I can't take it anymore

[Jumbo]

Florida
Brewer 33
Noah 25
Horford 36
Green 38
Humphrey 32
Richard 17
Hodge 15
Speights 3
Werner 1

Kansas
Wright 36
Kaun 23
Chalmers 33
Rush 36
Robinson 25
Collins 25
Jackson 10
Arther 8
(4 walk-ons with one minute each)

USC
Young 36
Gibson 30
Stewart 32
Hackett 33
Pruitt 37
Lewis 21
Wilkinson 9
Austin 1
Cromwell 1

Oregon
Leunen 34
Brooks 38
Hairston 32
Taylor 32
Porter 38
Catron 19
Zahn 6
Oguchi 1

Southern Illinois
Falker 34
Boyle 20
Tatum 31
Mullins 35
Young 36
Green 24
Clemmons 13
Bone 3
(4 walk-ons with 1)

UCLA
Shipp 33
Mbah a Moute 35
Mata 31
Collison 35
Afflalo 38
Aboya 9
Roll 9
Westbrook 4
Wright 3
Keefe 3

Georgetown
Summers 21
Green 36
Hibbert 34
Wallace 37
Sapp 39
Ewing Jr. 27
Rivers 4
Crawford 2

Texas A&M
Carter 17
Kavaliauskas 26
Jones 34
Law IV 35
Kirk 40
Sloan 25
Pompey 19
Davis 2
Roland 1
Elonu 1

Vanderbilt
Foster 42
Neltner 21
Gordon 37
Byars 45
Cage 49
Skuchas 28
Beal 13
Brown 9
Metcalfe 3
Drake 3

Butler
Betko 29
Crone 35
Ligon 18
Graves 39
Green 39
Streicher 28
Campbell 10
Nellems 2

What are those? The minutes played for 10 of the teams in the Sweet 16 from their most recent game.

Duke
McRoberts 40
Henderson 28
Paulus 38
Nelson 23
Scheyer 35
Thomas 18
Pocius 9
McClure 8
Davidson 1

What's that? Duke vs. VCU. See much of a difference with those other teams? I sure don't. And I didn't even include teams that won first-round games and lost in the second round, or teams like UNLV, whose minute-distribution off the bench was 13-11-9-3-3-2.

I keep hearing about all these other "deep" teams. Well, where are they? Maybe some of you should start watching teams other than Duke and UNC play basketball. Then, you might notice that around the country, successful teams aren't going much deeper than Duke.

Give it a rest, already. It's pretty hard to justify saying that Duke didn't utilize depth, was too tired, etc. when Kansas is winning with Darrell Arthur only getting 8 minutes off the bench, when Georgetown's playing 6 guys, when Butler's starting guards play 39 minutes apiece against Maryland's pressure, and so on. Florida, the defending champs, played seven guys, essentially, with 36 minutes off the bench. Duke used 8, essentially, with ... wait for it ... 36 minutes off the bench.

The next time I hear the "depth" argument again, I'm just re-posting this. Depth is a lovely argument to make in a vacuum. It's completely hollow when you look at what the vast majority of other (and successful) teams have done in the Tourney.

[dukepsy1963]

Yep, that arguement/excuse just doesn't seem to wash based on what you present here....!! Thanks ...veerrrrry interesting.....!!!

Go Duke Men and Women!!!!

[devildownunder]

K used his bench this year. He had no choice. I have some quibbles with how he used it but he certainly used it. I agree 100 percent that one cannot blame this season's, uhm...errr, relative lack of preferred rational outcomes, on any reluctance by K to employ a deep rotation.

I think the question of whether it would have helped previous teams is still open to endless debate, however, as the answer is very much dependent on the personnel involved and the challenges they faced.


I haven't been reading as many posts up here as I'm sure you have, Jumbo, are people really still harping on depth or is it more the case that people are raising the question of whether specific players could have helped us if given more minutes? Those two issues would be related, of course, but not quite the same thing.

[phaedrus]

that's strange, i could have sworn florida only had 5 players. was noah in foul trouble or something?

[ChrisP]

I'm so tired of reading people around here questioning the coaching staff - I mean, have you SEEN the thread about weight lifting? Do these people honestly think the coaches don't notice/haven't thought of this stuff?

Now, I'm no K apologist, I do get frustrated with things sometimes, but that's part of being a fan. And, while I might wonder about a decision here or there in the privacy of my own living room, I do have a ton of respect for his abilities. After all, the man's got 2 more national championships than I do (side note: the Helms Foundation retroactively awarded me the 1934 national championship because a psychic I once visited in the French Quarter told me that she felt I'd been a great set shooter for the fightin' mules of Kentucky Mountain Bible College). Anyway...my point is that I'm glad to have some "proof" that all this talk about how K should have played so-and-so such-and-such minutes is just that, talk. Most of it uninformed.

Do people really think that K is holding Marty down on purpose? Do they honestly believe that, in practice, he lights it up from 3, never turns it over and plays consistent, hard-nosed defense and the coaches just don't notice it? I'm NOT making fun of Marty here, I love him and all the players and I want them all to do well and live up to their potential. I know when I played ball back in HS, it sometimes took a few times up and down the court to get into the flow of the game and so, yes, I do get frustrated when I see K seemingly "yank" a guy who's made a mistake after only being in for a couple minutes. Doesn't mean he's wrong to make that decision. And he's not going to be right 100% of the time either - get over it! As great a coach as he is, he's human. There's no magic formula on how to coach and substitute and condition players that automatically leads to a "W" or a championship. It's a process, involving human beings.

So thanks, Jumbo, for pointing out that other teams - teams that I suppose would be considered more "successful" have a similar distribution of minutes to ours. I'm just as disappointed that the season is over and that it ended the way it did as the next guy, but please, PLEASE, can we stop with some of the complaining and second-guessing here. Or at least, can we harp on something NEW?

[chrisheery]

I agree that not having a deep bench doesn't make a lot of sense when you have an extremely talented first 5 guys. Or if the first 5 are head and shoulders above the rest of the team. Or if they are far more experienced and you need them more in tight games.

However, this is not the case with this team. I think this team should be looked at differently than others. It should also be pointed out that this formula didn't really work that well for us down the stretch, so I don't see how comparing us to them proves any point. For them, it has worked and they are in the sweet 16, no?

Anyway, the reason it seems more reasonable with this team to let more guys play more minutes is that I (and seemingly plenty of others) are not convinced that our most talented 5 guys are getting the majority of the minutes. Only by allowing the bench to play more do you find out who the elite players are that should get the majority of the minutes when you have a whole team of freshmen and sophomores.

Speaking to the point about Marty: there is such a thing a self-fullfilling prophecy. In his case, if Coach K pulled him aside and said: "son, you and gerald can do things no one else on this team can do. i know you will make mistakes doing them, but i want you to try to do it anyway. as you have success, you will realize where the mistakes come from and try to avoid them going forward, and we will help you do that," I think Marty would respond well. Thats all anyone seems to be saying. Once you tell a kid he makes too many mistakes, he only thinks about the mistakes. You know who else made lots of mistakes at the same age? Jason Williams and Bobby Hurley. You know why no one cared? Because they could do things no one else could do for us. And when you gave them a little freedom to do those things, the good outweighed the bad exponentially. Will Marty be those guys? No, probably not. Is he the closest thing, aside from Hendo, we have on this team? I think so.

So, instead of trying to recruit a guy like him who makes less mistakes and plays better D, why not let him play on a team that is already having trouble winning and learn for next year? I don't think this is a crazy thought. I can tell you letting someone play inefficiently for 37 minutes a game certainly doesn't lead to any change. Maybe some of our starters would be better guys coming off the bench.

[Lulu]

I haven't been complaining about depth this year, at least I hope not, as it really wasn't much of an issue for us this year. In past years, yes, I have complained. In any case, I don't remember foul trouble hurting us that often this year anyway.

That said, it was out of sheer curiosity that I went ahead and looked up our foes in their most recent game:

R. Terry, F 27
B. Wright, F 23
T. Hansbrough, F 38
W. Ellington, 22
T. Lawson, 36
M. Ginyard, 17
D. Green, 8
D. Thompson, 13
W. Miller, 7
A. Stepheson, 4
5 others with 1 minutes

...pretty deep.


The rest:
Tennessee
W. Chism, F 18
D. Bradshaw, G 23
J. Smith, G 32
C. Lofton, G 33
R. Smith, G 32
J. Howell, G 10
J. Tabb, G 13
D. Crews, F 18
R. Childress, F 21

UNLV
G. Essengue, F 29
J. Adams, G 27
K. Kruger, G 37
M. Umeh, G 37
W. White, G 29
J. Anthony, C 11
C. Terry, G-F 13
J. Darger, F 9
C. Bailey, F 3
M. Lawrence, G 3
R. Rougeau, G 2

Wisconsin
M. Landry, F 27
A. Tucker, F 39
J. Chappell, F-C 18
M. Flowers, G 19
K. Taylor, G 36
J. Bohannon, G 30
T. Hughes, G 7
G. Stiemsma, C 8
J. Krabbenhoft, G-F 16

Memphis
R. Dozier, F 34
J. Dorsey, F 30
W. Kemp, G 11
A. Anderson, G 37
C. Douglas-Roberts, G 23
J. Hunt, G 23
A. Allen, G 29
D. Mack, G 8
K. Cooper, F-C 5

OSU
I. Harris, F 20
G. Oden, C 35
M. Conley Jr., G 43
R. Lewis, G 35
J. Butler, G 43
D. Lighty, G-F 12
D. Cook, G 19
O. Hunter, F 14
M. Terwilliger, F-C 4
...OT game

Louisville
T. Williams, F 37
E. Clark, G-F 19
D. Padgett, F-C 18
E. Sosa, G 34
B. Jenkins, G 27
J. Palacios, F 20
D. Caracter, F 7
A. McGee, G 5
J. Smith, G 16
T. Farley, C 15
2 with 1 minute

Pitt
L. Kendall, F 34
A. Gray, C 26
L. Fields, G 39
A. Graves, G 34
M. Cook, G-F 22
K. Benjamin, G 14
R. Ramon, G 28
T. Biggs, F 3
S. Young, F 25

VCU
W. Fameni, F 25
M. Anderson, F 41
E. Maynor, G 42
B. Walker, G 37
J. Pellot-Rosa, G 36
M. Coward, G 3
F. Ndongo, F 11
J. Shuler, G 20
C. Roland, C 6
T. Gwynn, F 4

To Repeat:
J. McRoberts, F-C 40
G. Henderson, G-F 28
G. Paulus, G 38
D. Nelson, G 23
J. Scheyer, G 35
M. Pocius, G-F 9
D. McClure, F 8
L. Thomas, F 18
J. Davidson, G 1

There's a few OTs and injuries in there, and even so, not many teams going much deeper than us, if at all. I'd say only a few are legitimately 8 deep to an extent further than us. UNC being legitimately 9 deep is just ridiculous.

