graph, actually

http://www.scacchoops.com/ACCRoster.asp?sTeam=DU&sStat=eff

we had a nice downward trend before this game....but It's not just one stinker...it's the third BIG defensive stinker in 14 games.....

so the question is, is the longterm trend downward and this is just an outlier? or is this the return to the mean, and the regression is flat? unfortunately without future data points (games that haven't happened yet) we can't really know....but we can known that the longer the regression remains flat, the less likely it is that the overall trend is downward.

will the numbers go down until pitt and shoot back up again (like they did today) or will they trend downward, and then we slow down pitt, demonstrating real improvement?

I don't know what will happen, but we'll have a much better idea on the 27th.

[JBDuke]

I watched the game on a delay, so I'm just catching up with all the posts here. Some excellent thoughts, and I'm proud there hasn't been a lot of SPHMs running around. Some valid criticisms, some repeated stuff that is just silly, but not a whole lot of panic.

As McFinARL pointed out in an earlier post, we really got a good game from Notre Dame. Look at the assists, for example. Duke had 8 total on 24 FGMs. That's a pretty low rate, and you can see it in how we played - poor ball movement, not enough cuts through the lane, few baskets in the paint, and an overreliance on jump shots - especially 3's. But Notre Dame had 18 assists on 30 makes. That's 60%, which is pretty darned good. A lot of those were on cuts to the basket, which accounted for their good FG% and points in the paint advantage.

And as Troublemaker pointed out, it was Brey's move to a small lineup and a 5-out motion offense that sent ND on the 20-4 run to put them ahead for good. I thought we reverted to some of our earlier problems where our perimeter D was too aggressive, which allowed the cuts to succeed. On top of that, the Irish started hitting all their perimeter shots, too.

When a team puts 5 guys on the floor that can shoot the three, and then runs a motion offense to perfection, starts making good cuts to the basket when all our defenders have been pulled out to the perimeter, and makes their open shots on top of that, they're gonna win every time unless you have such superior one-on-one defenders that you don't ever need the help. We don't have that talent. We can do pretty well, if we're playing at the top of our game, but with our best player having a really bad night and riding the pine, and our guys pressing a bit, it wasn't happening.

That last bit deserves some elaboration, too. This is a team that relies on a couple of young guys that aren't road-tested yet. This was our first true road game, in an arena notoriously tricky for Top 10 opponents, and an opponent hyped to play their first ACC game against the traditional conference power, and perhaps still rallying around the loss of their best player. And our guys may have been over-pumped due to Coach K's family situation. And then when Jabari struggled, other guys stepped up for a while, but when the game was on the line at the end, I think we panicked a bit. I, too, noted that K seemed to be calling for a timeout on our last possession, but Hood pressed on and made an ill-advised drive into multiple defenders and ended up turning it over.

So, lots to learn from. We can't extend our defense that far and still guard the basket. We have to move the ball better, and find the weak points when teams try to zone us. (We regressed on that aspect today, as well.) And we have to learn some composure when the going gets rough in a hostile arena. Amile needs to take the shots and the drive opportunities when they're there - he can't just be looking for tip-ins.

Oh, and one other thing I'll mention, although it'll seem like Terping. I thought the refs let both sides get away with a lot of physical play. More than usual. And I think this helped the Irish a lot more than us.

I don't like the outcome, obviously, and I really didn't like the poor play in the end-game, especially if they weren't paying attention to the bench. But a 2 point loss at Notre Dame when the Irish made very few mistakes and our best player had his worst game of the year to date? I can live with that early. I just want us to learn and improve.

Next play.

[gep]

I went to Wingate U. and Katie Laettner played for us. Met her dad couple of times, great guy. But whenever he was there, she played horribly. If he wasn't there (which wasn't often), she played lights out. I graduated before she did, iirc, so I don't think I saw her senior year. It's been over 15 years, but I do remember this. Perhaps Jabari felt extra pressure to do too much.

Didn't this also happen to Seth Curry on his first visit to VTech?


And Marshall is just not nearly as skilled as Mason was. Nor is he nearly as athletic as Mason was.

I'm probably wrong in my recollection, but I thought that when MP3 committed to Duke, the word was that he was the "best" of the 3 MP's.:confused:

[Newton_14]

While the eye test may appear so, I'm not sure I can agree.

Kansas put up 130.6 on us
notredame put up 130.4

per kenpom, kansas' ought to put up 117.6 against an average defense, and ND, 112.8

so despite kansas being about 5 points better than ND offensively, notre dame still managed to put up the same efficiency as kansas did two months ago. We can debate about what constitutes the defense being better or worse, but I must side with the numbers in this case, and in my view, there was no improvement in the bottom line.

I tend to agree, though, that the offense is largely ahead of where it was, not the least because of the resurgence of sheed and dre. Despite going completely dry down the stretch, we still managed to put up the offensive numbers we "should" have today. Had jabari remained in the game, and we been able to continue to run the offense we've practiced, it's likely we would have exceeded our expected efficiency.

In both cases, we will have much more frequent data points (read: games against decent competition) now that the conference season is going, and it will be interesting to see how we respond. Ideally we'll come out and completely shut down GT next week...but on the flip side, we don't face an offense nearly as potent as NDs until the Pitt game in 3 weeks...which will be the real test of whether we have made progress over this game.



I don't argue that there is still plenty of time left, only that as time goes on, we need to show improvement, and as I argue (and you disagree) we have yet to see it in any permanent sense. Might it click? sure. but right now the regression looks pretty flat. SCACC gives a nice graph, actually

http://www.scacchoops.com/ACCRoster.asp?sTeam=DU&sStat=eff

we had a nice downward trend before this game....but It's not just one stinker...it's the third BIG defensive stinker in 14 games.....

so the question is, is the longterm trend downward and this is just an outlier? or is this the return to the mean, and the regression is flat? unfortunately without future data points (games that haven't happened yet) we can't really know....but we can known that the longer the regression remains flat, the less likely it is that the overall trend is downward.

will the numbers go down until pitt and shoot back up again (like they did today) or will they trend downward, and then we slow down pitt, demonstrating real improvement?

I don't know what will happen, but we'll have a much better idea on the 27th.

Got you and that's fair. I just put a lot of weight on degree of difficulty in conference road games. They are just different beasts than any of the preseason games including the marquee matchups. Kansas/Zona were two top dawgs going toe to toe on a neutral court. Yes we lost both, and yes defense was bad, but we were in both games with under 5 to go and failed to execute. So 0 for 2 there, but early in the season so in March it means nothing. The last 3 years we won all of those marquee games, then could not finish in March (though in fairness as Al reminded everyone in his great article, injuries were a major factor in all 3 of those seasons).

To me personally, today was a typical conference road game where records and stats are less relevant. The little dawg can and will rise up and bite the bit dawg if he is not on his full P's and Q's. Kempom is great but it will never accurately predict the intangibles that come with conference road games. For example, as Bill Dat mentioned ( and I fully admit to having a brain fart here which is sad on my part) but how much weight do we apply to the personal loss K dealt with this week? How much disruption did that cause to both K personally, the staff, and the team? If Jabari was sick, how is that measured? etc. Not making excuses for the team, just pointing out that there are many intangibles that Kenpom can not possibly measure and predict.

I guess overall I have just learned over the years to not give too much weight to one individual game. Too many variables. We could play them tomorrow and win by 20 or lose by 10. Let's see where the guys are at after 6, 8, 10 conference games with a mix of good and bad opponents home and away.

I am confident we will not lose all of our road games, and I am also confident the better basketball team did not win today. Notre Dame just played better and executed better than Duke. It happens.

Also want to note I am not trying to be dismissive of Kenpom or the other sites. At all. I just feel you have to balance that out with the many intangibles, which is why I stopped betting on sports games long ago. :D

[uh_no]

I guess overall I have just learned over the years to not give too much weight to one individual game. Too many variables. We could play them tomorrow and win by 20 or lose by 10.

I think a lot of my perspective comes from from my relative inexperience as a duke fan. I wasn't around (read: lived in Connecticut and hated duke) for most the final four runs, most of the national championships and great teams.

Having only been brought into the light for the '07-'08 season, you have to think of what I HAVE seen:

loss to west virginia in the sweet 16
loss to villanova in the sweet 16
natty
loss to arizona in the sweet 16
loss to lehigh
loss to UL in the elite 8

in the four years in which we underperformed in the tournament, it was easy to look back and say "there were obvious signs that that was going to happen," and obviously hindsight is perfect, but having 2/3 seasons i've followed end in such a fashion certainly makes me much more attune to the faults which are present during the regular season. I'm sure if I had seen more seasons like 2010, or even last year, my perspective might be much more similar to yours.

so while i fully understand the fact that a single game is a small sample size (hence different outcomes if you played a team twice in a row), with duke, it's under much more of a microscope, and for me, the question of is, unfortunately, what is the flaw that's going to be poo-pooed as transient or fixable that will ultimately kill us? as it turns out...most teams in the tournament come out disappointed....so i don't think it's wholly unreasonable to approach the season with the question of "how possible is it that i will be disappointed, and why will it happen?" people may say "that's a no-fun way to look at it"...but hey....i'm still here 7 years later after some disappointment and love duke basketball....so i just do my best not to drag everyone else down with me into pessimism!

[wavedukefan70s]

I'm never happy with a loss.with that being said.we didnt play our best game against a team that was fired up at home .not to mention a former assistant coach.plus the family issues coach k is dealing with.this game had trap game wriiten all over it.im still bothered more by the loss to Johnny football.the team has some flaws needs to adjust on d.they will get it done.i do believe we are going to need to play m.p.3 until he gets it.for more of a presence down low.you could see flashes out of him today.it won't be dukes last loss this season.i am thinking we can learn a lot from this game.its still better to be a duke fan with a loss than a unc fan with a win.that I'm sure of.

[Troublemaker]

I think this is one of the few times that it would be interesting to see the +/- for the opposition. It would certainly give us a very good picture of which lineups beat us over the course of the game.

Statsheet finally has the box score with +/- up: http://statsheet.com/mcb/games/2014/01/04/duke-77-notre-dame-79

ND's starting C Sherman (6'11" 255) was -5
ND's starting PF Auguste (6'10" 242) was -11

ND's smallball C Burgett (6'9" 227) was +15
ND's smallball PF Vasturia (6'6" 207) was +2

None of these stats alone would mean much, except I watched the game and tracked the lineups, and it was clear that ND made their huge run and won the game with smallball.

The tape confirms it, Brey has confirmed it, and now the +/- backs it up as well.

We could not contain their smallball 5-out motion. Before that, we were winning the game by 7.

[JPtheGame]

how so? generally allowing offensive rebounds is a weakness of a zone....since you aren't necessarily near a man, with man-man, you know where the guy you have to box out is....(or if you don't, something has gone horribly wrong)

Your point is valid. My counterpoints would be A- it couldn't get worse and B- It would allow us to play larger lineups without having defensive liabilities and/or foul trouble. For example, a zone (for 4-6 minutes a pop, nothing too crazy) would allow us to put a backline of Parker, Jefferson, and Plumlee on the floor. 6'8 (hood) at the 2 with 6'8, 6'9, 7'0 (not even factoring wingspans) along the frontline would be comparable. Bigger guys would have a better shot at bringing down more rebounds.

Again, not trying to change what brought K to a million wins. However, I do believe a change of pace zone would help here.

[Furniture]

Ok. Sorry, I have to admit that the loss was all my fault! I was just too positive right from the get go during the in game thread. Then during the game I just sank into a pit of shame for all the optimism that I had been broadcasting.
Sorry guys, don't blame any of the team. I promise not to post anything during a game again!
P.S. What's SPHM?

[Kedsy]

-11 on the glass and allowing 130.4 points per 100 possessions just isn't going to cut it for any team with legitimate deep march plans.

First of all, according to the box score we allowed 123 points per 100 possessions and were -9 on the glass. Still bad, but if we're deciding what is and isn't going to "cut it," we might as well try and be accurate.

Second, the 2010 team had two ppp performances worse than today's (1.25 against Georgetown and 1.26 against NCSU). The 2004 team had one the same as today's (1.23 against Wake Forest). The 2001 team had one almost as bad (1.21 against UVa, while going -16 on the glass). I'm pretty sure all three of those teams had "legitimate deep March plans."


