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Udaman
03-25-2008, 10:25 AM
I'm sure like many on this board...watching the game Saturday was extremely difficult for me. I called a few friends at halftime and said, "We should be up by at least 10. We were killing them, and only lead by 5 - that is not a good sign." Again, I know others felt like this.

When the 2nd half started and suddenly we couldn't buy a basket and they were hitting running 3 pointers (and Nelson was still in his funk), I knew it was over.

But the truly frustrating part is that I felt like I was watching a broken record. Like I had seen this team before - especially in the tournament. So, I went back and looked at how Duke has done in the last four NCAA tournaments. We've played 2 games, 1 game, 3 games and 3 games over that stretch, or a total of 12.

The numbers really speak for themselves. Over that stretch, we have shot 41.2% from the floor and 29.3% from behind the arc. Those numbers are really stunning. They would be bad for a 1-2 game stretch, but this is twelve games - 1/3rd of a season. I think even more important is that our assist to turnover ratio during these twelve games is .621. No, I don't have that backward, we committed 1.6 turnovers per assist. In only one game did we have more assists than turnovers, and it was 9 to 8.

The other number that jumped out at me is that we made a total of 90 assists in those games on 191 made baskets. In five of those games we had fewer than 10 total assists in the game.

I think the tough part is that those stats all really stand in stark contrast to how we have done during the season. We've finished every year with a positive assist to turnover ratio. We tend to have a pretty decent ratio to assists per made shots, and we always shoot better in the regular season (both total and in ACC games).

So, I don't know what to make out of this. Does it mean we get tired at the end? Maybe. Does it mean that teams tend to figure us out and adjust during the tournament? Maybe. Personally, I think it shows that for some reason our teams get really tight in the tournament. Maybe it's the pressure of being Duke. Maybe it's the fact that we are now so universally hated, that these young players feel supreme pressure to try and win for the fans and students. But clearly over the last 4 years we have been a different team once the NCAA tournament starts - one that tends to force shots, doesn't pass nearly as much, and one that turns the ball over at a very high rate.

Thoughts?

Karl Beem
03-25-2008, 10:30 AM
What's the rap on Duke?

They always come to play. They play harder.

As a result Coach K's teams tend to over achieve. However other teams tend to catch up as the season goes along. This along with flu problems might help to explain what happened this past weekend.

Bluedog
03-25-2008, 10:46 AM
I think one obvious explanation (but perhaps it doesn't explain it all) is that competition in the NCAA tournament is much stronger than the average opponent throughout the season. If we earn a strong seed, there's only one game against a potentially sub-par opponent, and the rest of the teams obviously are good since they made the tournament and have won games in the tournament. So, I think it's largely a function of the competition. Against the ACC teams that made the tournament this year, we were 3-3 during the season.