Now, to play devils' advocate for a second, you could say that those arguing about our depth mean more specifially "post-depth" (or perhaps developing depth througout the season). In that case... maybe there's a point to be made. After all, 5 of our guys playing significant minutes have a "G" for guard somewhere next to them. We're always overloaded with guards and everyone knows that. Perhaps we could use a couple more 4's and 5's with significant minutes. I think a lot of people were just sad to see Zoubek not even take off him warm-ups in the last game of the season, despite whatever type of team we were playing.

Edit: Ok, so there are a couple extra in there of interest but who lost, like Wisconsin #2 seed, VCU who beat us, and Louisville (Pitino). Didn't notice the first time, but Tennessee has pretty incredible balace, or depth, too I guess.

[dukie8]

i haven't been reading a lot of messages complaining that the bench should have been played more against vcu. what i have read is how it was used and/or who was on it. can you explain why scheyer was in there for 35 minutes? i sure hope it wasn't for his defense. he scored a grand total of 7 points in 35 minutes so it wasn't for his offense. are you going to tell me if marty had his 35 minutes and scheyer took marty's 9 minutes, marty would have walked away with less than 7 points and/or maynor would have put up 50?

[EagleDevil]

Jumbo,

Were it not for all the instability with the board systems, I would have posted by now that I was happy to see Coach K recognize that this was a year to play depth. (Have you seen anyone complaining about depth, or are you just getting a jump on next year? ;) ) It wasn't just the VCU game, of course. I think it happened around the time of the 4-game losing streak. It didn't work to turn the season around, but hopefully it will at least encourage folks like Marty and Lance to stick around.

I hope K gets used to it, because if Josh leaves, next year's team is going to have a ton of players and no obvious superstars... 40 minutes of Blue Devil hell, anyone? :rolleyes:

Chris

[AluminumDuke]

i haven't been reading a lot of messages complaining that the bench should have been played more against vcu. what i have read is how it was used and/or who was on it. can you explain why scheyer was in there for 35 minutes? i sure hope it wasn't for his defense. he scored a grand total of 7 points in 35 minutes so it wasn't for his offense. are you going to tell me if marty had his 35 minutes and scheyer took marty's 9 minutes, marty would have walked away with less than 7 points and/or maynor would have put up 50?

Do you know for a certainty that if Marty had taken Scheyer's 35 minutes that the defensive attention that was so obviously focused on Scheyer throughout that game would have been given to Marty? If so, Marty may have had 7 points or less. If not, certainly that defensive attention focused elsewhere would have affected someone's scoring.

As for Maynor putting up 50, again this assumes that Marty would have guarded Maynor in a vacuum. Maybe Maynor doesn't score 50. Maybe the help that the rest of the team gives Marty when he is out of position or loses Maynor results in increased production for the rest of VCU's team.

I don't claim to know the answers to these questions, so I'll defer to those who are paid to do answer these questions. I assume that these are the types of questions the coaching staff asks themselves in preparing for every game.

[Jumbo]

Speaking to the point about Marty: there is such a thing a self-fullfilling prophecy. In his case, if Coach K pulled him aside and said: "son, you and gerald can do things no one else on this team can do. i know you will make mistakes doing them, but i want you to try to do it anyway. as you have success, you will realize where the mistakes come from and try to avoid them going forward, and we will help you do that," I think Marty would respond well. Thats all anyone seems to be saying. Once you tell a kid he makes too many mistakes, he only thinks about the mistakes. You know who else made lots of mistakes at the same age? Jason Williams and Bobby Hurley. You know why no one cared? Because they could do things no one else could do for us. And when you gave them a little freedom to do those things, the good outweighed the bad exponentially. Will Marty be those guys? No, probably not. Is he the closest thing, aside from Hendo, we have on this team? I think so.

Do you have any idea what Coach K has, or hasn't, been telling him in practice for two years? Answer: No, you don't. Marty got some good run against VCU. He leaked out for one fast break layup, and was otherwise extremely quiet. I'm telling you, Marty is the ultimate manifestation of backup QB syndrome. We see him in limited minutes and immediately want to believe he's capable of much more. Then he has one breakout game and assume that's what he can give Duke regularly, and dismiss the idea that it might be an anomaly. Something tells me that Coach K is pretty damn competitive, and that he's probably not limiting someone's minutes who would help him win.

[feldspar]

Oh please, Jumbo. Quit trying to use these shifty tactics like "facts" and "logic" on us. We see right through you.

[Jumbo]

i haven't been reading a lot of messages complaining that the bench should have been played more against vcu. what i have read is how it was used and/or who was on it. can you explain why scheyer was in there for 35 minutes? i sure hope it wasn't for his defense. he scored a grand total of 7 points in 35 minutes so it wasn't for his offense. are you going to tell me if marty had his 35 minutes and scheyer took marty's 9 minutes, marty would have walked away with less than 7 points and/or maynor would have put up 50?

Sure, I can explain it. 1) Nelson was in foul trouble. 2) Scheyer is Duke's second-best perimeter defender, and drew Maynor for much of the game. (And, while Maynor went nuts at the end, he did a good job for much of the night -- many of Duke's real breakdowns were in transition D) 3) Scheyer is a key secondary ball-handler, especially against VCU's press, and is much better in this regard. 4) Scheyer, even when he's not scoring, draws attention, stretches the floor, and is a steadying influence.
Should Scheyer have shot more? Absolutely -- he passed up open looks. But Pocius scored three points in nine minutes, and they all came on a busted play -- a touchdown pass over the press. So, what else did he do on offense?
The fact that you are seemingly advocating giving Marty Scheyer's 35 minutes is patently absurd. Scheyer, in all the threads, is consistently overlooked because he does all the little things that go over most fans heads. He's going to be exposed to a certain degree given his heavy minutes, but can you imagine what people might say about Marty if he were defending for 35 minutes? It's an absurd line of reasoning. When people start talking about how Scheyer isn't "quick" enough, or complain about his defense, or things of that nature, it's clear they aren't getting it. And the fascination with Pocius has become something of a schoolboy crush -- people are overlooking five flaws because he's the basketball equivalent of a "hottie" based on his hops, speed and performance against NCSU.

[Jumbo]

Jumbo,

Were it not for all the instability with the board systems, I would have posted by now that I was happy to see Coach K recognize that this was a year to play depth. (Have you seen anyone complaining about depth, or are you just getting a jump on next year? ;) ) It wasn't just the VCU game, of course. I think it happened around the time of the 4-game losing streak. It didn't work to turn the season around, but hopefully it will at least encourage folks like Marty and Lance to stick around.

I hope K gets used to it, because if Josh leaves, next year's team is going to have a ton of players and no obvious superstars... 40 minutes of Blue Devil hell, anyone? :rolleyes:

Chris

Sadly, I've seen it in a bunch of different threads. Glad you've come around on this one. And I believe Duke will go at least eight deep next year. Next could remind me of 1996-97, if not 1997-98. Duke might not go that deep, but if Josh is the only departure, and Duke gets Patterson, I can't see any scenario in which, at the very least, Paulus, Scheyer, Nelson, Henderson, Singler, Patterson, Thomas, Smith, McClure and Zoubek get regular playing time. Pocius could be on the outside, looking in with that group, and McClure/Zoubek could fall out too. King will be a specialist. Either way, K won't keep many of those kids off the floor.

[TampaDuke]

I think K has used his depth more this year than any other in the recent past. He also seems to have experimented more this year. I don't have any quibbles with either of those issues and, in fact, welcome it.

That said, I think the "we don't use our depth" crowd would not argue that we didn't use the bench enough in the VCU game. Rather, from what I've seen, the argument is that we don't use our depth enough earlier in the season. I was glad to see Marty get some meaningful minutes toward the end of the season, but it does make me wonder what he could have brought earlier, even last year.

Looking at one game of numbers doesn't really capture the argument (for or against), IMHO.

[chrisheery]

i have a crush on pocius. your point is well taken that we focus on the good and ignore the bad when we wish that he played more. i would answer that one way: try it one time and find out what happens.

the thing is, if marty is being over played like shy-guy was, he would go by the guy. he might also turn it over, but he proved on multiple occasions that when one guy overplays him, he beats at least that guy (all year, even when barely playing). those plays usually resulted in him throwing it out of bounds. however, i respond to that problem thusly: at least he isn't throwing it away at midcourt or standing not knowing what to do until the shot clock runs down. with a little more experience, maybe those drives turn productive or at least make the guy guarding him more concern.

i am not saying that scheyer offers nothing to our team. i think he is going to be a great one for us. i think hendo will too. all i am saying is that if you take 4-5 minutes from dmarc and 4-5 from scheyer, maybe you get to see if pocius really has any impact over a longer period of time.

also, i think this defensive liability thing is overrated. josh and mcclure couldn't have been burned worse on defense in the NC state tournament game. i mean, every single play was a pick and role right at them and they were out of position each time. i never heard anyone saying that those guys deserve no minutes because they made some mistakes. however, i rumor got passed around that coach k has a problem with marty's defense. not sure i have ever heard him say it. now, it is fact and used to explain everything about him. look, it is hard to get adjusted to the pace of the game in the 4 minutes you are in. i bet with more time in any game anyone improves their positioning and awareness. this whole team had a problem with team defense and awareness, i don't see how he was that much worse.

yes, i love him. love him.

[imagepro]

. Either way, K won't keep many of those kids off the floor.



I want kids to play. It's good for MANY reasons, and mainly team moral.

But based on many years of observation, I sorta' doubt we ever go as deep as you seem think we may next year. I hope you're right and I'm wrong!

[Saratoga2]

[QUOTE=Jumbo;8857]Sure, I can explain it. 1) Nelson was in foul trouble. 2) Scheyer is Duke's second-best perimeter defender, and drew Maynor for much of the game. (And, while Maynor went nuts at the end, he did a good job for much of the night -- many of Duke's real breakdowns were in transition D) 3) Scheyer is a key secondary ball-handler, especially against VCU's press, and is much better in this regard. 4) Scheyer, even when he's not scoring, draws attention, stretches the floor, and is a steadying influence.
Should Scheyer have shot more? Absolutely -- he passed up open looks. But Pocius scored three points in nine minutes, and they all came on a busted play -- a touchdown pass over the press. So, what else did he do on offense?
The fact that you are seemingly advocating giving Marty Scheyer's 35 minutes is patently absurd. Scheyer, in all the threads, is consistently overlooked because he does all the little things that go over most fans heads. QUOTE]

Scheyer reminds me a lot of John Havlicek in that he was around 6'5 and about 205 pounds playing for the Celtics. He also had incredible stamina and had about the same speed as Scheyer has. Clearly Jon will add strength and grow into a better player with time and also as his confidence and assertiveness grows.