60-50 and ND goes on a 20-4 run. I knew we would be challenged in the post area but I really thought our athletes would be so suffocating on D that it would atone for our weakness in the post.

See, the thing is, Notre Dame achieved that 20-4 run while playing a small lineup. Sherman was in for only a few seconds (17-4 without him) and Auguste didn't play at all during the run. The only big in there for the run was Burgett, and (a) he isn't so big; and (b) he only scored two points for the entire game.

In other words, we didn't lose because of our "weakness in the post." We lost because we couldn't stay in front of them when they went small.


Hoisting up 20+ shots from deep is a recipe for an early exit from March Madness.

Well, the 2010 Duke team hoisted up 20+ three-point shots in 16 games (and had 17+ in 30 games), for an average of 19 threes per game. The 2001 Duke team hoisted up 20+ threes in 36 games (17+ in 38 games), for an average of 27 threes a game. So it's possible you're misreading the recipe.


we shot 43% from 3.....2 points higher than our season average....so we made 3's a bit above average in the first half and a bit below in the second....if the answer is that we need to shoot WELL above our season percentage to win, then that's not going to instill much confidence in me.

It isn't. We've already won 7 games while shooting below our season average.


We're gonna need Jefferson to play better if he's spending most of the game as our only pseudo big on the court.

Amile gathered 9 rebounds in 21 minutes. His defensive rebounding pct was 28.8% and his offensive rebounding pct was 21.1%. Those numbers are outstanding; it's not reasonable to expect him to rebound any better than he did today.


where will we be in march? who knows....but as the games chip away, and the team continues to relapse to the flawed early-season form, I start to lower my season expectations....

Since the Vermont debacle, we played pretty solid D for 8 games in a row and then had this one clunker today. I'm not sure where the "continues" comes from in this sentence.

[Kedsy]

I'll be honest. I just really want Marshall to be a slightly taller version of Mason and I want Jefferson to be a slightly taller version of Deng. I know that's asking A LOT and I don't FULLY expect that, but I feel like if they were both closer to being those it would be highly viable to have them out there together for 10-15 minutes a game. I think this would help the interior defense and the rebounding a lot.

Marshall played pretty poor interior defense in his four minutes (his amazing running steal notwithstanding). I assume that's why he didn't play at all in the second half. He also had zero rebounds. I know the "dream Marshall" could provide the defense and rebounding you crave, but the actual Marshall isn't really there yet.


I think this is one of the few times that it would be interesting to see the +/- for the opposition. It would certainly give us a very good picture of which lineups beat us over the course of the game.

Sherman's plus/minus was minus 5. I'm not going to bother calculating Auguste's or Knight's, but since neither of them were in for any of ND's 20-4 run, it's almost impossible that they were on the plus side.

[uh_no]

Sherman's plus/minus was minus 5. I'm not going to bother calculating Auguste's or Knight's, but since neither of them were in for any of ND's 20-4 run, it's almost impossible that they were on the plus side.

http://forums.dukebasketballreport.com/forums/showthread.php?32748-MBB-Notre-Dame-79-Duke-77-Post-Game-Thread&p=691396#post691396

trouble maker has your back!

[Furniture]

To be honest, there was a point a few minutes from the end where ND went up by about 6. I thought to myself why hasn't K called a time out? I don't know why but I feel that he normally would do. Maybe K had an off day too and who could blame him?

[JBDuke]

...I'm probably wrong in my recollection, but I thought that when MP3 committed to Duke, the word was that he was the "best" of the 3 MP's.:confused:

What I remember folks saying about the Plumlees was that Miles was the best athlete, Mason was the best all-around player, and Marshall was the biggest and had the best back-to-the-basket skills. Marshall was touted as more of a "true" center, while his brothers preferred to play facing the basket.

Whatever the assessment of their relative athletic skills, Marshall's steal today on that long pass was quite an athletic move. I thought he looked pretty good when he was out there. Unfortunately, when Brey went to his small lineup, the matchups did not favor more time for MP3.

[Kedsy]

I have zero concerns or qualms with how our offense looked today...

While the primary problem was our defense, and overall our offense was pretty successful from a points-per-possession standpoint, I do actually have some qualms with our offense today, specifically, our offense in the last 10 minutes of the game. It seemed to me during those last 10 minutes, Quinn, Rodney, Jabari, and Rasheed just tried to go one-on-one over and over. Shots after one or zero passes. Bad team offense. I don't think it's a coincidence that we stopped scoring at around the same time, although we did pick it up again after the 20-4 run.


I do think there are two important things to remember on a day like today. One is the great article Al Featherson wrote a short time ago about the danger of "living in the moment" with each and every game. Regressing on defense, having your best player lay an egg, and losing by two points to an inspired team executing really well, in the first conference road game of the season, does not mean we are doomed to exiting the NCAA in the first round, anymore than blowing ND out today (and we will likely blow them out in Cameron) would have meant we are a lock for the Final Four.

Thank you for saying this. Too many people seem to view our most recent game as the absolute predictor of future success.


I'm probably wrong in my recollection, but I thought that when MP3 committed to Duke, the word was that he was the "best" of the 3 MP's.:confused:

My recollection is people said he was the only true back-to-the-basket center of the Plumlees, and since many people were starved for such a center at the time (before Mason's success), some people equated "only true back-to-the-basket center" as "best."


Your point is valid. My counterpoints would be A- it couldn't get worse and B- It would allow us to play larger lineups without having defensive liabilities and/or foul trouble.

So far this season (including today), our team defensive rebounding percentage is 71.5%, which is the best such percentage in at least 17 years and maybe the best in all Coach K's time at Duke. So, sorry to say, it could get a lot worse.


For example, a zone (for 4-6 minutes a pop, nothing too crazy) would allow us to put a backline of Parker, Jefferson, and Plumlee on the floor. 6'8 (hood) at the 2 with 6'8, 6'9, 7'0 (not even factoring wingspans) along the frontline would be comparable. Bigger guys would have a better shot at bringing down more rebounds.

Did you see our zone against Arizona? It was awful and allowed our opponents to mount the game-winning run. And 4 to 6 minutes a "pop," assuming one pop in each half, would be 20% to 30% of the game, which does sound pretty crazy to me.

Also, even if we played zone, what makes you think Coach K would ever play a lineup of Marshall/Amile/Jabari/Rodney/{unspecified PG}?

[JamminJoe]

I hate seeing comments that someone on the team was or may have been sick after a Duke loss. Bad sportmanship and just plain tacky. For all we know, someone on Notre Dame could've been sick too, but that didn't cause them to lose. DBR should know better.

[DukeWarhead]

I hate seeing comments that someone on the team was or may have been sick after a Duke loss. Bad sportmanship and just plain tacky. For all we know, someone on Notre Dame could've been sick too, but that didn't cause them to lose. DBR should know better.

I think you may have been sick when you posted this.

[dukelifer]

While the primary problem was our defense, and overall our offense was pretty successful from a points-per-possession standpoint, I do actually have some qualms with our offense today, specifically, our offense in the last 10 minutes of the game. It seemed to me during those last 10 minutes, Quinn, Rodney, Jabari, and Rasheed just tried to go one-on-one over and over. Shots after one or zero passes. Bad team offense. I don't think it's a coincidence that we stopped scoring at around the same time, although we did pick it up again after the 20-4 run.



Thank you for saying this. Too many people seem to view our most recent game as the absolute predictor of future success.



My recollection is people said he was the only true back-to-the-basket center of the Plumlees, and since many people were starved for such a center at the time (before Mason's success), some people equated "only true back-to-the-basket center" as "best."



So far this season (including today), our team defensive rebounding percentage is 71.5%, which is the best such percentage in at least 17 years and maybe the best in all Coach K's time at Duke. So, sorry to say, it could get a lot worse.



Did you see our zone against Arizona? It was awful and allowed our opponents to mount the game-winning run. And 4 to 6 minutes a "pop," assuming one pop in each half, would be 20% to 30% of the game, which does sound pretty crazy to me.

Also, even if we played zone, what makes you think Coach K would ever play a lineup of Marshall/Amile/Jabari/Rodney/{unspecified PG}?
I also think the O was a problem.Duke should watch what ND did and how they shared the ball. Duke settled for jumpers and got almost nothing inside. When Duke got separation they could not get easy buckets. That has been a problem against the better teams. Duke has a ton of talent but I do not think the team plays well as a unit. They have to pass the ball better or his team will struggle in the half court against decent teams.

[jv001]

I also think the O was a problem.Duke should watch what ND did and how they shared the ball. Duke settled for jumpers and got almost nothing inside. When Duke got separation they could not get easy buckets. That has been a problem against the better teams. Duke has a ton of talent but I do not think the team plays well as a unit. They have to pass the ball better or his team will struggle in the half court against decent teams.

Good point on sharing the ball. Duke had 8 assists for the entire game. That's not sharing the ball. Quinn did an ok job with half of the total assists but could have done better. His main problem was with his defense and it looked like he lost focus. Well I know he did when his man back doored him for layups. Too many loose balls and rebounds that we just couldn't get possession of. Beat GT and GoDuke!

[Matches]

I hate seeing comments that someone on the team was or may have been sick after a Duke loss. Bad sportmanship and just plain tacky. For all we know, someone on Notre Dame could've been sick too, but that didn't cause them to lose. DBR should know better.

I don't think it's bad sportsmanship but it does seem to have become a ready-made excuse every time one of our guys has an off-night.

My own take on Jabari, which is entirely speculation, is that he was pressing and playing out of control. He's not a particularly demonstrative guy so it's not always evident with him, but he looked to me like he was trying to match the intensity of the ND team and crowd and just got a little outside of himself. K kept pulling him for short stretches, I thought to settle him down, but it just didn't seem to work.

He'll get it. He'll be fine. People have been playing road games for a really long time. If anything, we might've built the "first true road game" thing up a little too much.

[CBecker]

What I remember folks saying about the Plumlees was that Miles was the best athlete, Mason was the best all-around player, and Marshall was the biggest and had the best back-to-the-basket skills. Marshall was touted as more of a "true" center, while his brothers preferred to play facing the basket.

Whatever the assessment of their relative athletic skills, Marshall's steal today on that long pass was quite an athletic move. I thought he looked pretty good when he was out there. Unfortunately, when Brey went to his small lineup, the matchups did not favor more time for MP3.


Oh, Marshall definitely has the athleticism the other Plumlees have. Just youtube his high school dunk contest videos, and he also beat Mason in a CTC Dunk Contest :p He can definitely jump and is mobile as well. I think the reason why some people think he isn't athletic is he just looks kinda awkward or weird out there, hard to explain :P. Of course this doesn't mean his overall game warrants a lot of minutes, but the athleticism is there.


I do agree that overall the problem is probably not a case of lack of size, but people repeatedly getting blown by on the perimiter, especially Cook. I think in all the games that Duke has struggled defensively, Cook has just been blown by repeatedly as he has poor lateral quickness. I feel bad for him when he is asked to repeatedly pressure full court and watching him run himself into the ground trying his best just to stay in front of a guy cruising up the court, then get blown by once they get to the three point line. Kind of hard for me to get a grip on his defense, it has looked better of late, against teams with quicker back courts than ND. I dunno.
Of course, a big guy protecting the rim would help cover up these weakness, but of course that means nothing if the rotations aren't up to par, which is apparently another major problem for the duke defense so far this season.

[Indoor66]

I'm never happy with a loss.with that being said.we didnt play our best game against a team that was fired up at home .not to mention a former assistant coach.plus the family issues coach k is dealing with.this game had trap game wriiten all over it.im still bothered more by the loss to Johnny football.the team has some flaws needs to adjust on d.they will get it done.i do believe we are going to need to play m.p.3 until he gets it.for more of a presence down low.you could see flashes out of him today.it won't be dukes last loss this season.i am thinking we can learn a lot from this game.its still better to be a duke fan with a loss than a unc fan with a win.that I'm sure of.

Please develop the habit of capitalization and use of the space key. This post is almost indecipherable.

[DukeDevil]

Frustrating game...I'm trying to take away something good. MP3 is starting to give solid minutes...someone commented that he was starting to have an MP2/zoubekian combo game...while it's still early to tell I can see this down the road. Hood got out of whatever funk he was in...which is good.

Biggest issue was just the inability to defend the drive and dish and backdoor cuts. ND was passing it around so well. The frustrating thing is...first play out for duke, they were passing so well. It was a series of 5 (?) passes that were all fast, crisp, and got ND running and chasing, with a pretty open shot from the outside to cap it off. They missed the shot, but I was strongly encouraged by the passing...and then very little seemed to go right with the exception of 3 point shooting keeping us in it.

[DukeDevil]

3775

Hopefully this cheers some of y'all up

[sagegrouse]

I hate seeing comments that someone on the team was or may have been sick after a Duke loss. Bad sportmanship and just plain tacky. For all we know, someone on Notre Dame could've been sick too, but that didn't cause them to lose. DBR should know better.


I think you may have been sick when you posted this.

I don't worry about lame excuses using illness. I worry about how sick I feel when we offer up a clunker of a game.

[wavedukefan70s]

Please develop the habit of capitalization and use of the space key. This post is almost indecipherable.

Believe me.it looks fine on my phone until it posts.i promise I will figure it out.

[CDu]

I'm probably wrong in my recollection, but I thought that when MP3 committed to Duke, the word was that he was the "best" of the 3 MP's.:confused:

No, Mason was definitely the best. Mason was the #18 rated player in his class. Marshall was #61 in his class. Miles was #81 in his class.

The general idea was that Mason was the most talented, Miles was the most athletic, and Marshall was the most "post-oriented."


Oh, Marshall definitely has the athleticism the other Plumlees have. Just youtube his high school dunk contest videos, and he also beat Mason in a CTC Dunk Contest :p He can definitely jump and is mobile as well. I think the reason why some people think he isn't athletic is he just looks kinda awkward or weird out there, hard to explain :P. Of course this doesn't mean his overall game warrants a lot of minutes, but the athleticism is there.

Marshall is definitely athletic. But he's certainly not in the same stratosphere as Miles athletically. Miles was nearly the state high school high jump champ, and was a freak at the combine.

Marshall is probably similar in athleticism to Mason, but far less coordinated and far less skilled than Mason was as a freshman. Conversely, he's probably similarly skilled to where Miles was as a freshman, but far less athletic.

[nobodybutDUKE]

Basketball at this level is about making plays in critical situations. Duke did not make the plays on D or O and against a team that has less talent. Close games are are part if basketball and Duke is going to get a focused opponent every time. ND played well but Duke missed a chance to get an important ACC win. Every team is flawed- but even a flawed team can win if they execute. Flawed ND executed and flawed Duke did not - particularly on D. Very frustrating. The coaching staff need to help this team figure this out or this will be a very difficult season.

A lot has been said and everyone's heart is bleeding, but the above says all that can and needs be said.

[CBecker]

No, Mason was definitely the best. Mason was the #18 rated player in his class. Marshall was #61 in his class. Miles was #81 in his class.

The general idea was that Mason was the most talented, Miles was the most athletic, and Marshall was the most "post-oriented."



Marshall is definitely athletic. But he's certainly not in the same stratosphere as Miles athletically. Miles was nearly the state high school high jump champ, and was a freak at the combine.

Marshall is probably similar in athleticism to Mason, but far less coordinated and far less skilled than Mason was as a freshman. Conversely, he's probably similarly skilled to where Miles was as a freshman, but far less athletic.


Oh yeh, Miles is insane, the best athlete of the trio. Was just saying he did inherit the family "athletic genes" because many people seem to think he isn't athletic for some reason.

[Bob Green]

P.S. What's SPHM?

Screaming Panic Howler Monkey.

[kAzE]

I actually think MP3 has played really well lately in his limited opportunities. He's been doing much less thinking and just playing out there with a lot of energy. He's obviously our only true big, so he's likely heavily scrutinized while he's on the floor by most people on this board. From what I've seen in the past couple of games, he's done a lot of good things out there, at least more good than bad. And defensively, I think he played as well, if not better than some of our other front court guys. I definitely wouldn't mind seeing what he could do with a few more minutes. He's cut down on some of the killer mistakes that were once his hallmark, and just having a guy with his size and athleticism out there changes how we play immensely.

[Gthoma2a]

I agree with Kaze that MP3 has certainly improved. It may not make him a great post player yet, but he looks like he could be used now without feeling scared of a bad play following his entrance.

For me, the worry is, where do we stand against the rest of the conference? We have always had an inflated ranking, IMO. It is only because we don't have any real post players. Jabari plays in the post on offense, but not defense. Rodney is the same way, but with a little less on offense from a post up (size being the reason). Then, we have Amile, who is just too small for teams with a real post player. Add to that that, since none of these guys feel comfortable guarding the interior, they seem to avoid switching to it, and we have a lot of really tough matchups ahead. I don't like how we stack up with UNC, even. They know that they can get a two whenever they want, but we will likely have to try to make up for it with threes, with no rebounds after (the space around the basket was consistently empty of Duke players on both ends in our losses). I don't think we can create post players. That concerns me, because no matter how much talent we have elsewhere, we can't concede that area of the court.

This is what makes me think the development of Marshall may be crucial for later on. We need a body down low that will try to get the board or alter a shot. Without it, it is a race to the paint for the other teams.

[Saratoga2]

Marshall played pretty poor interior defense in his four minutes (his amazing running steal notwithstanding). I assume that's why he didn't play at all in the second half. He also had zero rebounds. I know the "dream Marshall" could provide the defense and rebounding you crave, but the actual Marshall isn't really there yet.



Sherman's plus/minus was minus 5. I'm not going to bother calculating Auguste's or Knight's, but since neither of them were in for any of ND's 20-4 run, it's almost impossible that they were on the plus side.

I don't buy that Marshall played that poorly while in. When there were baskets scored inside, it was more a total blow by of our guards that led to the score. I don't compare Marshall to Mason, but instead to Hairston, Amile and Jabari. Hairston was too small to stop their inside game, I don't care if he was in position, Amile is not quite strong enough and Jabari had trouble staying with the defense. Compared to those three, it is not as black and white as no minutes for Marshall in the second half seem to indicate. Personally I though Amile's rebounding was good and his defense in general was the best of the three so he should have gotten the bulk of the minutes, but Marshall matched up better against ND's big lineup and possibly could have helped.

Those saying we only lost by 2 should realize that ND gave a lot of points away from the line. Had they hit those the deficit could have been 10. Our defense was poor and the offense relied primarily on the 3.

With Tyler and Rasheed having defensive lapses, why not give a shot to Matt. He is an aggressive 6'4" defender and may have provided the spark we needed. His offense is not worse than what we saw from Rasheed and Tyler.

[Furniture]

3775

Hopefully this cheers some of y'all up

What is this?

[left_hook_lacey]

Lose by 2 on the road with your best player having the worst game of his career?

Not the worst scenario. Would have loved to see better defense and more toughness, but plenty of season left.

Not trying to pile on, but to be fair, their best player didn't even take the court. Grant was averaging 19 ppg and 6 apg. He also lead them in steals.

Maybe with Jabari having such a bad game it equaled out? It's hard to imagine Notre Dame would've played worse with him. Either way, I thought it was worth noting for those of us taking the "our best player had a bad game" route.

[left_hook_lacey]

Did I miss a court storming or did the streak of court stormings with road losses also come to an end today?

If you look closely as the clock winds down, you can see Atkins holding his hands up and waving at the students to stay in the stands and not storm the court. Classy move by him I thought. I few still made it to the court, maybe 10 or so, but without the rest of the student body, they just looked like idiots jumping up and down at mid-court.

At least some of these young players get it. Not every single win is worth storming the court. You beat the number 7 team at your house in ACC conference play. Act like you belong.

[Sixthman]

Not trying to pile on, but to be fair, their best player didn't even take the court. Grant was averaging 19 ppg and 6 apg. He also lead them in steals.

Maybe with Jabari having such a bad game it equaled out? It's hard to imagine Notre Dame would've played worse with him. Either way, I thought it was worth noting for those of us taking the "our best player had a bad game" route.

The only route to take is that this is, without a doubt, at this time, the worst defensive team at Duke since the early 1980s. The good news is that the team is full of depth and great athletic talent. A team with talent and depth can learn to be a great defensive team. It is about understanding what to do, making all the fundamentals a habit instead of an action, and then, playing harder than the other team. It is the last point that is the most disturbing, but the easiest to correct. This team has been out hustled and out worked about half of their games out so far. Notre Dame destroyed us in the hustle department. I've seen comparatively average Duke teams go THE WHOLE SEASON without getting outworked. Even our hardest working, toughest guy, Tyler Thorton, seems to be in a "hustle funk". I think this is an unfortunate result of so many game minutes going to guys who are freshmen and sophomores. They may not fully understand what "playing like Duke" means. The good news is, everyone on the coaching staff does. I honestly believe it won't be long, and I honestly believe there is still potential for this team to be one of the best ever by the end of the season. However, if that hope is realized, the defense will not look anything like it has looked to date this season.

[FerryFor50]

Not trying to pile on, but to be fair, their best player didn't even take the court. Grant was averaging 19 ppg and 6 apg. He also lead them in steals.

Maybe with Jabari having such a bad game it equaled out? It's hard to imagine Notre Dame would've played worse with him. Either way, I thought it was worth noting for those of us taking the "our best player had a bad game" route.

Their best player =! Our best player.

Plus they have reliable replacements for him. We don't have another Jabari.

There is also diminishing returns. The best player not playing means the best player not going 2-10 and turning the ball over.

[vrob90]

I'd convinced myself this team had made progress in addressing significance vulnerabilities. It seems evident that hasn't happened after all. It's probably time to rachet down expectations for this year.

[Furniture]

A couple of more things.
In the 20 to 4 run against us we had so many shots from the three and layups that rimmed out while at the other end almost everything went in. Maybe we were shooting something like 10% or something. If a couple of those go in its a different story. So much bad luck really.
As someone else pointed out TT didn't have a great D night either, he got blown away and caught out not covering a few times. Jabari and Hood shouldn't get all the blame. I wonder why K didn't try Jones for a bit in TT's place?
When you look at TT' stats you have to wonder why he played that much.
I don't think Josh played for the whole second half. That's a first.

[SoCalDukeFan]

We did not play well. Notre Dame did.

The only positive I can see from this game is that it should help the coaches convince the players that they need to play hard every play, play smart every play, and take every game very seriously.

SoCal

[rsvman]

Screaming Panic Howler Monkey.

I could be wrong, but I thought it was supposed to be SHPM (screaming howler panic monkey).

I dunno. Haven't seen the term for a long time. Now I can't decide which one is right.

[ChrisP]

We did not play well. Notre Dame did.

The only positive I can see from this game is that it should help the coaches convince the players that they need to play hard every play, play smart every play, and take every game very seriously.

SoCal

Well said. My take, overall, is...eh, we lost a road game against a tough conference opponent who was JACKED up to play, is talented (despite the many posters here who seem to feel otherwise), smart, and well-coached. Further, Duke's best player was off - for whatever reason - and we didn't defend or rebound well at all. And we lost by 2. I certainly didn't expect Duke to go through the new-look ACC undefeated this year, did any of you? Clearly, this team has lots to work on and I am definitely concerned, but they've probably got another 4-5 weeks to figure it out. After that, if they haven't figured out how to play D better and play smarter, well then, they will have hit their ceiling. As Popeye used to say, "I yam what I yam" and I think that this Duke team is very talented and filled with great kids who are still not really good at playing together as a team. IF that clicks for them in the next few weeks (and, for the record, I think that's a very big "IF") then they have the potential to be a truly great team. Clearly, the talent is there to anyone who's been paying attention - it's the mental aspect that seems to be lacking. But, I'd rather have loads of talent with a high ceiling and time to sort it out than a dearth of talent who hits their ceiling in January and isn't able to get much better.

Not to get all "back in my day" here, but I do remember a time when the ACC had several "top" teams. Sure, I have loved seeing Duke dominate in the regular season for the past several years, but frankly, going 14-2 or 15-1 or whatever in a weak conference doesn't necessarily prepare us for a deep run in March. I am bummed we lost but I'm not ready to give up on this team figuring it out. AZ and the 'Cuse both got tested yesterday at home and OKSt. lost as well. It happens. Next play, I say (and I really, really hate that saying sometimes, just so you know).