I agree totally that Jon is our second best ball handler and is not rattled by pressure into a lot of unforced turnovers. He has the shooting form needed to put up respectable points per game and also has other skills that will allow him to penetrate and score. His foul shooting is also a strong attribute on a team sorely lacking in that regard. Next season he is likely to make significant improvements in his game. A quicker shot release, more assertiveness and added strength are the areas he needs to improve.

[jkidd31]

Do you have any idea what Coach K has, or hasn't, been telling him in practice for two years? Answer: No, you don't. Marty got some good run against VCU. He leaked out for one fast break layup, and was otherwise extremely quiet. I'm telling you, Marty is the ultimate manifestation of backup QB syndrome. We see him in limited minutes and immediately want to believe he's capable of much more. Then he has one breakout game and assume that's what he can give Duke regularly, and dismiss the idea that it might be an anomaly. Something tells me that Coach K is pretty damn competitive, and that he's probably not limiting someone's minutes who would help him win.

I love the backup QB analogy Jumbo, I think that is dead on. I think if Marty improves his D he could be the classic instant offense guy off the bench. But scoring is negated if your guy blows by you for layups.

[imagepro]

Several thanked Jumbo for his research, and I do too. It took some effort and time. And the same to you too LuLu!

One member noted to him, --"Yep, that arguement/excuse just doesn't seem to wash based on what you present here....!! Thanks ...veerrrrry interesting.....!!!

"Very interesting" Huh? Well Lulu, to you I say ---"Very Interesting. That arguement/excuse just doesn't seem to wash based on what you present here. Thanks for pointing that out."

Guys and gals, it proves one thing--nothing. Is Jumbo right or is Lulu right? We have our feelings and opinions. You can put what you want in a post (myself included), to attempt to substantiate or validate your views. But usually, someone will counter as Lulu did. Sometimes logically, sometimes not.

I like what Lulu posted, you may like what Jumbo put up. Either is ok.

Jumbo, you say "I can't take it anymore"--- I bet time proves you can!!!

Seee Yaa!

[CMS2478]

[QUOTE=Jumbo;8858] Pocius could be on the outside, looking in with that group, and McClure/Zoubek could fall out too.

Sadly, I agree with this. I think Pocius will see VERY LITTLE playing time. He didn't get much this year and we are adding 3 freshman to the mix who will get minutes. So it may in Marty's best interest to play professionally oversees or transfer. Who could blame him??? I worry about Zoubek and McClure as well. If Josh leaves and Patterson doesn't come then they will get plenty of minutes. If we have Josh or Patterson I don't see them getting a whole of minutes with Lance and Singler in the mix too. Everyone talks about a really deep team next year. It's only deep if you play em' and Coach K traditionally doesn't play more than 8. Paulus, Sheyer, Nelson, Thomas, McRoberts or Patterson, Singler, Henderson. That's seven the other 5 (Pocius, Zoubek, McClure, Smith, and King) will have to battle for that final spot in the rotation and I foresee the other four SITTING A LOT!!! :(

[Chicago 1995]

But scoring is negated if your guy blows by you for layups.

That's just as true for Marty as it is for anyone else on the team. That's important when discussing our PG and his improved shooting, er, play over the last six weeks.

[CMS2478]

That's just as true for Marty as it is for anyone else on the team. That's important when discussing our PG and his improved shooting, er, play over the last six weeks.

I love Greg to death, but he is obviously not quick enough to keep certain point guards in front of him. I know Coach K like the "in your face defense" but wouldn't we be better off if Greg didn't play so far up on the ball-handler. Then he wouldn't get beat so frequently. I'm sure Coach K has his reasons, but when I coach my middle school team and the opposing team has a point guard that is quicker than mine, I tell my PG to play off him some and keep him in front. :confused:

[dcarp23]

King will be a specialist.

Jumbo-What do you mean by this?

[jma4life]

In fairness to his supporters, I believe there was a Jerry West comment praising Marty and he has looked fantastic in international play and that has certainly contributed to his appeal and led to even increased backup qb syndrome.

That said, I think Jumbo's overall point is correct. This year at least, I thought that enough guys got solid burn. I think some guys like Paulus could have benefitted from extra rest, but at the same time, a worn out Paulus at point guard is better than any other option we had so I can't really disagree with his playing time either. I would like to see more guys play, but I don't think that giving a couple of other guys an extra 5 mpg is going to really change the success of this or really any other Duke team.

One thing I will say is that the importance of being able to get into the flow of the game can not be underestimated- the problem was that on this team, we did not really have the luxury to wait for say Pocius to get into the flow (close games) when we could just bring in Henderson. I don't think its a complete coincidence that he had his best game when K allowed him to play through a couple of mistakes.

[CMS2478]

In fairness to his supporters, I believe there was a Jerry West comment praising Marty and he has looked fantastic in international play and that has certainly contributed to his appeal and led to even increased backup qb syndrome.

That said, I think Jumbo's overall point is correct. This year at least, I thought that enough guys got solid burn. I think some guys like Paulus could have benefitted from extra rest, but at the same time, a worn out Paulus at point guard is better than any other option we had so I can't really disagree with his playing time either. I would like to see more guys play, but I don't think that giving a couple of other guys an extra 5 mpg is going to really change the success of this or really any other Duke team.

One thing I will say is that the importance of being able to get into the flow of the game can not be underestimated- the problem was that on this team, we did not really have the luxury to wait for say Pocius to get into the flow (close games) when we could just bring in Henderson. I don't think its a complete coincidence that he had his best game when K allowed him to play through a couple of mistakes.

I agree with you to a certain extent..............although Carolina is pretty successful at running them in and out. But your point is what worries me about next year. We could potentially go 11 deep (if we have either Patterson or McRoberts), and there is not enough minutes to go around for everyone to "get in the flow of the game." :o

[phaedrus]

I love Greg to death, but he is obviously not quick enough to keep certain point guards in front of him. I know Coach K like the "in your face defense" but wouldn't we be better off if Greg didn't play so far up on the ball-handler. Then he wouldn't get beat so frequently. I'm sure Coach K has his reasons, but when I coach my middle school team and the opposing team has a point guard that is quicker than mine, I tell my PG to play off him some and keep him in front. :confused:

this is probably the wrong thread to go off on this, and jumbo or someone else can elaborate better than i, but our pressure man-to-man always leaves our one-on-one defenders out to dry. dockery was obviously a great defender but he got blown by - and he also forced a lot of turnovers. i remember last year when marco killingsworth went off for 30+: i was at the state game soon afterwards and they got some easy inside buckets. my friend expressed her dissatisfaction with shelden's defense, calling him overrated and complaining that he was getting beat. i explained that our perimeter ball pressure allowed frequent penetration, shelden would come over to help and leave his man open for the dish. it wasn't shelden's fault, it was the fault of poor defensive rotation.

point being, defense is a team game just like offense, if not moreso. we use our pressure to force mistakes and we had our entire starting lineup among the top 20 in the conference in steals. recall that defense was the hallmark of this team for the first 3/4 of the season, and when it broke down at the end it wasn't because of one slow perimeter defender, it was because of poor communication and teamwork.

[CMS2478]

this is probably the wrong thread to go off on this, and jumbo or someone else can elaborate better than i, but our pressure man-to-man always leaves our one-on-one defenders out to dry. dockery was obviously a great defender but he got blown by - and he also forced a lot of turnovers. i remember last year when marco killingsworth went off for 30+: i was at the state game soon afterwards and they got some easy inside buckets. my friend expressed her dissatisfaction with shelden's defense, calling him overrated and complaining that he was getting beat. i explained that our perimeter ball pressure allowed frequent penetration, shelden would come over to help and leave his man open for the dish. it wasn't shelden's fault, it was the fault of poor defensive rotation.

point being, defense is a team game just like offense, if not moreso. we use our pressure to force mistakes and we had our entire starting lineup among the top 20 in the conference in steals. recall that defense was the hallmark of this team for the first 3/4 of the season, and when it broke down at the end it wasn't because of one slow perimeter defender, it was because of poor communication and teamwork.

I would still challenge two things......1) if we didn't play so far out there on the ball, we wouldn't have to rotate as much bc our guards wouldn't get burnt as much and 2) We don't have the "Landlord" standing back there anymore to block shots when Greg or other guards get burnt.

However, you do make a valid point about the rotation and team defense.......I cannot argue that. I just think that the more other guards go by ours. The more open layups and dunks you see, bc someone comes over to help and then someone has to "help the helper."

[Jumbo]

Several thanked Jumbo for his research, and I do too. It took some effort and time. And the same to you too LuLu!

One member noted to him, --"Yep, that arguement/excuse just doesn't seem to wash based on what you present here....!! Thanks ...veerrrrry interesting.....!!!

"Very interesting" Huh? Well Lulu, to you I say ---"Very Interesting. That arguement/excuse just doesn't seem to wash based on what you present here. Thanks for pointing that out."

Guys and gals, it proves one thing--nothing. Is Jumbo right or is Lulu right? We have our feelings and opinions. You can put what you want in a post (myself included), to attempt to substantiate or validate your views. But usually, someone will counter as Lulu did. Sometimes logically, sometimes not.

I like what Lulu posted, you may like what Jumbo put up. Either is ok.

Jumbo, you say "I can't take it anymore"--- I bet time proves you can!!!

Seee Yaa!

Lulu wasn't countering me. If Lulu was attempting counter me, he/she did a poor job. For one, Lulu included teams that lost, like VCU and Wisconsin. And, interestingly, both those teams use their benches about the same amount Duke did. Plus, teams like UNLV barely played more bench minutes than Duke. The only super-deep teams, who gave extended minutes beyond the eight-deep Duke went, were UNC and Tennessee.

[Jumbo]

[QUOTE=Jumbo;8858] Pocius could be on the outside, looking in with that group, and McClure/Zoubek could fall out too.

Sadly, I agree with this. I think Pocius will see VERY LITTLE playing time. He didn't get much this year and we are adding 3 freshman to the mix who will get minutes. So it may in Marty's best interest to play professionally oversees or transfer. Who could blame him??? I worry about Zoubek and McClure as well. If Josh leaves and Patterson doesn't come then they will get plenty of minutes. If we have Josh or Patterson I don't see them getting a whole of minutes with Lance and Singler in the mix too. Everyone talks about a really deep team next year. It's only deep if you play em' and Coach K traditionally doesn't play more than 8. Paulus, Sheyer, Nelson, Thomas, McRoberts or Patterson, Singler, Henderson. That's seven the other 5 (Pocius, Zoubek, McClure, Smith, and King) will have to battle for that final spot in the rotation and I foresee the other four SITTING A LOT!!! :(

1) McRoberts is gone. 100% No ifs. Just let this one go.
2) There is absolutely nothing to worry about with Zoubek. He's not going anywhere. I really hope he can get stronger so that he can contribute next year. The coaching staff thinks he can, and wants him to succeed.
3) McClure isn't going anywhere next year. There's nothing to worry about.
4) Depth isn't how many guys you play as much as how many guys you CAN play. Maybe K will only play 8 guys next year. But, he'll have 10-12 scholarship players for practice. This will make everyone work harder and play better. And K will have options with foul trouble -- having a guy like McClure as a 10th man or Marty as an 11th man is a really nice option if guys get hurt or saddled with fouls.
5) I couldn't blame Marty for leaving either. I like him, but I've seen enough (and heard enough) to be convinced that he's just not as good as Paulus, Scheyer, Nelson and Henderson. The jury is obviously out on Smith. If he wants to play more, there's no reason he can't leave. And I wouldn't blame him -- or the coaches -- if that were to happen.

[Jumbo]

That's just as true for Marty as it is for anyone else on the team. That's important when discussing our PG and his improved shooting, er, play over the last six weeks.

I'm sorry, but Paulus brings a lot more to the table than Pocius. Yes, Paulus' on-ball defense leaves something to be desired. But he doesn't get lost in rotations nearly as frequently as Pocius. Sure, Paulus has turnover problems, but he still gets Duke into its offense better than anyone else. Marty, at times, can be an explosive scorer. But he has real weaknesses that go beyond simple "guard your own man" problems. The coaching is not dumb, and I'm sure some of this manifests itself in practice.

[Jumbo]

Jumbo-What do you mean by this?


King's a great shooter. I could see him getting some run in games where Duke is struggling from downtown, going against a zone, etc. But I have a hard time seeing him beat out Singler, Thomas, McClure, etc. for minutes at the 4.

[Jumbo]

I would still challenge two things......1) if we didn't play so far out there on the ball, we wouldn't have to rotate as much bc our guards wouldn't get burnt as much and 2) We don't have the "Landlord" standing back there anymore to block shots when Greg or other guards get burnt.

However, you do make a valid point about the rotation and team defense.......I cannot argue that. I just think that the more other guards go by ours. The more open layups and dunks you see, bc someone comes over to help and then someone has to "help the helper."

As Phaedrus said, overplaying is a hallmark of Duke's defensive system. Ideally, Duke makes guys pull-up for mid-range jumpers -- the whole key to Duke's system is forcing teams to do what they normally wouldn't -- go to third or fourth options, take different shots. The one aspect that was different this year was the emphasis on turnovers over rebounds. As mentioned, in the past, Duke would overplay so much that the big man would have to help on the guard. If the rotation was bad, the other team's big guy would get a layup. If it was decent, the guard might miss a shot, but the other team would grab an offensive rebound. This year, Duke did a much better job on the defensive backboards. Oddly, though, the defense got worse as the year went on.

[duke23]

Anyway, the reason it seems more reasonable with this team to let more guys play more minutes is that I (and seemingly plenty of others) are not convinced that our most talented 5 guys are getting the majority of the minutes. Only by allowing the bench to play more do you find out who the elite players are that should get the majority of the minutes when you have a whole team of freshmen and sophomores.



I apologize for this being a very late reply, but I hadn't read the thread until now and I think this is important to note. Look at our player's individual stats, courtesy of Ken Pomerory (http://http://kenpom.com/sr.php?team=Duke). Compare the % of possible minutes played with offensive efficiency. Also look at turnover rate. I love all the guys and think they will all work hard to improve, but there is a pretty clear demarcation here in terms of performance on the court this season.

[Troublemaker]

IMO, there is a bit of a consistency issue with the criticisms about depth.

For example, it has been said that Scheyer wore down because of too much playing time (33.7 mpg). However, Paulus played a lot of minutes as well (32.4 mpg) and got better as the season went along. And I would say McRoberts (35.3 mpg) and Nelson (31.9 mpg) played at roughly the same level throughout the season. [Perhaps Scheyer just hit the "freshman wall," something that's certainly not unique to Duke?]

Zoubek (7.3 mpg) got yanked too easily, lost confidence, and regressed? Okay, but then explain Pocius (7.1 mpg), who was yanked just as much and seemingly improved with every appearance. [Perhaps Z, being a plodding true center, just has the most difficult adjustment you can make in learning Duke's system that values quickness?]

But maybe there's a Goldilocksish perfect amount of PT in the middle, between the high-end and the low-end, for player development? Doubtful. Henderson (19.3 mpg) improved as the season went along while McClure (21.7 mpg) seemingly lost effectiveness.

I would say it's difficult to draw any sort of conclusions, good or bad, about the playing rotation by just looking at minutes played and, especially, without knowing what the coaches see in practice and behind the scenes and without knowing what the players are experiencing. I think it's fine to hold "He should've played more/less"-type opinions, but we should probably respect that we're just amateurs and not state these opinions on a public forum as if the coaches are idiots and we're the ones who are informed (not that a lot of that has necessarily been happening). My 2 cents.

[Indoor66]

Maybe he would like an education?

[Chicago 1995]

I'm sorry, but Paulus brings a lot more to the table than Pocius. Yes, Paulus' on-ball defense leaves something to be desired. But he doesn't get lost in rotations nearly as frequently as Pocius. Sure, Paulus has turnover problems, but he still gets Duke into its offense better than anyone else. Marty, at times, can be an explosive scorer. But he has real weaknesses that go beyond simple "guard your own man" problems. The coaching is not dumb, and I'm sure some of this manifests itself in practice.


I wasn't trying to make a direct comparison between Greg and Marty, although in my haste here at work, I can understand the confusion. My point was directed more generally at the board and the discussions we've had since Thursday night. Maybe this wasn't the place to post it, but it seemed apprpropriate

Much of the praise heaped upon Greg has been pointed specifically at his increased scoring, has talked around his problems handing the ball and running the offense (absurdly comparing him to Hurley in at least one instance) and hasn't talked at all about his (substantial, in my opinion) defensive shortcomings.

If we're going to justify leaving Marty on the bench because he's a poor defender (and, FWIW, I thought he'd improved when given the chance this year), we also have to temper our analysis of Paulus with the realization that he's a significant defensive liability.

Just looking to hold everyone to the same standard.

I have no doubt, FWIW, Greg's a better player and deserves more minutes than Marty. I don't suspect that very many here, if any, would argue Marty should have played 30 minutes a night. I think the only complaint, if any, would be the distribution of minutes at the three wing positions, and even that complaint, is, I think speculative in many ways.

FWIW, I thought K did a much, much better job spreading minutes and keeping our rotation extended this year. The rotation and depth didn't have anything to do with our struggles or our demise.

At the same time, I think it's fair for people to wonder why Marty didn't get more consistent minutes this year and last, given the offense he's brought to the table the few opportunities he's had to play extended minutes. No, he's not perfect, but no player is. Sacrifices have to be made in many circumstances. How we choose to make those sacrifices -- sacrificing offense with McClure but not defense with Marty, for example -- is ripe for discussion, IMO.

[Spret42]

The problem wasn't depth. The issue was the roster. It is full of young players who right now ar very limited both physically and skill wise. For the first time in a long time, Duke's players just weren't better than the other guys.

Look at the lineups of those surviving teams and tell me you wouldn't take some quick guards like Chris Lofton, Acie Law IV, a shooter like Brandon Rush (I didn't realize he was only a sophomore!!) and forwards like Al Horford, or Jeff Green.

Give Duke a starting five of senior point guard Acie Law IV, next to Nelson, put a strong NBA body and inside/out skilled forward Jeff Green next to McRoberts and have a glue guy like Darnell Jackson (Kansas Jr. who averages 5 rebounds in 15 minutes and makes Dave McClure look like he is in the third grade) protecting the young buck Henderson (first off the bench with Paulus) and tell me that Duke wouldn't be a serious threat this year.

The two freshman Thomas and Scheyer along with McClure are in spot back up roles, they get experience in practice and stay healthy, ready to step in next year etc.

That team would play primarily 7 guys with another three guys getting spot duty. In other words, it is the type of fully developed roster that you see on most, but not all of the other teams still playing.

This isn't an indictment of the coaching style, the recruiting etc. Things didn't go as planned. Guys left, got hurt etc. It is fine to love these players and one should if they put on the uniform and work hard for you, but understand, they just aren't as good right now. They aren't as strong, as quick or as physical as they need to be.

I think Coach Krzyzewski did as much as anyone could have with that group this year.

[devildownunder]

I love Greg to death, but he is obviously not quick enough to keep certain point guards in front of him. I know Coach K like the "in your face defense" but wouldn't we be better off if Greg didn't play so far up on the ball-handler. Then he wouldn't get beat so frequently. I'm sure Coach K has his reasons, but when I coach my middle school team and the opposing team has a point guard that is quicker than mine, I tell my PG to play off him some and keep him in front. :confused:


makes sense to me.

[devildownunder]

Do you have any idea what Coach K has, or hasn't, been telling him in practice for two years? Answer: No, you don't. Marty got some good run against VCU. He leaked out for one fast break layup, and was otherwise extremely quiet. I'm telling you, Marty is the ultimate manifestation of backup QB syndrome. We see him in limited minutes and immediately want to believe he's capable of much more. Then he has one breakout game and assume that's what he can give Duke regularly, and dismiss the idea that it might be an anomaly. Something tells me that Coach K is pretty damn competitive, and that he's probably not limiting someone's minutes who would help him win.

look, the team wasn't successful this year. That's not going by my standards, those are Coach K and Duke basketball standards. Anyone who tries to tell you Coach K is "satisfied" with the team's on-the-court results this year is crazy.

Given that, people are going to ask what else could have been done. And on a team that was offensively challenged it makes sense for people to want to see more of a player who has demonstrated offensive ability. That's not unreasonable and it's not blasphemous.

The frustrating thing to me about your take on this is that you keep saying everyone has "a crush" on Pocius while at the same time you talk about scheyer as if he's been incredibly productive or something. Yes, he can be a secondary ballhandler and, yes, his grasp of Duke's team defensive concept is good and, yes, he is an adequate on-the-ball defender. But jon's performance this year has not been such that anyone who suggests he could've given up 10 or so minutes a night to someone else is crazy. And since the team wasn't exactly a world-beater anyway, what would've been so insane about giving someone who was talented but raw a real chance to see what he could do?

Also, scheyer's minutes aren't the only ones that could've been made available to pocius (or anyone else on the bench). Paulus, for all his issues, was our only real option at point guard but, in all seriousness, what other wing player on the team performed so well this season that his minutes should have been deemed untouchable?