[Furniture]

It's not very often that an opposing team gets double bonus well before Duke. My limited knowledge of BB tells it's because ND were playing in the paint much more than Duke?

[JPtheGame]

So far this season (including today), our team defensive rebounding percentage is 71.5%, which is the best such percentage in at least 17 years and maybe the best in all Coach K's time at Duke. So, sorry to say, it could get a lot worse.


Did you see our zone against Arizona? It was awful and allowed our opponents to mount the game-winning run. And 4 to 6 minutes a "pop," assuming one pop in each half, would be 20% to 30% of the game, which does sound pretty crazy to me.

Also, even if we played zone, what makes you think Coach K would ever play a lineup of Marshall/Amile/Jabari/Rodney/{unspecified PG}?
I dont think anyone watches this team and thinks " wow, this is the best rebounding team we've had in almost 20 years". The percentage stat (like all stats) is just a snapshot. It may be elevated by the types of shots we are getting to rebound. It seems like anything close gets converted.

Hard to imagine Duke remaining at the same level and not improving by doing more of something. Practice may not make perfect but we would certainly improve. We also ran that zone with two midgets up front. People constantly talk about the length of the syracuse zone (when it is really effective) and with Hood up top and those 3 across the bottom, we would have excellent length.

I think K is constantly looking for ways to improve and I think K would consider this lineup rotation in a zone context because the current lineups simply arent good enough and/or aren't working consistently against the best competition. Yes, we have not seen that lineup but we are going to need to see something we haven't seen yet if this team is going to accomplish it's lofty goals.

Saying all this, after watching Duke for 30 years, I know we are debating something that will never happen.

[left_hook_lacey]

Their best player =! Our best player.

Plus they have reliable replacements for him. We don't have another Jabari.

There is also diminishing returns. The best player not playing means the best player not going 2-10 and turning the ball over.

True. Notre Dame really seemed to have accepted and moved on from Grant not being on the floor. While I'm sure our team and everyone watching at home thought that "Parker Time" would start any moment. It just never did.

[NashvilleDevil]

One reason this loss doesn't bother me is the lack of attention it received in the media. With the NFL playoffs starting, Charlie Strong going to coach Texas, all the NFL coaching hires, bowl games and the BCS title game, Duke losing was not the lead story and most of the time when Duke loses it is.

[Kedsy]

I don't buy that Marshall played that poorly while in. When there were baskets scored inside, it was more a total blow by of our guards that led to the score.

In general, I agree that our defensive problems were keyed by their guards blowing by our guards. However, Marshall only played 4 minutes and I noticed two times (there may have been more) when Marshall was way out of position and his man took advantage of Marshall's poor position to get an easy score. To me, that's playing poorly on defense.

[Bob Green]

One reason this loss doesn't bother me is the lack of attention it received in the media.

Really? I could care less about the media.

[Kedsy]

I dont think anyone watches this team and thinks " wow, this is the best rebounding team we've had in almost 20 years". The percentage stat (like all stats) is just a snapshot. It may be elevated by the types of shots we are getting to rebound. It seems like anything close gets converted.

What's more important, how it looks or how it is?

I understand stats don't tell the whole story, but the fact is we're rebounding on the defensive end as well as any of Coach K's Duke teams. Maybe that won't continue moving forward, but for now at least, the people who say we're getting killed on the boards are just wrong.

[uh_no]

Really? I could care less about the media.

if you could care less, then perhaps you should.....for my part, I couldn't care less. :)

[Trinity09]

I was annoyed by this game but am not worried. This game revealed nothing new about the team vis-a-vis its weaknesses. Despite playing terrible defense and our (the nation's?) best player having the worst game of his career, Duke came within a whisper of knocking off a team in its own building playing its biggest game in years. If Rodney had scored on that last drive and we went on to force OT and win, people would be praising K's decision to sit Jabari ("teaching the freshman a lesson"), our defense would get marks for buckling down when it counted ("say what you will, but that stop on possession X was HUGE"), and our FT shooting down the stretch would be the story of the day ("Rasheed has icewater in his veins!").

If you went into this season expecting this team to coast, you were way off-base. You don't lose a trio like Seth/Ryan/Mason and go 40-0, no matter how otherworldly your additions (and Hood and Parker are pretty damn otherworldly). This team has flaws and K will either fix them or make schematic changes to mask them. If you bail on this team now, you're selling way, way, way low.

[DBFAN]

I have a question. Was this the first game for ND without grant? It may not have been, but Dean Smith ( I feel gross just typing that) used to say that you never wanted to face a team the first game after they lost a good player. The reason; the team comes together for that game and will play the hardest they have all year

[mr. synellinden]

We did not play well. Notre Dame did.

The only positive I can see from this game is that it should help the coaches convince the players that they need to play hard every play, play smart every play, and take every game very seriously.

SoCal

I think the Vermont game should have already convinced them of that. If they're not convinced already, then it does not bode well for the rest of the season. But I don't think that's really the problem. The problem is we essentially played without our best player. And it's not like ND playing without their best player. Our best player actually played and played very poorly - he missed the rim entirely on two jump shots and missed a point blank layup. He clearly was not right and it affected both ends of the court. That is really why we lost. I think we'll be fine.

[devildeac]

I could be wrong, but I thought it was supposed to be SHPM (screaming howler panic monkey).

I dunno. Haven't seen the term for a long time. Now I can't decide which one is right.

I believe this is correct because somewhere it was designated as SHPaM:o.

[Ultrarunner]

In general, I agree that our defensive problems were keyed by their guards blowing by our guards. However, Marshall only played 4 minutes and I noticed two times (there may have been more) when Marshall was way out of position and his man took advantage of Marshall's poor position to get an easy score. To me, that's playing poorly on defense.

I thought Marshall did a pretty good job on defense. At least once, the television announcer blamed Marshall for being out of position when he rotated to stop penetration and nobody behind him rotated over to help. Kid's in a no-win position with some folks - stay with his man and allow an uncontested lay-up or rotate over and his man scores.

And he alters a ton of shots. Looking forward to his progress over the next couple of years.

[FerryFor50]

True. Notre Dame really seemed to have accepted and moved on from Grant not being on the floor. While I'm sure our team and everyone watching at home thought that "Parker Time" would start any moment. It just never did.

Maybe the lesson here is to play more like a team rather than a group of individuals... Sometimes the "fist" lesson takes time. Especially with a young team.

[Wander]

I understand stats don't tell the whole story, but the fact is we're rebounding on the defensive end as well as any of Coach K's Duke teams. Maybe that won't continue moving forward, but for now at least, the people who say we're getting killed on the boards are just wrong.

Yes, we are defensively rebounding better than any recent Duke team. Guess what? Duke generally sucks at defensive rebounding. As of today, in the ACC alone, Maryland, Pittsburgh, Virginia, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, and Miami all have better defensive rebounding percentages than us. You're right to point out that we're not nearly as bad on the boards as some people are saying here, but we're also nowhere near as good as "this is our best rebounding team in _____ years" would suggest. Overall, we're a mediocre rebounding team.

[Duvall]

Yes, we are defensively rebounding better than any recent Duke team. Guess what? Duke generally sucks at defensive rebounding. As of today, in the ACC alone, Maryland, Pittsburgh, Virginia, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, and Miami all have better defensive rebounding percentages than us. You're right to point out that we're not nearly as bad on the boards as some people are saying here, but we're also nowhere near as good as "this is our best rebounding team in _____ years" would suggest. Overall, we're a mediocre rebounding team.

Seems like it says more about the importance of defensive rebounding, or lack thereof.

[Wander]

Seems like it says more about the importance of defensive rebounding, or lack thereof.

That might also be true. I'd be open to hearing an argument about that.

[mkirsh]

Maybe the lesson here is to play more like a team rather than a group of individuals... Sometimes the "fist" lesson takes time. Especially with a young team.

Agree with this. There is a TON of talent on this team, but not much cohesion yet. Our offense, while very efficient, relies on a lot of one-on-one play from Parker/Hood/Cook. We seem to run a lot of dribble hand-off action, but only to get the ball to Hood or Parker in position to attack the basket or potentially get a switch, but not a ton of ball movement after that. The only time the ball really seems to move is if Rasheed drives and dishes or when we run plays for Andre. Back in '01 we ran a lot of high ball screen with Williams/Boozer and Williams/Battier, but haven't seen that much in recent years. Parker/Cook pick and roll or pick and pop would be very effective I think. Again, we are scoring well, but I still think there are ways to get better so we are less likely to have scoring droughts that allow other teams to make a run. In all of our losses we had leads in the second half and then had stretches where we couldn't score.

On defense it's the same problem. We have what is probably the most athletic team we have had in a while, but team defense has been poor due to bad positioning, bad rotations, and bad communication. The coaches obviously know how to run a suffocating defense as we've seen in the past, the question is whether this group of players can figure it out this year and play like the fist or the fingers. Given how central a theme this is for Coach K, the talent on the roster, and the amount of season left, I think they'll figure it out.

[Bob Green]

if you could care less, then perhaps you should.....for my part, I couldn't care less. :)

Thanks for the correction!

[Saratoga2]

I thought Marshall did a pretty good job on defense. At least once, the television announcer blamed Marshall for being out of position when he rotated to stop penetration and nobody behind him rotated over to help. Kid's in a no-win position with some folks - stay with his man and allow an uncontested lay-up or rotate over and his man scores.

And he alters a ton of shots. Looking forward to his progress over the next couple of years.

He is getting unfairly criticized when he is having to try to make up for guards being blown by. Look at what happened with our other bigs. It is a matter of comparison. Who did better?

[FerryFor50]

One point about playing a zone defense...

Other than the points made about how it can actually hurt rebounding, there's something people seem to miss - playing an effective zone is not something you do overnight on a whim. Teams that are really good at the zone (like Syracuse) run it every day, every practice. It's the only defense they play, really. And they recruit to play the defense with long armed, athletic and tall wings and guards. Duke has some guys that could play in that type of zone, but not all of them. Plus, a zone requires MORE communication than man to man, so there's that...

3776

[flyingdutchdevil]

Needed time to process this loss. This one hurt a lot. ND is not a good basketball team. They lost their best player and they even underpreformed when they had him.

1) Rodney and Quinn played fantastically on offense. I have no issues with either of their play. Yes - Quinn turned the ball over a few times and Rodney had that poor last play, but overall they were great

2) Jabari is a freshman. It should. I got really excited when we were up 10 WITHOUT Jabari. Showed that we can still play. And then it all came apart, both with Jabari in the game and with him on the bench. Not sure what to make of that. Hopefully the next few games will provide a little more context about that one.

3) Jabari is a very poor defender. I know a lot of people of this board think his D is good, but I don't see any of it. Jabari is a great offensive player and a really good rebounder. His on-the-ball D and off-the-ball D were awful. He has a loooooong way to go.

4) Our interior D from the 3-5 positions is just terrible. Jabari, Rodney, Hairston, and Amile got burned multiple times. MP3 didn't play poorly but he didn't see much of the floor either.

5) Dawkins again showed that he is an inconsistent player and hasn't performed well against okay teams and better this year. I'm a little surprised by this.

6) I don't have the stats to back it up, but I didn't think our perimeter D was that bad. Quinn got burned a few times, but overall it was decent. Maybe it was bad and our interior D was even worse so I couldn't effectively tell. I thought this team turned a leaf on D in the last half dozen games. Guess I was wrong...

7) Right now, we aren't a top 10 - probably top 15 - team. This isn't a "sky is falling" comment. This is the reality. Can we be a top 10 team by season end? Of course. We can be a top 3 team. But there is a lot of work that needs to be done. You can't lose to a mediocre team and think that we are currently a good team. Thankfully, it's only early January. Plenty of time to develop.

[sagegrouse]

Thanks for the correction!

Hey, Bob! How about a line of Navy abuse -- starting with "avast," and including a few choice terms for critics. Surely there is an application here for "snivel."

sage

[Kedsy]

You can't lose to a mediocre team and think that we are currently a good team.

1991 Duke lost by 6 to unranked NCSU and by 9 to unranked Wake Forest (also by 17 to #18 UVa).

1992 Duke lost by 4 to unranked Wake Forest.

2004 Duke lost by 10 to unranked Purdue on a neutral floor and by 8 to unranked Maryland.

2010 Duke lost by 4 to unranked Wisconsin and by 14 to unranked NCSU.

I could go on and on but I hope you get the point.