[devildownunder]

I'm so tired of reading people around here questioning the coaching staff


well then, whom should people question? The players? Or would you then post about how you "so tired" of people questioning the players, who are, after all, only 19-year-old kids under a lot of pressure, etc etc? Or do you think that we should question no one?

This is a fan's site. People discuss the team and have opinions because they care.

[feldspar]

well then, whom should people question? The players? Or would you then post about how you "so tired" of people questioning the players, who are, after all, only 19-year-old kids under a lot of pressure, etc etc? Or do you think that we should question no one?

This is a fan's site. People discuss the team and have opinions because they care.

Some people care a little too much.

[devildownunder]

Do you have any idea what Coach K has, or hasn't, been telling him in practice for two years? Answer: No, you don't. Marty got some good run against VCU. He leaked out for one fast break layup, and was otherwise extremely quiet. I'm telling you, Marty is the ultimate manifestation of backup QB syndrome. We see him in limited minutes and immediately want to believe he's capable of much more. Then he has one breakout game and assume that's what he can give Duke regularly, and dismiss the idea that it might be an anomaly. Something tells me that Coach K is pretty damn competitive, and that he's probably not limiting someone's minutes who would help him win.

Well, obviously, he hasn't been saying what chrisheery suggested he could/should say because if he had, he would've been putting him into games with a real opportunity to make a contribution, along with some mistakes. So I don't see chrisheery's speculation as so completely offbase.

[devildownunder]

Some people care a little too much.

now what does that mean?

[jafarr1]

I love Greg to death, but he is obviously not quick enough to keep certain point guards in front of him. I know Coach K like the "in your face defense" but wouldn't we be better off if Greg didn't play so far up on the ball-handler. Then he wouldn't get beat so frequently. I'm sure Coach K has his reasons, but when I coach my middle school team and the opposing team has a point guard that is quicker than mine, I tell my PG to play off him some and keep him in front.

There are two potential flip sides to this argument.

The first is that game plans are designed to encourage improvement just like practices are. For example: do you use the turn-around jump shot you've been practicing before it's 100% perfected in practice, or do you start using it sooner to hasten the time when it's 100% perfected.

This one doesn't really fit. Greg isn't going to improve his quickness during games. Maybe K wants Greg to anticipate better, but it seems like he could still do that while playing off the ball.

The second argument is that Duke guards are often encouraged to play tight and let their man beat them inside, where help is supposed to come shut the player down. The guard is supposed to pressure the ball handler to shut down passing lanes and outside shots, and getting beat is not seen as such a bad thing. It's a question of defensive philosophy: plenty of Duke guards in recent history could be beaten by dribble penetration on a consistent basis because of that philosophy.

[imagepro]

"Lulu wasn't countering me. If Lulu was attempting counter me, he/she did a poor job."

Who was that from? Well, you've probably seen it already.

Actually I thought both of you (Lulu and the other poster) did a nice job of validating your point. Sorry you took offense to it, and criticized Lulu.

And Lulu, thanks for not telling me, or anyone else we do a poor job!

[devildownunder]

There are two potential flip sides to this argument.

The first is that game plans are designed to encourage improvement just like practices are. For example: do you use the turn-around jump shot you've been practicing before it's 100% perfected in practice, or do you start using it sooner to hasten the time when it's 100% perfected.

This one doesn't really fit. Greg isn't going to improve his quickness during games. Maybe K wants Greg to anticipate better, but it seems like he could still do that while playing off the ball.

The second argument is that Duke guards are often encouraged to play tight and let their man beat them inside, where help is supposed to come shut the player down. The guard is supposed to pressure the ball handler to shut down passing lanes and outside shots, and getting beat is not seen as such a bad thing. It's a question of defensive philosophy: plenty of Duke guards in recent history could be beaten by dribble penetration on a consistent basis because of that philosophy.


i'm not the person who made the post you quoted. i quoted it myself from someone else. This comes up a lot. Duke guards are encouraged to pressure the ballhandler, and I have no problem with this defensive philosophy, in general. That philosophy did not really work this year, especially in the second half of the season (i.e., when we started consistently facing good competition) and I think the inability of our perimeter defenders to stay in front of the opposing pg was a factor in this. So, it would seem like a good idea to try something else.

Regarding other Duke guards, from which previous duke pg would you draw a parallel to paulus, on the defensive end?

[BlueDevilBaby]

Every Duke team plays in the other team's shorts. The difference this year from comments I have read is that communication was poor. Thus defensive help/rotation, which Duke has always been know for, suffered.

[jimmymax]

one game's stats used to support an entire season

[Jumbo]

"Lulu wasn't countering me. If Lulu was attempting counter me, he/she did a poor job."

Who was that from? Well, you've probably seen it already.

Actually I thought both of you (Lulu and the other poster) did a nice job of validating your point. Sorry you took offense to it, and criticized Lulu.

And Lulu, thanks for not telling me, or anyone else we do a poor job!

You have been warned, repeatedly, about your tone here. You have been warned, repeatedly, about playing the victim, while simultaneously making snarky comments about me (and other people). You have been reminded, repeatedly, that everyone knows who you are talking about when you say stuff like "the other poster." And I have spoken to you, in public in private, and at exhausting length, about the fact that you don't seem to understand the tone of posts from time to time, that you feel you can make any point you want, but if someone disagrees with you, they are "criticizing," that you criticize the coaching staff all you want, but if someone says something to counter that, they are "attacking the kids," and so forth.
Cut it out, imagepro. I've really had it. If you think saying that someone dia "poor job" of countering me is somehow out of bounds, then I don't think you really want to be posting on a message board. This is a place for debate and the exchange of ideas. But you only want the debate to work one way -- your way. I'm tired of it. I've been extremely patient with you, I've not moderated a single one of your posts, and I've even intervened early so you could learn the ropes here. But your latest post shows a complete lack of respect for that effort I've made. And you need to understand that.

[Jumbo]

one game's stats used to support an entire season

Want me to throw some other games up there? Because they'll show the same thing: At least 10 of the teams currently in the Sweet 16 have reduced their bench as much --if not more -- than Duke did in the Tourney, most of this year, or most of any year. Yawn all you want. The facts are there.

[Jumbo]

look, the team wasn't successful this year. That's not going by my standards, those are Coach K and Duke basketball standards. Anyone who tries to tell you Coach K is "satisfied" with the team's on-the-court results this year is crazy.

Strawman.


Given that, people are going to ask what else could have been done. And on a team that was offensively challenged it makes sense for people to want to see more of a player who has demonstrated offensive ability. That's not unreasonable and it's not blasphemous.

Except this team wasn't offensively challenged down the stretch. Instead, the defense evaporated.


The frustrating thing to me about your take on this is that you keep saying everyone has "a crush" on Pocius...

Everybody? Not at all. Some people? Sure.


...while at the same time you talk about scheyer as if he's been incredibly productive or something.

Well, let's see. He made first-team All-ACC frosh over some really good players. He tied for the team lead in scoring in conference games. He had 26 at home against UNC. He regularly covered some of the best perimeter players Duke faced. He opened the season at point guard, as a freshman, despite the fact that it isn't his natural position. Yeah, I'd say he was incredibly productive this year.


Yes, he can be a secondary ballhandler and, yes, his grasp of Duke's team defensive concept is good and, yes, he is an adequate on-the-ball defender.

Adequate? No. I can assure you that he's a good on-the-ball defender, at worst. The staff loves his D. And I love how you write off the other qualities when they were severely lacking on this team.


But jon's performance this year has not been such that anyone who suggests he could've given up 10 or so minutes a night to someone else is crazy. And since the team wasn't exactly a world-beater anyway, what would've been so insane about giving someone who was talented but raw a real chance to see what he could do?
Who says Pocius didn't have a chance to show what he could do? What do you define as talent? If you watch him off the ball, he makes the same mistakes he did early in the season on D. On offense, he's still out of control a large portion of the time (look at his turnover rate). I like the kid, but I do think it's silly to suggest he didn't get a chance to show what he could do. He got it every day in practice, for one thing. The problem is, at least four perimeter players out-performed him.


Also, scheyer's minutes aren't the only ones that could've been made available to pocius (or anyone else on the bench). Paulus, for all his issues, was our only real option at point guard but, in all seriousness, what other wing player on the team performed so well this season that his minutes should have been deemed untouchable?

Another strawman. No one deemed anyone "untouchable." I, and others, just happen to think that players earn their minutes and that Marty was in just about the right role at the end of the season. His ankle was messed up midway through the year, but otherwise, I was quite happy with him playing 5-10 minutes, and potentially more if he provided a spark (like vs. NCSU). But I think Paulus, Scheyer, Nelson and Henderson are all superior players, and that's where the bulk of the perimeter minutes should have, and did, go.

[Jumbo]

i'm not the person who made the post you quoted. i quoted it myself from someone else. This comes up a lot. Duke guards are encouraged to pressure the ballhandler, and I have no problem with this defensive philosophy, in general. That philosophy did not really work this year, especially in the second half of the season (i.e., when we started consistently facing good competition) and I think the inability of our perimeter defenders to stay in front of the opposing pg was a factor in this. So, it would seem like a good idea to try something else.

Regarding other Duke guards, from which previous duke pg would you draw a parallel to paulus, on the defensive end?

How about Jason Williams? Defensively, he got beaten like a rented mule on countless occasions. And was there ever a quicker point guard at Duke than Jason Williams. Again, as others have said in this thread, Duke's guards are told to overplay the ball, and force the man to drive. Normally, this plays into Duke's strength, because the help defense is so good. Near the end of the year, for some reason, that help defense stopped arriving on time, and Duke's rotations broke down. I have no idea why this happened. But it's not always a bad thing when the opposing PG drives. In Duke's system, that's often playing right into the defense's hands.

[jimmymax]

Want me to throw some other games up there? Because they'll show the same thing: At least 10 of the teams currently in the Sweet 16 have reduced their bench as much --if not more -- than Duke did in the Tourney, most of this year, or most of any year. Yawn all you want. The facts are there.

reducing the bench in the tourney is different. just don't say,

"The next time I hear the "depth" argument again, I'm just re-posting this. Depth is a lovely argument to make in a vacuum. It's completely hollow when you look at what the vast majority of other (and successful) teams have done in the Tourney."

you play 30 reg season games to figure out your best chance to win 6 games (at any cost) because each could be your last. one tourney game's numbers are not convincing to me.

[DukeVu]

Duke tries to pressure the ball, all the time. This Duke team was not very proficient at it once they got into the conference playing more skilled teams. But we are going to do it no matter what. Now these other 'quicker' teams said 'well we will just challenge that'. It started working and low and behold we never did figure that out because they just kept doing it over and over again. Why, because Duke is just not going to change.