I assume you aren't suggesting those weren't good Duke teams, despite thier losses to mediocre teams on the road (or at a neutral site). Are you suggesting no reasonable person could think that those Duke teams were good teams around the time they lost those games?

I suppose it depends on your definition of "currently." Certainly none of those teams played well in those losses, and 2014 Duke didn't play well against Notre Dame. But personally I think those teams were all good teams that had bad games, and I'm not entirely certain but I believe this year's team is too.

[CBecker]

I thought Marshall did a pretty good job on defense. At least once, the television announcer blamed Marshall for being out of position when he rotated to stop penetration and nobody behind him rotated over to help. Kid's in a no-win position with some folks - stay with his man and allow an uncontested lay-up or rotate over and his man scores.

And he alters a ton of shots. Looking forward to his progress over the next couple of years.

I agree, with Quinn and co getting blown by on a consistent basis, it'd be really helpful to have a shot blocker back there, but if the rotations are poor it doesn't really matter. And it seems that is a problem right now. Certainly not Marshalls fault if his man scores when he is trying to protect the rim from a drive. The perimeter defense really looked a lot better over the last 5-6 games, so you could chalk it up to just one bad game, and the defense is on the improve, but it did look mighty similar to a lot of the other poor defensive performances from earlier in the season. Looking forward to the next game :)

[kAzE]

1991 Duke lost by 6 to unranked NCSU and by 9 to unranked Wake Forest (also by 17 to #18 UVa).

1992 Duke lost by 4 to unranked Wake Forest.

2004 Duke lost by 10 to unranked Purdue on a neutral floor and by 8 to unranked Maryland.

2010 Duke lost by 4 to unranked Wisconsin and by 14 to unranked NCSU.

I could go on and on but I hope you get the point.

I assume you aren't suggesting those weren't good Duke teams, despite thier losses to mediocre teams on the road (or at a neutral site). Are you suggesting no reasonable person could think that those Duke teams were good teams around the time they lost those games?

I suppose it depends on your definition of "currently." Certainly none of those teams played well in those losses, and 2014 Duke didn't play well against Notre Dame. But personally I think those teams were all good teams that had bad games, and I'm not entirely certain but I believe this year's team is too.

There's always the possibility of this becoming a championship caliber team, and you're right to stay optimistic with the amount of talent we have, but also, keep mind in every single team we've put out there other than those 4 teams didn't win the championship. On the other end of the spectrum, there's also a possibility that this might be who we are. A very good offensive team, with some of the best offensive players in the country, but a poor defensive unit with limited lateral quickness, and no size in the interior.

We've got the pieces to at least shore up some of our deficiencies on defense, so there's still plenty of room for improvement, but realistically, we're probably never going to be as potent a defense as some of our best teams in the past. Sometimes, we're just going to have to outscore really good offensive teams, which we're entirely capable of. That said, our offense played rather poorly against ND in my opinion. we shot 28 threes, 1 off from our season high. You pointed out earlier that we had teams in the past which succeeded despite shooting a ton of threes, but those teams also played better defense and rebounded much better. We have so many guys who can create off the dribble and get in the paint, there needs to be more of an emphasis to get the ball inside. Even a kick out for an open three is much more effective than the "pass it around the perimeter until you get an open 3" offense.

Also, I think we can end the Grant Hill comparisons for Jabari now. Melo is an apt comparison (and he might be even better than Melo), but Hill was a dominant defensive player from day 1. Jabari has a lot of work to do on that end.

[trinity79]

Would it be alright if Okafor, Jones, and Winslow (yeah sure why not Grayson Allen too) could just go ahead and enroll as January freshmen? But if there's only room for one (since Murphy has now transferred and all), I say Okafor for shore.

[MCFinARL]

Needed time to process this loss. This one hurt a lot. ND is not a good basketball team. They lost their best player and they even underpreformed when they had him.



5) Dawkins again showed that he is an inconsistent player and hasn't performed well against okay teams and better this year. I'm a little surprised by this.



? Dawkins shot 40%, and his defense was no worse than the rest of the team's and better than some. Was this his best game of the year? No--but his missed shots were reasonable ones for him to take--they were just a little off target. When on the bench he looked like an engaged leader, supporting the players on the court.

As for his play against "okay teams and better," the Kansas and Arizona games were very early in the season, when Andre was recovering from a back injury and also getting back into game shape after a full year off. Against Kansas he had a DNP and thus had no opportunity to perform, well or otherwise. Against Arizona he played only 4 minutes but hit his only shot. Against Michigan he was 3-3 in 10 minutes of play. He went 1-5 against UCLA but pulled in 3 rebounds in 7 minutes.

I suppose you could argue that the fact that he didn't get more playing time is itself evidence of inconsistency, but that is assuming you can know exactly why Coach K has made all of the specific decisions he did about Dawkins' playing time in these games.

I'm not sure what you expected of him but I don't think this assessment--which seems to go far beyond evaluating this one game--is fair. Given that he is coming back after a year off I think it is far too soon to make this kind of judgment.

[Duvall]

Would it be alright if Okafor, Jones, and Winslow (yeah sure why not Grayson Allen too) could just go ahead and enroll as January freshmen? But if there's only room for one (since Murphy has now transferred and all), I say Okafor for shore.

A player actually can enroll for the second semester during his senior year of high school - Tennessee's Jarnell Stokes did it a couple years back.

[Kedsy]

There's always the possibility of this becoming a championship caliber team, and you're right to stay optimistic with the amount of talent we have, but also, keep mind in every single team we've put out there other than those 4 teams didn't win the championship. On the other end of the spectrum, there's also a possibility that this might be who we are. A very good offensive team, with some of the best offensive players in the country, but a poor defensive unit with limited lateral quickness, and no size in the interior.

We've got the pieces to at least shore up some of our deficiencies on defense, so there's still plenty of room for improvement, but realistically, we're probably never going to be as potent a defense as some of our best teams in the past. Sometimes, we're just going to have to outscore really good offensive teams, which we're entirely capable of. That said, our offense played rather poorly against ND in my opinion. we shot 28 threes, 1 off from our season high. You pointed out earlier that we had teams in the past which succeeded despite shooting a ton of threes, but those teams also played better defense and rebounded much better. We have so many guys who can create off the dribble and get in the paint, there needs to be more of an emphasis to get the ball inside. Even a kick out for an open three is much more effective than the "pass it around the perimeter until you get an open 3" offense.

Also, I think we can end the Grant Hill comparisons for Jabari now. Melo is an apt comparison (and he might be even better than Melo), but Hill was a dominant defensive player from day 1. Jabari has a lot of work to do on that end.

I was responding to a poster who said, "You can't lose to a mediocre team and think that we are currently a good team." My point was lots of good teams lose to mediocre teams so I don't agree with his statement. I wasn't suggesting that this team is going to win a championship, although I do think it's possible.

I'd also correct your bolded statement above. Those other teams rebounded better on the offensive end than this year's team, but this year's team is significantly better than those other Duke teams at defensive rebounding (especially the '91, '92, and '01 teams, all of which were pretty poor at defensive rebounding). I agree with your statement that those teams were all significantly better defensive teams than this year's version. I also agree with you regarding Jabari's defense. If we are going to turn it around on the defensive end, it has to start with Jabari, and closely after that involve Rodney and Quinn (who's getting a lot of steals but too often not staying with his man).

[tommy]

I don't buy that Marshall played that poorly while in. When there were baskets scored inside, it was more a total blow by of our guards that led to the score. I don't compare Marshall to Mason, but instead to Hairston, Amile and Jabari. Hairston was too small to stop their inside game, I don't care if he was in position, Amile is not quite strong enough and Jabari had trouble staying with the defense. Compared to those three, it is not as black and white as no minutes for Marshall in the second half seem to indicate. Personally I though Amile's rebounding was good and his defense in general was the best of the three so he should have gotten the bulk of the minutes, but Marshall matched up better against ND's big lineup and possibly could have helped.


I thought Marshall did a pretty good job on defense. At least once, the television announcer blamed Marshall for being out of position when he rotated to stop penetration and nobody behind him rotated over to help. Kid's in a no-win position with some folks - stay with his man and allow an uncontested lay-up or rotate over and his man scores.

And he alters a ton of shots. Looking forward to his progress over the next couple of years.


I agree, with Quinn and co getting blown by on a consistent basis, it'd be really helpful to have a shot blocker back there, but if the rotations are poor it doesn't really matter. And it seems that is a problem right now. Certainly not Marshalls fault if his man scores when he is trying to protect the rim from a drive. The perimeter defense really looked a lot better over the last 5-6 games, so you could chalk it up to just one bad game, and the defense is on the improve, but it did look mighty similar to a lot of the other poor defensive performances from earlier in the season. Looking forward to the next game :)

OK so here is a play-by-play of every possession on which Marshall Plumlee was on the floor against Notre Dame. Not many, I know, because he didn't get many minutes -- none in the second half, in fact. But here they are:

Entered at 15:41 of the 1st half.

1st offensive possession: not involved. Dawkins missed a 3, no offensive board opportunity.

1st defensive possession: guarding Auguste, goes to help on Jackson’s drive (though we had two guys on him already), recovers, but ends up on Connaughton (with Hood) thereby leaving Auguste open underneath. Luckily, Amile blocks the shot. MP3 looked lost on this possession.

Offense: Not involved as Hood went 1 on 1 and hit a midrange J.

Defense: MP3 on Sherman now. Helps Cook on Atkins, leaving Sherman at the FT line to receive the ball. Amile helps, and Sherman dumps it to Connaughton, who finishes through MP3 for the hoop. Plumlee wasn't in the best position, and could’ve been quicker to contest the pass to Connaughton, or maybe he didn’t see it, but in any event Connaughton was more aggressive and got it, resulting in a hoop.

Offense: screen for Hood, who carries it.

Out of game at 14:13.


Plumlee re-entered at 5:48 1st half.

Offense: set a few screens, we missed a shot, Marshall didn’t get a shot at an o-board

Defense: hustles back to make great steal of lead pass to Sherman. Highlight of Marshall's day for sure.

Offense: not involved in play as Jabari got fouled

Offense: tried to set a screen, Andre took the jumpshot, no offensive board

Defense: Beachem (little guy) took Plumlee off the dribble from the wing into the lane and shot over him, but missed. We got the board but only after they missed a tip.

Offense: not involved as Andre missed a 3, no o-board

Defense: Plumlee's man screens for Jackson, Marshall hedges but releases too quickly, allowing Jackson to get to the hoop and get fouled on the shot. Andre also was slow in getting back to his man, so that didn’t help matters, but Marshall needed to stay until Andre did get there, which he basically never did.

Defense: guarded out of bounds passer, where we gave up a layup. Not Marshall’s fault.

Offense: not involved as Hood goes 1 on 1 and gets stripped. We get it back on the arrow.

Offense: sets high ball screen for Cook, rolls to the hoop, but Cook shoots and makes the long 3. Marshall was actually open on the roll. Not sure how much the guys trust him to catch and finish though.

Defense: Two of our perimeter guys get beat with penetration, Plumlee steps up nicely to challenge Jackson, tries to take a charge (why are you trying to take a charge against a little guy instead of swatting his shot, especially since it's next to impossible to get any charges called these days?) but nothing doing as Jackson dumps it off to Knight, who is fouled on the shot. Not really Plumlee’s fault. Announcer said he “beat Plumlee to the spot,” which is not what happened at all.

TV timeout.

Offense: sets a couple of more screens which were fine, rolled ok on one, but we ended up turning it over.

Defense: hedged nicely to help Quinn on the outside. Recovered onto Knight. Atkins took it to the hoops and Marshall not really in position to help, due to where his man had been. Not really his fault or a failure to help properly. Had he been quicker or seen the play developing earlier, then perhaps he could’ve had a chance to get over to intimidate or block, but I can’t hold that against him in this circumstance.

Out of game after that.


To sum up, on offense he set screens, that’s all. Some were OK, he rolled a couple of times and was open for one pass, though his teammate didn’t throw it to him. But most of the possessions he wasn’t involved at all. He wasn’t close to any offensive rebounds.