Blame it on communications, or lack thereof, but other coaches were smart enough to see that Duke could not handle offenses that directly challenged their 'planned' defense. Because as I was told 'we do not have enough time to practice anything else' it stands to that reasoning that there was nothing else Duke could do. So, just maybe next year we will be quick enough, or we had better be, because these coaches are not going to forget about a team that 'cannot communicate'.

[Jumbo]

reducing the bench in the tourney is different. just don't say,

"The next time I hear the "depth" argument again, I'm just re-posting this. Depth is a lovely argument to make in a vacuum. It's completely hollow when you look at what the vast majority of other (and successful) teams have done in the Tourney."

you play 30 reg season games to figure out your best chance to win 6 games (at any cost) because each could be your last. one tourney game's numbers are not convincing to me.

I don't understand your point. Duke didn't play 30 regular season games to figure out its best chance to win? People have been screaming for more depth for years on these boards, claiming that other teams go deeper in the Tourney and wear teams, like Duke, down. Well, the vast majority of the teams in the Sweet 16 don't go deeper than Duke does. So, that sort of negates what people have been saying, doesn't it? If Georgetown can be a 2-seed and go to the Sweet 16 playing 6 guys, Duke can't do it with the 7 or 8 K usually plays?

[imagepro]

I said you made good points for your cause. I thougth I was complimenting the both of you, and siding with her/him. How is that playing the victim? I'm no victim. Sorry you misinterpreted. I agree with LuLu, some agree with you. You don't like my "tone" because I disagree with you.


As far as me thanking Lulu for not saying we "do a poor job", what is wrong with that? I meant every word of it. As for you, I disagree with some things you say, and agree on others. I have never said you do a poor job. Never. I have told you on numerous occasions that I agree with you. I respect your opinion, yet as Feldspar said so appropriately today, "People see things how they want to see it". I agreed with that statement and told him so. I told him we all do that, myself included. Do you not do the same?

I have told many members here that their observations made me rethink my opinions. And they have. I'm not always right, nor are (though you may disagree) you.


You always get on me for taking up for the kids. You take up for the coach. It is simply a difference in view. That simple. I have never, and never will, criticize a student athlete at DUKE for their performance. I can assure you they want to win more than you or I. Why you get mad at me for that is, well, misunderstood.

[Jumbo]

You always get on me for taking up for the kids. You take up for the coach. It is simply a difference in view. That simple. I have never, and never will, criticize a student athlete at DUKE for their performance. I can assure you they want to win more than you or I. Why you get mad at me for that is, well, misunderstood.

You're right. This is misunderstood. I've explained this to you a bunch of times, and I'll try once more.
1) Stop seeing everything in black and white. I don't "take up for the coach." I just think certain criticisms are unwarranted. When that's the case, I post my opinion.
2) Sometimes, to support my opinion, I have to use facts and analysis. Often, this necessitates discussing the strengths and weaknesses of various players on the team.
3) It is a complete cop-out to say you "never will criticize a student athlete at DUKE for their performance." It is a cheap way to take the high road. Why? Suppose I say Pocius doesn't play good defense. You can just respond, "You're criticizing a kid! I never criticize a kid!" Suppose I say McRoberts isn't a good jump shooter. You can just say, "You're criticizing a kid! I never criticize a kid!" And so forth. This line of yours, that you keep repeating, is your ticket out of ever thinking about an issue, ever defending your perspective, ever arguing in good faith. You have, countless times, accused those who disagree with you of "attacking the kids." It's wrong, and it does nothing to help the community here. Nothing.

[jimmymax]

is that you quoted numbers from one round of this year's ncaa tournament games in order to prove that no other team plays significanltly more minutes/player than duke (i.e. to refute the idea that duke suffers from a lack of depth). whether duke is deep or not is beside the point. i think the stats are bogus.

you also suggested that your conclusion was an immutable fact, to be reposted as necessary.

i am guessing (and you can abuse me for being lazy for not posting numbers) is that there is a high liklihood that the distribution of minutes among players in tourney games will differ significanltly from those logged during the regular season games where the "survive and advance" mentality dominates.

[Jumbo]

is that you quoted numbers from one round of this year's ncaa tournament games in order to prove that no other team plays significanltly more minutes/player than duke (i.e. to refute the idea that duke suffers from a lack of depth). whether duke is deep or not is beside the point. i think the stats are bogus.
How are the stats bogus? The point of using one game was intentional. Fans have been criticizing K's use of depth in the NCAA Tournament for years. I just showed you that of the 16 teams that are still alive, most were no deeper than Duke. There is nothing bogus about that. I can do that for other rounds in other NCAA Tourneys as well. The stats are what they are, and they show that people don't pay attention to the rest of the country when suggesting Duke somehow plays fewer players than other successful schools.


you also suggested that your conclusion was an immutable fact, to be reposted as necessary.
Disprove it, then.


i am guessing (and you can abuse me for being lazy for not posting numbers) is that there is a high liklihood that the distribution of minutes among players in tourney games will differ significanltly from those logged during the regular season games where the "survive and advance" mentality dominates.

And this is irrelevant, since I'm talking about the NCAA Tournament. I've made that clear a bunch of times now.

[imagepro]

man, you keep bringing up the kids thing. I meant every word of what I've said about the kids. I don't criticize everyone. I say I'm not going to do it. I say criticize the top, not the middle or bottom. And I'm not even doing that actually. I like our staff. They are the best in America in my opinion. The only thing I'm consistently harping on is bench development. And not just this year.

If I want to take up for the kids Jumbo, I certainly will not stop because you think I'm "not thinking".

Carry on!

[Jumbo]

man, you keep bringing up the kids thing. I meant every word of what I've said about the kids. I don't criticize everyone. I say I'm not going to do it. I say criticize the top, not the middle or bottom. And I'm not even doing that actually. I like our staff. They are the best in America in my opinion. The only thing I'm consistently harping on is bench development. And not just this year.

If I want to take up for the kids Jumbo, I certainly will not stop because you think I'm "not thinking".

Carry on!

OK, explain this to me. If it's not ok to "criticize the kids," as you say, then how can anyone argue with you about bench development? The only way to argue for a shorter bench is to say that certain players shouldn't play. Well, if we shouldn't criticize them, then how can we do that?

The answer? We can't. You are setting up an artificial system where it's impossible to argue against you, because you can reflexively say "I refused to criticize the kids," and label anyone who does as a bad guy. That's not fair.

[Zeke]

Everyone knows that Duke got tired in the latter part of the season. Even Coach K mentioned that. Why? (1)The minutes that Jumbo quoted from the VCU game were PROBABLY more or less true for the majoirity of the games in the season (2) Duke plays an agressive defense 100% of the time - no time to rest there (3) the offense is based on a lot of cuts (weaves later in the season) and feeds from post players - no time to rest there either (4) fast breaks when they occur - everybody runs. Would you be surprised that over a 30+ game season that freshmen and sophmores would get fatigued. I'm sure that given several years the freshmen/sophmores will get more endurance, but for golly's sake they needed a blow now and then.

[dukie8]

Everyone knows that Duke got tired in the latter part of the season. Even Coach K mentioned that. Why? (1)The minutes that Jumbo quoted from the VCU game were PROBABLY more or less true for the majoirity of the games in the season (2) Duke plays an agressive defense 100% of the time - no time to rest there (3) the offense is based on a lot of cuts (weaves later in the season) and feeds from post players - no time to rest there either (4) fast breaks when they occur - everybody runs. Would you be surprised that over a 30+ game season that freshmen and sophmores would get fatigued. I'm sure that given several years the freshmen/sophmores will get more endurance, but for golly's sake they needed a blow now and then.

if that is the case, then duke should get a new strength and conditioning coach. i don't care what kind of offense or defense the team plays, 40 minutes, of which probably 20 are spent standing around doing little or nothing, with tv timeouts every 4 minutes and breaks in play throughout, should not tire out fit 18 to 22 year olds. guys in the the tour de france ride over 100 miles nearly EVERY day for 23 days (with 2 off days) with many stages climbing the alps and they are ready to go each morning. guys in the olympics run multiple rounds in the distance events in track at world class pace and are able to make it to the finals with no excuses. this fatigue that people keep on pointing to on here in recent years never seemed to bother hurley, laettner, g hill (and he did probably more in the 40 minutes than anyone), brand, battier, j will, etc. and they played the exact same style of offense and defense that the guys have played the last few years (they actually played MORE up tempo because they fastbroke a lot more than this year's team).

[throatybeard]

if that is the case, then duke should get a new strength and conditioning coach.

Yeah, we've got a whole thread for people to complain about that. :rolleyes:

[jimmymax]

(and bogus) is your one game sample size. as is talking about depth in the tournament vs. the season as a whole: by the time you get to the tournament you either have depth or you don't. it is the reg season where depth is established/developed/determind so it can be used with confidence (not out of desperation) in the tournament.

scenario: duke plays some bruiser team in the ncaas. there are lots of fouls and several players foul out. headline: 10 dukies play double-digit minutes. see! duke has depth. feel free to post the box score and feel superior about having made a case.

[Zeke]

if that is the case, then duke should get a new strength and conditioning coach. i don't care what kind of offense or defense the team plays, 40 minutes, of which probably 20 are spent standing around doing little or nothing, with tv timeouts every 4 minutes and breaks in play throughout, should not tire out fit 18 to 22 year olds. guys in the the tour de france ride over 100 miles nearly EVERY day for 23 days (with 2 off days) with many stages climbing the alps and they are ready to go each morning. guys in the olympics run multiple rounds in the distance events in track at world class pace and are able to make it to the finals with no excuses. this fatigue that people keep on pointing to on here in recent years never seemed to bother hurley, laettner, g hill (and he did probably more in the 40 minutes than anyone), brand, battier, j will, etc. and they played the exact same style of offense and defense that the guys have played the last few years (they actually played MORE up tempo because they fastbroke a lot more than this year's team).

Actually, it does bother them a good bit. Leattner once said after an NCAA winning season (when Coach K wanted to talk with him about summer ball )that he was so tired that he really didn't want to think about BB for a good while, Your point is understood and I don't know why except that the season is long, the trips frequent, they are playing with flu or injuries some of the time, and the pressure is significant. It is grueling. Coach K., a few weeks ago, said that the team was tired (actually fatigued is probably a better word) and that it always happens this time of year and that losing makes it worse.