On defense, both the possessions he was in for in his first stint were problematic. He was lost on the first one, and either didn’t demonstrate good court vision or good aggressiveness in the second -- and didn't block or alter the inside shot -- all of which resulted in a Notre Dame basket.

His second stint was better, as it included his terrific hustle play to get back in transition D and make an athletic steal, saving a sure basket. Hedged a couple of times and did OK with it, doing pretty well once and not great the other time. But neither time was he terrible. No glaring defensive errors.

Also: his defensive performance in this game was consistent with other games' in this respect: Despite his height, he is not a shot blocker, at least not yet. I know a lot of guys on these boards long for Marshall to get more time to "protect the rim" or to block shots or at least alter or intimidate them. Marshall is simply not doing that in the limited minutes he has been given.

[jv001]

OK so here is a play-by-play of every possession on which Marshall Plumlee was on the floor against Notre Dame. Not many, I know, because he didn't get many minutes -- none in the second half, in fact. But here they are:

Entered at 15:41 of the 1st half.

1st offensive possession: not involved. Dawkins missed a 3, no offensive board opportunity.

1st defensive possession: guarding Auguste, goes to help on Jackson’s drive (though we had two guys on him already), recovers, but ends up on Connaughton (with Hood) thereby leaving Auguste open underneath. Luckily, Amile blocks the shot. MP3 looked lost on this possession.

Offense: Not involved as Hood went 1 on 1 and hit a midrange J.

Defense: MP3 on Sherman now. Helps Cook on Atkins, leaving Sherman at the FT line to receive the ball. Amile helps, and Sherman dumps it to Connaughton, who finishes through MP3 for the hoop. Plumlee wasn't in the best position, and could’ve been quicker to contest the pass to Connaughton, or maybe he didn’t see it, but in any event Connaughton was more aggressive and got it, resulting in a hoop.

Offense: screen for Hood, who carries it.

Out of game at 14:13.


Plumlee re-entered at 5:48 1st half.

Offense: set a few screens, we missed a shot, Marshall didn’t get a shot at an o-board

Defense: hustles back to make great steal of lead pass to Sherman. Highlight of Marshall's day for sure.

Offense: not involved in play as Jabari got fouled

Offense: tried to set a screen, Andre took the jumpshot, no offensive board

Defense: Beachem (little guy) took Plumlee off the dribble from the wing into the lane and shot over him, but missed. We got the board but only after they missed a tip.

Offense: not involved as Andre missed a 3, no o-board

Defense: Plumlee's man screens for Jackson, Marshall hedges but releases too quickly, allowing Jackson to get to the hoop and get fouled on the shot. Andre also was slow in getting back to his man, so that didn’t help matters, but Marshall needed to stay until Andre did get there, which he basically never did.

Defense: guarded out of bounds passer, where we gave up a layup. Not Marshall’s fault.

Offense: not involved as Hood goes 1 on 1 and gets stripped. We get it back on the arrow.

Offense: sets high ball screen for Cook, rolls to the hoop, but Cook shoots and makes the long 3. Marshall was actually open on the roll. Not sure how much the guys trust him to catch and finish though.

Defense: Two of our perimeter guys get beat with penetration, Plumlee steps up nicely to challenge Jackson, tries to take a charge (why are you trying to take a charge against a little guy instead of swatting his shot, especially since it's next to impossible to get any charges called these days?) but nothing doing as Jackson dumps it off to Knight, who is fouled on the shot. Not really Plumlee’s fault. Announcer said he “beat Plumlee to the spot,” which is not what happened at all.

TV timeout.

Offense: sets a couple of more screens which were fine, rolled ok on one, but we ended up turning it over.

Defense: hedged nicely to help Quinn on the outside. Recovered onto Knight. Atkins took it to the hoops and Marshall not really in position to help, due to where his man had been. Not really his fault or a failure to help properly. Had he been quicker or seen the play developing earlier, then perhaps he could’ve had a chance to get over to intimidate or block, but I can’t hold that against him in this circumstance.

Out of game after that.


To sum up, on offense he set screens, that’s all. Some were OK, he rolled a couple of times and was open for one pass, though his teammate didn’t throw it to him. But most of the possessions he wasn’t involved at all. He wasn’t close to any offensive rebounds.

On defense, both the possessions he was in for in his first stint were problematic. He was lost on the first one, and either didn’t demonstrate good court vision or good aggressiveness in the second -- and didn't block or alter the inside shot -- all of which resulted in a Notre Dame basket.

His second stint was better, as it included his terrific hustle play to get back in transition D and make an athletic steal, saving a sure basket. Hedged a couple of times and did OK with it, doing pretty well once and not great the other time. But neither time was he terrible. No glaring defensive errors.

Also: his defensive performance in this game was consistent with other games' in this respect: Despite his height, he is not a shot blocker, at least not yet. I know a lot of guys on these boards long for Marshall to get more time to "protect the rim" or to block shots or at least alter or intimidate them. Marshall is simply not doing that in the limited minutes he has been given.

Tommy, thanks for your work on this(help from Kedsey). I guess the closest player we have to a true 5/center is Amile, because Josh and MPIII are not the answer. In order to have a very good team, our guards plus Hood and Parker must be able to play good defense. I don't see why Jabari and Rodney can't play better defense. They are as tall as Battier and are at least as athletic as Shane was. Shane Battier has made a living by playing defense and making the 3. To get better, players are going to have to buy into Duke's man to man defense. Just my thoughts and once again, thanks. GoDuke!

[CBecker]

OK so here is a play-by-play of every possession on which Marshall Plumlee was on the floor against Notre Dame. Not many, I know, because he didn't get many minutes -- none in the second half, in fact. But here they .

Also: his defensive performance in this game was consistent with other games' in this respect: Despite his height, he is not a shot blocker, at least not yet. I know a lot of guys on these boards long for Marshall to get more time to "protect the rim" or to block shots or at least alter or intimidate them. Marshall is simply not doing that in the limited minutes he has been given.

He is definitely capable of blocking shots or at least altering shots. One game this season he obviously altered at least 3 or 4 in the one game (big considering he hardly even gets on the court).
He has a lot of flaws, but he is certainly capable of challenging shots. Not saying he deserves to play more minutes though........

[kAzE]

Gonna go outside the box for a second . . . maybe this Notre Dame game was more of an outlier than a trend? We had been playing pretty good defense for the past 7 games, starting from the Alabama game. There had been noticeable improvement, especially in the games against Michigan, UCLA, and Elon. We played absolutely smothering defense for long stretches in those games. What if this was just a bad day, in a hostile environment, against a well coached team with a great game plan? Plus, I don't imagine Coach K had gotten much sleep for the past few days . . .

My point is, this happens sometimes to young teams. Perhaps it was just a bad game, so we do some serious film study from the ND game, learn from what we did wrong, and then continue playing good defense, as we had been for the past month. Of course, it's not like we have a week to dwell on it, we've got 2 games in the next 5 days, so if we're going to improve, these guys need to get their s*** together fast. I'm not going to say "it's still early" at this point, because right now, our NCAA tournament resume is being written, and as it stands, we'd be lucky to grab a #3 seed. We need to come out strong and really start building some steam for these next 6 games before the showdown at Syracuse. A #1 seed is barely still within reach, but we don't have much room for error anymore, and there are only a few statement games left on the regular season schedule.

[Dopeshop]

I won a $ bet with a tar hole who said Josh would not make a 15 foot jump shot in 2014.

Still alive is the bet that M Plumlee will not make FT this season and that Jefferson /Plumlee will not make 50% of their FT's for the year.

STAY TUNED

[flyingdutchdevil]

? Dawkins shot 40%, and his defense was no worse than the rest of the team's and better than some. Was this his best game of the year? No--but his missed shots were reasonable ones for him to take--they were just a little off target. When on the bench he looked like an engaged leader, supporting the players on the court.

As for his play against "okay teams and better," the Kansas and Arizona games were very early in the season, when Andre was recovering from a back injury and also getting back into game shape after a full year off. Against Kansas he had a DNP and thus had no opportunity to perform, well or otherwise. Against Arizona he played only 4 minutes but hit his only shot. Against Michigan he was 3-3 in 10 minutes of play. He went 1-5 against UCLA but pulled in 3 rebounds in 7 minutes.

I suppose you could argue that the fact that he didn't get more playing time is itself evidence of inconsistency, but that is assuming you can know exactly why Coach K has made all of the specific decisions he did about Dawkins' playing time in these games.

I'm not sure what you expected of him but I don't think this assessment--which seems to go far beyond evaluating this one game--is fair. Given that he is coming back after a year off I think it is far too soon to make this kind of judgment.

Gotta disagree on the good game. Yes, Dawkins shot 40% (2-5 FG, 1-4 3pt FG). But other than that, this stats aren't impressive. 1 rebound, 0 assists, 0 blocks, 0 steals, 4 fouls. All that in 18 minutes. His D didn't regress, but he did have a few blunders (but everyone did on D).

As for his consistency, let's look at the last 9 games that Dawkins has played in as well as the KenPom ranking of those teams (in parentheses):

Vermont: 16pt (141)
Alabama: 0pt (69)
Arizona: 3pt (2)
Michigan: 8pt (20)
Gardner-Webb: 18pt (259)
UCLA: 3pt (31)
E Michigan: 20pt (137)
Elon: 15pt (138)
ND: 6pt (53)

Interestingly, Dawkins has failed to his double hits in any team ranked in the top 100 but has scored at least 16 in every game against teams outside the top 100. Like you said, a lot of this has to do with minutes. But Coach K, who knows Dawkins better than anyone on this board, clearly understands Dawkins's performance against bad, okay, and good teams better than you or I.

Based on the data above, I do feel that Dawkins is inconsistent for the reason (however, he is consistent against bad competition vs good competition). Also, like my previous statement, Dawkins hasn't performed well against good competition.

I'm not attempting to give any rationale, but it is an accurate observation.

[Kfanarmy]

He is definitely capable of blocking shots or at least altering shots. One game this season he obviously altered at least 3 or 4 in the one game (big considering he hardly even gets on the court).
He has a lot of flaws, but he is certainly capable of challenging shots. Not saying he deserves to play more minutes though........

While I am also not sure he "deserves" to play more. I am wholly convinced he needs to play more to maximize Duke's chances against big teams in the future. Not playing him is not developing him and is failing to invest in the teams future, IMHO. I think Duke needs him to play more.

[dyedwab]

1) Our defensive problems and our offensive problems (when we have them) are actually quite similar. They stem from a lack of communication, and an incomplete understanding of where our players and their teammates should/shouldn't be. It's easier to overcome on offense because we have extraordinarily talented players in Parker and Hood and some great shooters. Plus, offense (shooting, dribbling, etc) are the thing everyone who has ever played basketball has practiced the most.

2) I believe some posters have compellingly demonstrated that it was the small lineup of Notre Dame that spurred their comeback. That suggests that our biggest defensive problem is not lack of a post presence, but weak perimeter defense. Or maybe more correctly, the lack of a defensive post presence requires much better perimeter defense then we are getting.

3) Notre Dame controlled tempo. We needed to speed them up. And we did poorly, by taking too many shots early in the clock. Crisper quicker ball movement, which we had been seeing for the past few games, was elusive on Saturday

4) The frustration with this team is that, on the whole, it appears more physically gifted then the teams of the last 2 years, yet, on defense especially, it doesn't seem to understand how to use those gifts. Probably a result of the lack of experience on the team coming in, but still. Put another way, it seems this team is physically gifted enough to overcome mistakes (positioning, etc), but that it rarely happens. Perhaps I'm misreading, or perhaps I'm wrong about the talent-level as it relates to defense.

[Troublemaker]

Gonna go outside the box for a second . . . maybe this Notre Dame game was more of an outlier than a trend? We had been playing pretty good defense for the past 7 games, starting from the Alabama game. There had been noticeable improvement, especially in the games against Michigan, UCLA, and Elon. We played absolutely smothering defense for long stretches in those games. What if this was just a bad day, in a hostile environment, against a well coached team with a great game plan? Plus, I don't imagine Coach K had gotten much sleep for the past few days . . .

My point is, this happens sometimes to young teams. Perhaps it was just a bad game, so we do some serious film study from the ND game, learn from what we did wrong, and then continue playing good defense, as we had been for the past month.