[dukie8]

Sure, I can explain it. 1) Nelson was in foul trouble. 2) Scheyer is Duke's second-best perimeter defender, and drew Maynor for much of the game. (And, while Maynor went nuts at the end, he did a good job for much of the night -- many of Duke's real breakdowns were in transition D) 3) Scheyer is a key secondary ball-handler, especially against VCU's press, and is much better in this regard. 4) Scheyer, even when he's not scoring, draws attention, stretches the floor, and is a steadying influence.
Should Scheyer have shot more? Absolutely -- he passed up open looks. But Pocius scored three points in nine minutes, and they all came on a busted play -- a touchdown pass over the press. So, what else did he do on offense?
The fact that you are seemingly advocating giving Marty Scheyer's 35 minutes is patently absurd. Scheyer, in all the threads, is consistently overlooked because he does all the little things that go over most fans heads. He's going to be exposed to a certain degree given his heavy minutes, but can you imagine what people might say about Marty if he were defending for 35 minutes? It's an absurd line of reasoning. When people start talking about how Scheyer isn't "quick" enough, or complain about his defense, or things of that nature, it's clear they aren't getting it. And the fascination with Pocius has become something of a schoolboy crush -- people are overlooking five flaws because he's the basketball equivalent of a "hottie" based on his hops, speed and performance against NCSU.

scheyer may have been doing "the little things that go over most fans heads" against vcu but he also glaringly wasn't doing the big things that don't go over people's heads -- like scoring, rebounding, passing and not getting torched on d. contrary to what you want to believe, by the time the tournament rolled around, the attention scheyer received was very little because any opposing team watching tapes of duke knew that (1) he was scared to shoot and (2) when he did shoot, it probably wasn't going in (in his last 12 games, he shot over 38% a grand total of 4 times). this was a dramatic change from earlier in the year when he was lights out in many games (particularly the unc game).

my point was not that marty and scheyer should have swapped minutes, but rather, why was scheyer in there for 35 minutes when he was doing next to nothing offensively and getting torched defensively and there were players on the bench who may have been able to do more at one end of the court? apparently the answer is that he was doing the little things that only the most shrewd fan recognized. i'm glad that i got that cleared up.

[Jumbo]

(and bogus) is your one game sample size. as is talking about depth in the tournament vs. the season as a whole: by the time you get to the tournament you either have depth or you don't. it is the reg season where depth is established/developed/determind so it can be used with confidence (not out of desperation) in the tournament.

scenario: duke plays some bruiser team in the ncaas. there are lots of fouls and several players foul out. headline: 10 dukies play double-digit minutes. see! duke has depth. feel free to post the box score and feel superior about having made a case.

You're still not getting it.
1) The sample size is an apples vs. apples comparison. Duke fans have been complaining about shortened rotations in the Tourney, including this Tourney. Duke only played one game in this Tourney. But it shows depth that is equal to, or greater, teams that have done well.
2) If, as you say, you either have depth or you don't by the Tourney, then Duke had depth. Because Duke went as deep as most teams in the Tourney.
3) If other teams are deeper than Duke, they've cut their rotations in the postseason -- the exact complaint people have made about Duke. And they've won doing that.

But, if you want to change the argument and talk about the regular season, that's fine too. In virtually every game, Duke gave at least seven guys double-digit minutes. Again, that compares favorably to other Tourney teams. In addition, Duke almost always gave an eighth (and even ninth guy) some burn in the first half, if not both halves.

In the end, I'm not sure what your point is here. Do you think Duke wasn't deep? Do you think the other teams are deep?

[throatybeard]

equally irrelevant (and bogus) is your one game sample size

It's not a one game sample size; he cited a bunch of different tournament teams. The sample has breadth.

Using one-game sample sizes, though, I might point out, is a favored tactic of many DBR depth-enthusiasts. JJ Redick's entire seasons have been characterized by LSU (2006) or KU (2003). See, he was exhausted. Ergo, our depth wasn't developed. Depth-complainers also accord the 2000 Florida game a healthy dose of over-emphasis, ignoring the fact that that team won several close games late.

[chrisheery]

I apologize for this being a very late reply, but I hadn't read the thread until now and I think this is important to note. Look at our player's individual stats, courtesy of Ken Pomerory (http://http://kenpom.com/sr.php?team=Duke). Compare the % of possible minutes played with offensive efficiency. Also look at turnover rate. I love all the guys and think they will all work hard to improve, but there is a pretty clear demarcation here in terms of performance on the court this season.

this is only true if basketball were not a game of rhythm. of course the people who play more are going to have better numbers per minute. they have more time to make up for mistakes and play better. they also have more confidence and are more certain of their role when they are in the game. i think using per minute stats is not a reasonable way to judge someone who plays 4-5 minutes or less a game. just isn't fair. (for instance, zoubek plays 1 minute, travels and then gets taken out. who knows, if he played 10 straight minutes, maybe he would travel a couple times and then get his mind right with one good/lucky play like a put back or block and then play much better after that).

[Jumbo]

redacted

This is grossly inappropriate. I don't moderate threads in which I participate, but in my mind, you have seriously crossed a line.

As far as the rest of your rant goes, Scheyer was not getting torched defensively. Duke's defensive problems, as I've said time and again, were tied to team defense -- help, recovering, etc. What's strange is that was the team's strength for the first 2/3 of the season. I think Scheyer should have shot more. But it's absurd to suggest he wasn't producing. And the team wasn't offensively challenged at the end of the year -- Duke scored at least 72 points in each of its last four games. Interestingly, Duke lost those games. Why? Defense.

BTW, Scheyer had 7 points and 7 boards in 35 minutes. Pocius, in nine minutes, took one shot (a leak-out dunk on a press-breaker) and had one rebound. Extrapolate that, and tell me how Pocius was any more productive.

[chrisheery]

[QUOTE=Troublemaker;8926]IMO, there is a bit of a consistency issue with the criticisms about depth.

Zoubek (7.3 mpg) got yanked too easily, lost confidence, and regressed? Okay, but then explain Pocius (7.1 mpg), who was yanked just as much and seemingly improved with every appearance. [Perhaps Z, being a plodding true center, just has the most difficult adjustment you can make in learning Duke's system that values quickness?]

But maybe there's a Goldilocksish perfect amount of PT in the middle, between the high-end and the low-end, for player development? Doubtful. Henderson (19.3 mpg) improved as the season went along while McClure (21.7 mpg) seemingly lost effectiveness.

QUOTE]


I think numbers are fine to look at some times. Another thing to look at is the actual games and the players' in those games. We don't have to base everything on numbers. That just allows a more objective basis for something we already feel. What we all feel about Zoubek (that he needed mroe time to get confidence) can be true for him even if it is not for Marty. They are two different people. Marty realized that he could just go for it all at once when he was in, and this was a good thing for his team. Zoub never found a place where he could succeed. All these guys are different. I assume most people here have played basketball, and there is no one way that all players sees themselves or the team they are on.

On another note, when did Pocius get "blown by" so much. Never saw it. Really. I know he was horrible on his defensive rotations at times and wasn't great as a team defender, but if anything, I thought he was one of our better on the ball defenders (not that he had a lot to live up to).

[throatybeard]

of course the people who play more are going to have better numbers per minute.

That's not always true. In Corey Maggette's one season, his points per minute played were off the charts, excelling even Brand. He still came off the bench because he had older players in front of him, but he out-produced all of them on a per-minute, at least in scoring.

Defense, of course--as Jumbo has repeatedly pointed out--is another matter.

[throatybeard]

This is grossly inappropriate. I don't moderate threads in which I participate, but in my mind, you have seriously crossed a line.

I'll go to bat on this one. I don't want to edit threads in which I have participated, but I've taken the liberty of editing out the inflammatory comment. We're trying to maintain a reasonable level of decorum here, folks. :(

[trinitydevil]

Here are some things to think about on the bench play, minutes, etc. My perspective anyhow.

There is no direct corrolation between minutes played and record/success/championships. Now, we all know the sayings about numbers and what you can do with them.

Here are some past season stats for Duke
2007 7 players avg 10+min/game 22-11 Lost 1st round
2006 8 players avg 19.8min/game 32-4 Sweet 16
2005 8 players avg 18.9min/game 27-6 Sweet 16
2004 7 players avg 15.3min/game 31-6 Final Four
2003 9 players avg 10.4min/game 26-7 Sweet 16
1999 9 players avg 9.7min/game 37.2 Lost Champ game
2001 8 players avg 10.7min/game 35-4 NCAA Champs (6 players at 25.6min)

So, some years, less players played=better results. We can do this all day as Larry The Cable guy said. We have generally had 3 players average 30+minutes, a few in the 20's and a few in the 10's.

In prior years though, we had first team all americans, some teams we had 5 NBA players on the the team. We had players of the year, defensive players of the year, players setting all time Duke records, people with jerseys retired, etc. We had teams that averaged winning by 20+ points.

What is easier, playing 34 mintues per game when you average winning by 20 or playing 34 mintues per game when you are having to play until the buzzer? Not just physically demanding but mentally demanding as well. You can sometime rest on the court, albiet briefly, but you can.

This years team played hard, very hard. I sit close enough to heam them talk, see their faces, etc. I also sit close enough to see them breath hard.

Unfortunately, they had to play hard and for 40 minutes more than most teams from the past. Possibly leading to some poor results at the end of the game. We are all arm chair QB's, but I think some of the slow down offense toward the end was, in addition to shortening the game, because we were tired and it was a form of resting

Someone said something about a conditionin coach or something. Remember JJ going on a very intense training program to get in shape so he would be better at the end of the year. His shot was off at the end of the prior year becasue he was fatigued. I am not saying it was the conditioning coaches problem this year by any means. These kids also have class to concentrate on and may not all have the time to run 10 miles per day. (I can't find 20 minutes for the treadmill).

Now, I do wish we could have developed the bench more this year. Who doesn't? Utilizing it more though is a double edge sword. You play your best players to stay in the game, win the game. But, if you play them too much, they get tired and you get diminishing returns. If you play them too much, the bench gets little game experience (which is much different than practice and pick up games, trust me). The bench players can sometimes see greener grass and bolt, as has happened. And when that happens, you bench becomes weeker, especially when the loss of the player is mid season.

But I don't get paid to coach and its probably a good thing cause this board would be full of posts cause I'd come to everyone here for coaching advice. I think we could win 20.

[devildownunder]

if that is the case, then duke should get a new strength and conditioning coach. i don't care what kind of offense or defense the team plays, 40 minutes, of which probably 20 are spent standing around doing little or nothing, with tv timeouts every 4 minutes and breaks in play throughout, should not tire out fit 18 to 22 year olds. guys in the the tour de france ride over 100 miles nearly EVERY day for 23 days (with 2 off days) with many stages climbing the alps and they are ready to go each morning. guys in the olympics run multiple rounds in the distance events in track at world class pace and are able to make it to the finals with no excuses. this fatigue that people keep on pointing to on here in recent years never seemed to bother hurley, laettner, g hill (and he did probably more in the 40 minutes than anyone), brand, battier, j will, etc. and they played the exact same style of offense and defense that the guys have played the last few years (they actually played MORE up tempo because they fastbroke a lot more than this year's team).