Absolutely. Good point. I would expect Duke to start playing good defense again immediately.

The overall season-long trend is still good.

In our first 6 games through the Vermont game, we played poorly on defense in 4 games: Davidson, Kansas, ECU, Vermont. (Technically only 3 games were "poor" if we define "poor" as allowing an opponent to score above its season average in Offensive Efficiency. But I'm comfortable counting ECU as a "poor" game despite this not being true for them.)

In our next 8 games post-Vermont, we played poorly on defense in 2 games: Gardner-Webb and Notre Dame.

Now let's see what happens in the next 8 games post-Notre Dame. (This would take us through Feb 1 and the Syracuse game.)

[flyingdutchdevil]

4) The frustration with this team is that, on the whole, it appears more physically gifted then the teams of the last 2 years, yet, on defense especially, it doesn't seem to understand how to use those gift. Probably a result of the lack of experience on the team coming in, but still. Put another way, it seems this team is physically gifted enought to overcome mistakes (positioning, etc), but that it rarely happens. Perhaps I'm misreading, or perhaps I'm wrong about the talent-level as it relates to defense.

This is arguably our most physically gifted team since 2001. We have insane athletes on the floor. I think that is why this team is particularly frustrating. It's not their lack of talent or athleticism that is making them lose games, it's something else. I don't know what that something else is, but it's clearly affecting defense (post and perimeter), communication, and closing out games.

[CajunDevil]

Vermont: 16pt (141)
Alabama: 0pt (69)
Arizona: 3pt (2)
Michigan: 8pt (20)
Gardner-Webb: 18pt (259)
UCLA: 3pt (31)
E Michigan: 20pt (137)
Elon: 15pt (138)
ND: 6pt (53)



A couple of things:
1. Dawkins didn't play bad. Was it his best game, no, but he wasn't bad. Flyingdutch you should've also put minutes played in the chart of points and opponents rpi above - not doing so makes it misleading.

2. Marshall played pretty well. Despite Tommy and Kedsy's analysis above, Marshall was active, physical and played with a purpose. He is improving and I'm encouraged that by the end of league play he will be logging 15 min/game - and giving us an interior presence that we are lacking now.

3. Tyler's lapses. I did notice on multiple occasions that our "best defender" was beat backdoor which put tremendous pressure on our bigs. This was one point that hasn't been mentioned on this board but that should be mentioned. If he can't play GREAT D then he has no business being in the game.

The consistent theme by many on this board is to have a narrative, and repeat that narrative until Coach K acts differently. It's so funny. For instance, Dawkins was the worst defender in the history of Duke basketball according to some on this board (slight exaggeration here) until 4-5 games ago and then it suddenly improved... because obviously, K wouldn't be playing him if his D was subpar. Another one is that Marshall is just really bad. If Marshall plays four minutes then that is evidence he's bad, regardless of how he did during that game... ugh

The sky is not falling. Duke can make the Final Four and win the Natty. We have been used to seeing a finished product in January... and then fizzling in March. I'm encouraged that we are far from our end product now... Enjoy the ride and the growth that the team is going through. We will be fine.

[Billy Dat]

Something really important warrants mention....I am not sure when he made the change, but Mike Brey looks a million times better in a standard button down shirt then those mock turtlenecks that he beat into the ground over 10+ years. It also occurs to me that he could be Paul Giamatti's older brother.

[Devilwin]

Like the man says, insane athletes on the floor. Unfortunately, nobody plays defense. Another big test failed. This team is maddening. Never saw a Coach K team so lacking in defense. ND ate us alive inside with their cuts. If this continues, we won't finish in the top four in this league. All that hype is worthless when you cannot play defense!
Not ready to throw in the towel, but in spite of the superstar quality of this bunch, it's without question the worst defensive team I have ever seen at Duke.:mad:

[CDu]

Like the man says, insane athletes on the floor. Unfortunately, nobody plays defense. Another big test failed. This team is maddening. Never saw a Coach K team so lacking in defense. ND ate us alive inside with their cuts. If this continues, we won't finish in the top four in this league. All that hype is worthless when you cannot play defense!
Not ready to throw in the towel, but in spite of the superstar quality of this bunch, it's without question the worst defensive team I have ever seen at Duke.:mad:

Never saw a Duke team so lacking in defense? How about 2012, when we were #81 in defensive efficiency? We are currently #73 in defensive efficiency right now. It's certainly not good to be comparable to the 2012 defense (which wasn't good), but I don't think it is quite fair to say that this is without question the worst defensive team we've seen at Duke when there is such a recent example of comparably bad (if not worse) defense.

That being said, the team defense is definitely a concern. I don't know that we're going to be a good defensive team this year, as too many of our players seem to not be good defensively. But hopefully we can get to a point where we're average at defense, and hope to just outscore teams. But the dream of a swarming, long, athletic defense that forces turnovers and creates havoc does not appear to be in the cards with this group unless things REALLY change.

[azzefkram]

OK so here is a play-by-play of every possession on which Marshall Plumlee was on the floor against Notre Dame...

But neither time was he terrible. No glaring defensive errors.

Nice post tommy and I appreciate all the extra effort you put in to breaking down the games. A few minor quibbles however. I think the bolded part is important. We all know that Marshall has his flaws but he is not a disaster out there. If you ran the same exercise with either Amile or Josh, I'd hazard to guess that you'd get a pretty similar result.


Also: his defensive performance in this game was consistent with other games' in this respect: Despite his height, he is not a shot blocker, at least not yet. I know a lot of guys on these boards long for Marshall to get more time to "protect the rim" or to block shots or at least alter or intimidate them. Marshall is simply not doing that in the limited minutes he has been given.

This isn't really true. Marshall would rank 7th in the ACC in block% if he qualified. His block% of 5.8 is the second highest on the team and significantly higher than the players he would be subbing for. It is also on par with what Mason and Ryan did. Is Marshall an elite shot-blocker? Nope, but he's pretty good and one of the best options we have. I don't think Marshall should start but I do think he should be splitting the 5 with Amile (with Amile getting the lion's share of the minutes).

[mkirsh]

Never saw a Duke team so lacking in defense? How about 2012, when we were #81 in defensive efficiency? We are currently #73 in defensive efficiency right now. It's certainly not good to be comparable to the 2012 defense (which wasn't good), but I don't think it is quite fair to say that this is without question the worst defensive team we've seen at Duke when there is such a recent example of comparably bad (if not worse) defense.

That being said, the team defense is definitely a concern. I don't know that we're going to be a good defensive team this year, as too many of our players seem to not be good defensively. But hopefully we can get to a point where we're average at defense, and hope to just outscore teams. But the dream of a swarming, long, athletic defense that forces turnovers and creates havoc does not appear to be in the cards with this group unless things REALLY change.

Given that athletic ability and good defense don't necessarily go hand in hand at Duke (2012 had 3 NBA level athletes in 2 Plumlees and Rivers but team D was one of the worst at Duke), I wonder if the stronger correlation is seniority (ie 2010 when we had 3 seniors and 2 juniors starting)? Not sure how to easily get the stats of weighted average "experience" minutes by year, but I would hypothesize that experience is probably the best indicator of defensive success at Duke historically, meaning that this team will have a hard time ever becoming a lock-down unit like Duke teams of old. Also wonder if reduced minutes for Tyler and especially Josh were part of the reason we got shredded by ND?

[vick]

Given that athletic ability and good defense don't necessarily go hand in hand at Duke (2012 had 3 NBA level athletes in 2 Plumlees and Rivers but team D was one of the worst at Duke), I wonder if the stronger correlation is seniority (ie 2010 when we had 3 seniors and 2 juniors starting)? Not sure how to easily get the stats of weighted average "experience" minutes by year, but I would hypothesize that experience is probably the best indicator of defensive success at Duke historically, meaning that this team will have a hard time ever becoming a lock-down unit like Duke teams of old. Also wonder if reduced minutes for Tyler and especially Josh were part of the reason we got shredded by ND?

I buy the experience hypothesis (I don't know if there's super strong empirical support for it, but I think it's logical), but Tyler played 25 minutes against ND, which is well above his average for the season. In fairness, I think it also has to be said that in that game at least, we played better with Tyler in (+2) than when he was out (-4). Single-game plus-minus isn't really very useful, but it matched at least my eye-test in this case (and FWIW, I'm more on the preferring Tyler in the 10-15 than 20-25 range side of that endless argument).

[Furniture]

A couple of things:

3. Tyler's lapses. I did notice on multiple occasions that our "best defender" was beat backdoor which put tremendous pressure on our bigs. This was one point that hasn't been mentioned on this board but that should be mentioned. If he can't play GREAT D then he has no business being in the game.
.

Hello. I agree and I did mention it in one of my earlier posts. My sentiment is exactly the same.

[CDu]

Given that athletic ability and good defense don't necessarily go hand in hand at Duke (2012 had 3 NBA level athletes in 2 Plumlees and Rivers but team D was one of the worst at Duke), I wonder if the stronger correlation is seniority (ie 2010 when we had 3 seniors and 2 juniors starting)? Not sure how to easily get the stats of weighted average "experience" minutes by year, but I would hypothesize that experience is probably the best indicator of defensive success at Duke historically, meaning that this team will have a hard time ever becoming a lock-down unit like Duke teams of old. Also wonder if reduced minutes for Tyler and especially Josh were part of the reason we got shredded by ND?

Oh I think experience absolutely has an effect on defense. It takes time to learn to play defense the way Coach K coaches defense. So a veteran has an advantage over a freshman. Take Hairston for example. He's pretty limited in terms of talent in pretty much every area of the game. But by virtue of having had 3+ years in the system, he knows where to be on the floor. That obviously can only take you so far, but it makes a difference.

Unfortunately, in this era of basketball, team continuity is difficult to achieve. Team continuity and player talent are probably negatively correlated, so you're basically trading talent for experience. On offense, talent appears more important. On defense, experience appears more important.

[markbdevil]

I blame the loss on the black uniforms. I don't have the time or resources, but I'd love to know Duke's record when wearing black.

[Kedsy]

Gonna go outside the box for a second . . . maybe this Notre Dame game was more of an outlier than a trend? We had been playing pretty good defense for the past 7 games, starting from the Alabama game. There had been noticeable improvement, especially in the games against Michigan, UCLA, and Elon. We played absolutely smothering defense for long stretches in those games. What if this was just a bad day, in a hostile environment, against a well coached team with a great game plan? Plus, I don't imagine Coach K had gotten much sleep for the past few days . . .

My point is, this happens sometimes to young teams. Perhaps it was just a bad game, so we do some serious film study from the ND game, learn from what we did wrong, and then continue playing good defense, as we had been for the past month. Of course, it's not like we have a week to dwell on it, we've got 2 games in the next 5 days, so if we're going to improve, these guys need to get their s*** together fast. I'm not going to say "it's still early" at this point, because right now, our NCAA tournament resume is being written, and as it stands, we'd be lucky to grab a #3 seed. We need to come out strong and really start building some steam for these next 6 games before the showdown at Syracuse. A #1 seed is barely still within reach, but we don't have much room for error anymore, and there are only a few statement games left on the regular season schedule.

Good post. I concur wholeheartedly except for one thing: I don't think we need "statement games" to get a top seed. We need to win the ACC and win the ACC tournament. Not saying that'll be easy, but if we do it we have a very good shot at a #1 or at least a #2 seed.


Gotta disagree on the good game. Yes, Dawkins shot 40% (2-5 FG, 1-4 3pt FG). But other than that, this stats aren't impressive. 1 rebound, 0 assists, 0 blocks, 0 steals, 4 fouls. All that in 18 minutes. His D didn't regress, but he did have a few blunders (but everyone did on D).

As for his consistency, let's look at the last 9 games that Dawkins has played in as well as the KenPom ranking of those teams (in parentheses):

Vermont: 16pt (141); 20 minutes, 32 points per 40
Alabama: 0pt (69); 8 minutes, 0 points per 40
Arizona: 3pt (2); 4 minutes, 30 points per 40
Michigan: 8pt (20); 10 minutes, 32 points per 40
Gardner-Webb: 18pt (259); 22 minutes, 32.7 points per 40
UCLA: 3pt (31); 7 minutes, 17.1 points per 40
E Michigan: 20pt (137); 26 minutes, 30.8 points per 40
Elon: 15pt (138); 19 minutes, 31.6 points per 40
ND: 6pt (53); 18 minutes, 13.3 points per 40

Interestingly, Dawkins has failed to his double hits in any team ranked in the top 100 but has scored at least 16 in every game against teams outside the top 100. Like you said, a lot of this has to do with minutes. But Coach K, who knows Dawkins better than anyone on this board, clearly understands Dawkins's performance against bad, okay, and good teams better than you or I.

Based on the data above, I do feel that Dawkins is inconsistent for the reason (however, he is consistent against bad competition vs good competition). Also, like my previous statement, Dawkins hasn't performed well against good competition.

I'm not attempting to give any rationale, but it is an accurate observation.

I don't agree. I'm also not sure that points alone tell the story about performance, but I'll go along with that for now. In six of the nine games you mention, Andre scored between 30 and 33 points per 40 minutes (see my bolded addition to your post). That's amazingly consistent. Yeah, he had three games not in that range, but what player performs exactly the same every game?

The only argument I can see for saying Andre doesn't perform as well against top competition is that (as you point out) Coach K seems to give him fewer minutes against those teams. But that's pretty circumstantial, in my opinion.

We've seen Andre come up big in the past against good teams (in his junior year, four of his best games came against Michigan State, Washington, and future ACC champion Florida State). In that light, I don't think the evidence supports your observation.


Given that athletic ability and good defense don't necessarily go hand in hand at Duke (2012 had 3 NBA level athletes in 2 Plumlees and Rivers but team D was one of the worst at Duke), I wonder if the stronger correlation is seniority (ie 2010 when we had 3 seniors and 2 juniors starting)? Not sure how to easily get the stats of weighted average "experience" minutes by year, but I would hypothesize that experience is probably the best indicator of defensive success at Duke historically, meaning that this team will have a hard time ever becoming a lock-down unit like Duke teams of old. Also wonder if reduced minutes for Tyler and especially Josh were part of the reason we got shredded by ND?

One opposing data point certainly doesn't disprove a hypothesis, but one of the youngest Coach K teams ever, the 2006-07 team, had the 9th best defense in the country according to Pomeroy. That team had a lousy offense and sputtered at the end of the year, but we had no seniors and only one junior in the rotation and still had a top ten D.

[uh_no]

I blame the loss on the black uniforms. I don't have the time or resources, but I'd love to know Duke's record when wearing black.

you mean like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9_pPqWfI84

[dukelifer]

Oh I think experience absolutely has an effect on defense. It takes time to learn to play defense the way Coach K coaches defense. So a veteran has an advantage over a freshman. Take Hairston for example. He's pretty limited in terms of talent in pretty much every area of the game. But by virtue of having had 3+ years in the system, he knows where to be on the floor. That obviously can only take you so far, but it makes a difference.

Unfortunately, in this era of basketball, team continuity is difficult to achieve. Team continuity and player talent are probably negatively correlated, so you're basically trading talent for experience. On offense, talent appears more important. On defense, experience appears more important.

I think this has been the biggest challenge to Coach K's system. It is designed for continuity. Guys who play 4 years who learn to play the D. The O has had years of being shaky- but the D was always solid. Now the Duke teams look a bit lost. Not sure how K has changed with the times but I imagine he tries to teach the same basic system of D. It takes time to learn it because it relies on team works and communication. My guess is that they will get better but I must admit, I expected to see more improvement by now- given the level of athletes on this team.

[Des Esseintes]

I think this has been the biggest challenge to Coach K's system. It is designed for continuity. Guys who play 4 years who learn to play the D. The O has had years of being shaky- but the D was always solid. Now the Duke teams look a bit lost. Not sure how K has changed with the times but I imagine he tries to teach the same basic system of D. It takes time to learn it because it relies on team works and communication. My guess is that they will get better but I must admit, I expected to see more improvement by now- given the level of athletes on this team.

Every defensive system is designed for continuity.

[flyingdutchdevil]

I think this has been the biggest challenge to Coach K's system. It is designed for continuity. Guys who play 4 years who learn to play the D. The O has had years of being shaky- but the D was always solid. Now the Duke teams look a bit lost. Not sure how K has changed with the times but I imagine he tries to teach the same basic system of D. It takes time to learn it because it relies on team works and communication. My guess is that they will get better but I must admit, I expected to see more improvement by now- given the level of athletes on this team.

And this is why Coach K will never fully adopted the Calipari model. He needs those experienced players to inject solid D into the system.

[DukieInBrasil]

you mean like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9_pPqWfI84

always love watching that! thanks for perking up my afternoon!!!

[Des Esseintes]

And this is why Coach K will never fully adopted the Calipari model. He needs those experienced players to inject solid D into the system.

That's why? Good to know.

In any case, Calipari's system benefits from continuity, too. All systems benefit from continuity. Continuity, intelligent schemes, and talent. The more you have of each, the better off you are. I don't think we need to make Duke's system into some kind of unique snowflake in regards to the players it demands. K has won with many types and many combinations of types, including preponderances of youth.

[flyingdutchdevil]

That's why? Good to know.

Don't have to be sarcastic about it. I'm sure it's one of the many reasons he doesn't.

[Gthoma2a]

That thing that some have listed as being missing is simple... execution. We have talent and athletes, but we don't execute. You can be able to run circles around the other team and outplay them as individuals, but when you aren't playing as a team, you will lose consistently to teams that do. Kansas vs SDSU was a case of it last night. SDSU is a team that would be a nightmare for us, not because they have incredible talent, but because they are completely focused on making the play. Whether it's a rebound or a switch to prevent a cutter from getting to the basket, teams like that will make the play.

Furthermore, despite not being our most athletic team in the last few years, the 2010 team would eat our other recent teams alive. I am reminded of reports from their open practice prior to the ACC tournament that year where the description was that the team practiced with a focus that was missing from any other shootarounds. The report was that the entire team drilled with a purpose the entire time, as a team. It was described as the determination and maturity of a championship team. That is what we need to find. We need to focus on team oriented strategies and stop trying to use our athletes as more than a spoke in the wheel. Talent will still rise, but a system that focuses on creating through passes and spacing on offense and being in position/switching on D is much better than hoping our athletes perform better under chaos on both ends than the opponent to me. Any one guy take the ball and forget about his teammates on offense isn't going to work against top teams and neither is overplaying everything that is away from the basket and not coming over to help under the basket.

[Kfanarmy]

And this is why Coach K will never fully adopted the Calipari model. He needs those experienced players to inject solid D into the system. After all an awful lot of folks only expect three current starters to be replaced by freshman next year rather than 5...I'd argue he's moved further into the one-an-done recruiting mode than I ever would have thought.

[flyingdutchdevil]

After all an awful lot of folks only expect three current starters to be replaced by freshman next year rather than 5...I'd argue he's moved further into the one-an-done recruiting mode than I ever would have thought.

I do agree with you that Coach K is embracing the one-and-done model more than I though.

I disagree about 3 starters. I don't see Winslow nor Allen as a starter at the 3. We have Sulaimon (2 years in the program) and Jones (1 year in the program) who potentially provide more than newbies Winslow and Allen.

The unknown is certainly not always better.

[Gthoma2a]

I do agree with you that Coach K is embracing the one-and-done model more than I though.

I disagree about 3 starters. I don't see Winslow nor Allen as a starter at the 3. We have Sulaimon (2 years in the program) and Jones (1 year in the program) who potentially provide more than newbies Winslow and Allen.

The unknown is certainly not always better.

I think we see Sulaimon at the 2, Winslow at the 3, but I agree on Allen sitting a good bit of his freshman year. The point likely comes down to how consistent Cook is and how well Tyus plays D. I'd give the edge to Quinn, though.

[flyingdutchdevil]

I think we see Sulaimon at the 2, Winslow at the 3, but I agree on Allen sitting a good bit of his freshman year. The point likely comes down to how consistent Cook is and how well Tyus plays D. I'd give the edge to Quinn, though.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I see Quinn at the 1, Tyus at the 2, Okafor at the 5, and some mixture of Rasheed/M. Jones/Winslow/Jefferson/Ojeleye at the 3/4

But, it's too early to talk next season. Gotta get pumped for this year's team and pray that they learn to play solid D.

[Gthoma2a]

I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I see Quinn at the 1, Tyus at the 2, Okafor at the 5, and some mixture of Rasheed/M. Jones/Winslow/Jefferson/Ojeleye at the 3/4

But, it's too early to talk next season. Gotta get pumped for this year's team and pray that they learn to play solid D.

As we've seen in the past, anything could happen, in terms of lineup.

On this year's team, I'm praying, but leaving room for a deal with the devil, if that doesn't work out by March (Zoubek discovers an extra year of eligibility or something).:D

[trinity79]

This is arguably our most physically gifted team since 2001. We have insane athletes on the floor. I think that is why this team is particularly frustrating. It's not their lack of talent or athleticism that is making them lose games, it's something else. I don't know what that something else is, but it's clearly affecting defense (post and perimeter), communication, and closing out games.

I tend to agree with this assessment. When I perused the box score for the ND game, a single item jumped out at me: Duke had a paltry 8 assists while Notre Dame had 18. I think this indicates a lack of communication on offense, which carries over to the defensive end as well. One must take into account that this was the first trip into a hostile and fairly loud ACC road environment for Parker (:(), Hood (:o), and others. And we all know there were some other unique factors that affected this particular game. All in all I think this might be a "lessons learned" kind of game. I'm climbing back in from the ledge now, because it's getting really cold and windy out here.

And, fwiw, had we made half of the little close-in "dink" shots we missed in this game we would have won going away. Coaches nearly always attribute that problem to one of two causes: nerves or physical fatigue. As mentioned, I'm thinking maybe it was nerves in this opening ACC game.

[CDu]

I tend to agree with this assessment. When I perused the box score for the ND game, a single item jumped out at me: Duke had a paltry 8 assists while Notre Dame had 18. I think this indicates a lack of communication on offense, which carries over to the defensive end as well.

It's especially true against a zone defense. You don't beat a zone with dribbling or one-on-one play. You beat a zone with passing and coordinated team movement (draw the defense out of position with one pass, then use the next pass to create scoring chances. Instead, we tried to beat the zone primarily with outside shooting (and almost did so). But the 8 total assists suggests that the offense wasn't working together as a team, and that is either a communication or execution issue.

[Troublemaker]

And, fwiw, had we made half of the little close-in "dink" shots we missed in this game we would have won going away. Coaches nearly always attribute that problem to one of two causes: nerves or physical fatigue. As mentioned, I'm thinking maybe it was nerves in this opening ACC game.

I think Notre Dame fans would argue they missed a bunch of chippies as well and they normally shoot much better from the FT line, too. I think that kind of stuff either evened out or was even to Duke's advantage in that game. We just have to play much better in these road games to expect to win, and I think we will.

[sagegrouse]

Having studied sports metaphors (cliches, for you critics) for many decades, let me offer an analysis-by-analogy of the Notre Dame loss:


Bad game -- forget about it, and look to the next game. As members of the golf establishment often say, "If you have a bad round forget about it. If you have two bad rounds in a row, consult a pro."

This was a classic "tank job." A tank job, in tennis, is when you are playing poorly but winning, but then get mad because you are playing poorly and kick the match away. Duke was winning on outside shooting and -- in the middle of the game -- improved defense, but wasn't playing well overall. Notre Dame made a small run and then our offensive game fell apart. How do you say, "general quarters" ["prepare for battle" in navy lingo] in Italian -- "panica generale!" Yep! That was us!

"Nerves." (I always say "noives" when a one-word phrase, as homage to the Three Stooges.) We missed an awful lot of close-in shots we normally make, especially in the first half of the game. it is almost amazing that we led at the half.

Coach K's absence/William K.'s death. These were "defocusing" events, as senior managers sometimes say, and we played with a lack of focus throughout the game.

Our best player had a stinker of a game. Why is anyone surprised we lost?

Jabari had a bad game near his hometown with his Dad in attendance. Hmm.... perhaps he was pressing.

"Change is in the offing." Julio believes so. Maybe there will be some major changes by tomorrow night, but if there are, I suspect that they have been in the works for at least a couple of weeks. See the first item above.


All the best to DBR readers -- Go Duke!