I wouldn't necessarily agree that it didn't bother them. Laettner was exhausted in the championship game each of his last two years. And though I can't prove Grant was exhausted in the last 7 minutes against Arkansas his senior year, I'd sure like to believe that he was. And who could blame him? Dude did EVERYTHING for that team.

[Troublemaker]

Marty realized that he could just go for it all at once when he was in, and this was a good thing for his team. Zoub never found a place where he could succeed. All these guys are different. I assume most people here have played basketball, and there is no one way that all players sees themselves or the team they are on.

Absolutely, I agree. However, my point is this: once folks admit that you can't just look at minutes per game to draw hard-and-fast conclusions about player development, then they should tone down the criticism of the coaching staff a bit. There's been a bit too much presumption of truth in the criticism of the coaching staff in some of the posts I've seen. I mean, if 33 mpg definitely burned out Scheyer, then why did 32 mpg not do the same to Paulus? If Redick was burned out at the end of last season, then why did he play the best game of his career in the ACC championship, on the third of three consecutive days of play? Tone it down a bit. You may be right, but there's usually going to be evidence to the contrary that you're wrong. (here, "you" is you in general, of course, not you, chris)

[jimmymax]

You're still not getting it.
QUOTE]

please don't patronize.

[QUOTE=Jumbo;9059]
1) The sample size is an apples vs. apples comparison...
QUOTE]

huh? if you're not comparing apples, what difference does it make what the sample size is?

[QUOTE=Jumbo;9059]2) If, as you say, you either have depth or you don't by the Tourney, then Duke had depth...
3) If other teams are deeper than Duke, they've cut their rotations in the postseason...
QUOTE]

as has been stated, it is no surprise that teams would shorten their bench in big/tight games -- especially tourney games -- to max the use of their best players. so the fact that other teams' minutes/player closely align with duke's is no shocker.

[QUOTE=Jumbo;9059]In the end, I'm not sure what your point is here. Do you think Duke wasn't deep? Do you think the other teams are deep?

i'm not saying anyone is deep or not, only that your list of minutes from a round of ncaa games proclaiming equality of depth among teams should not be postscripted with qed.

[chrisheery]

if that is the case, then duke should get a new strength and conditioning coach. i don't care what kind of offense or defense the team plays, 40 minutes, of which probably 20 are spent standing around doing little or nothing, with tv timeouts every 4 minutes and breaks in play throughout, should not tire out fit 18 to 22 year olds. guys in the the tour de france ride over 100 miles nearly EVERY day for 23 days (with 2 off days) with many stages climbing the alps and they are ready to go each morning. guys in the olympics run multiple rounds in the distance events in track at world class pace and are able to make it to the finals with no excuses. this fatigue that people keep on pointing to on here in recent years never seemed to bother hurley, laettner, g hill (and he did probably more in the 40 minutes than anyone), brand, battier, j will, etc. and they played the exact same style of offense and defense that the guys have played the last few years (they actually played MORE up tempo because they fastbroke a lot more than this year's team).


couple things:

1. cyclists are some of the best conditioned athletes in the world. they usually have spent more than 10-15 years preparing for the tour when they actually get to that point. they are full grown men with 1 repetitive motion. they can prepare for that one motion by strengthening and working the exact muscles they need for that sport. nothing changes in cycling moment to moment except the terrain, for which they prepare.

2. they cheat. almost all of them. this seems to be commonly accepted as close to fact. don't go saying i can prove it, but everyone believes it.

3. our athletes are 18-19 years old. they are just growing into their bodies and learning what hard work really is.

4. basketball is extremely tiring. i had the chance to try out for the team in 2000 when coach k let the students who qualified play in cameron prior to midnight maddness. in a 5 minute game of trying to play like duke does (intense defense, cutting, etc), i was so winded, i almost vomitted after it was over. and i play a lot of basketball. the duke system requires unbelievable conditioning and mental focus. you can't prepare for what games provide in terms of conditioning. there is nothing like a real game for this.

so, lets give them a break and the staff a break on this. experience and time will improve their conditioning in each game and as the season wears on. i agree that you don't NEED more depth for these reasons. i have always thought it annoying in prior years when we had talent enough in the top 5-7 players to support not using depth. I only think we could have expanded the minutes for THIS team in an attempt to prepare more for next year (or do it earlyin the year to let them get ready for the tournament).

I agree with what everyone has said that we don't know how anyone would have proven to be better than anyone else, but like I was saying, nothing replaces the game to find out what someone is capable of.

I also agree that not many teams went deeper than duke this year, but I don't think this is the point as we didn't have their talent/skill/experience at the top either.

[chrisheery]

That's not always true. In Corey Maggette's one season, his points per minute played were off the charts, excelling even Brand. He still came off the bench because he had older players in front of him, but he out-produced all of them on a per-minute, at least in scoring.

Defense, of course--as Jumbo has repeatedly pointed out--is another matter.

i meant better numbers for that particular person. meaning, if that guy got more minutes, his numbers per minute will likely improve.

plus, maggette got plenty of minutes, didn't he? seems like he played at least 10-15 a game and had some games where he played much more than that (when he was playing well). That is a huge distinction because staying in when you are doing well allows those numbers to go up. Many guys with confidence problems never get that chance. (Corey never had a confidence problem because he could dunk over superman).

[Jumbo]

i meant better numbers for that particular person. meaning, if that guy got more minutes, his numbers per minute will likely improve.

plus, maggette got plenty of minutes, didn't he? seems like he played at least 10-15 a game and had some games where he played much more than that (when he was playing well). That is a huge distinction because staying in when you are doing well allows those numbers to go up. Many guys with confidence problems never get that chance. (Corey never had a confidence problem because he could dunk over superman).

The NBA website has great per-minute stats readily available, and it shows that playing time isn't a big advantage for per-minute stats. For instance, among other players, Anthony Roberson and Eddie House average more points per 48 minutes than Chris Paul. First and third in the NBA in rebounds per minute? Try Dikembe Mutombo and Jeff Foster. Point is, guys with limited minutes can put up some impressive stats in garbage time.

[FishStick]

i'm not saying anyone is deep or not, only that your list of minutes from a round of ncaa games proclaiming equality of depth among teams should not be postscripted with qed.
Jumbo put the work into making a point on depth that was well backed up with stats. If you want to keep trying to bring down his stats, post some facts of your own. Otherwise, you're just blowing wind.

[dukie8]

1. cyclists are some of the best conditioned athletes in the world. they usually have spent more than 10-15 years preparing for the tour when they actually get to that point. they are full grown men with 1 repetitive motion. they can prepare for that one motion by strengthening and working the exact muscles they need for that sport. nothing changes in cycling moment to moment except the terrain, for which they prepare.

i was using cyclists as the extreme example of fit athletes. do you want to look at soccer players (who run a lot more and play a lot longer than basketball players)? runners (even collegiate ones) who have to run multiple heats and races in consequative days? even lax players are covering a lot more ground and playing longer. a basketball court is tiny relative to any other team sport playing space and college games only are 40 minutes. the point is that fit 18-22 year olds should not be exhausted from 40 minutes of playing basketball -- particularly when more than half of it is nothing and there are repeated breaks. your anecodotal experience of being exhausted from 5 minutes of basketball means absoluletly nothing. you obviously were out of shape!


2. they cheat. almost all of them. this seems to be commonly accepted as close to fact. don't go saying i can prove it, but everyone believes it.

no argument here. most of them are doped.


3. our athletes are 18-19 years old. they are just growing into their bodies and learning what hard work really is.

i don't buy that at all. jim ryan set the world record in the mile in HIGH SCHOOL in the 1960s. this mindset is so typical of today's all too often soft approach to sports.


4. basketball is extremely tiring. i had the chance to try out for the team in 2000 when coach k let the students who qualified play in cameron prior to midnight maddness. in a 5 minute game of trying to play like duke does (intense defense, cutting, etc), i was so winded, i almost vomitted after it was over. and i play a lot of basketball. the duke system requires unbelievable conditioning and mental focus. you can't prepare for what games provide in terms of conditioning. there is nothing like a real game for this.

huh? you can't train in the off season (like redick did) with aerobic workouts to get in shape for the season? that's ridiculous. if you had played a sport at a high level, you would know that the actual game/event is the EASY part. it's the monster workouts leading up to it when you aren't tapered and when nothing is on the line to push you that are the real killers. ask lance armstrong if his workouts or his races are harder. anyone who tells you that his/her races/events are harder than his/her workouts isn't performing optimally in the races/events. i agree that the duke system requires unbelievable conditioning and mental focus but if people really think that our guys are exhausted after most games, then the team needs to get a new conditioning coach, because in the grand scheme of athletic demands, 40 minutes of college basketball is not that demanding and easily should be addressed by proper conditioning in the off season.

[Jumbo]

Basketball is an anaerobic sport -- lots of stopping and starting. FWIW, I think the fatigue a team endures is more the result of practicing hard all week, catching up on studies at a tough university, balancing all that time, etc., than two 40-minute games a week. And I think the fatigue might be mental as much as physical.

[hughgs]

2. they cheat. almost all of them. this seems to be commonly accepted as close to fact. don't go saying i can prove it, but everyone believes it.

no argument here. most of them are doped.

How do you know that most cyclist of doped? Not enough negative drug tests for you? Or, is it just that there are enough positive tests that "most" cyclists must be doped. I, know, you actually know a number of professional cyclists and have seen them dope. Oh, wait, "everyone" believes that most cyclist dope therefore it must be true. Nice that you can impugn an entire sport like that without any data or any experience. Stick with something you know or something you can back up. There's less possibility of looking ignorant.

[dukie8]

How do you know that most cyclist of doped? Not enough negative drug tests for you? Or, is it just that there are enough positive tests that "most" cyclists must be doped. I, know, you actually know a number of professional cyclists and have seen them dope. Oh, wait, "everyone" believes that most cyclist dope therefore it must be true. Nice that you can impugn an entire sport like that without any data or any experience. Stick with something you know or something you can back up. There's less possibility of looking ignorant.

2 words: operation puerto

next time, do a little research so then there's less possibility of looking ignorant.

[devildownunder]

Strawman.



Except this team wasn't offensively challenged down the stretch. Instead, the defense evaporated.



Everybody? Not at all. Some people? Sure.



Well, let's see. He made first-team All-ACC frosh over some really good players. He tied for the team lead in scoring in conference games. He had 26 at home against UNC. He regularly covered some of the best perimeter players Duke faced. He opened the season at point guard, as a freshman, despite the fact that it isn't his natural position. Yeah, I'd say he was incredibly productive this year.



Adequate? No. I can assure you that he's a good on-the-ball defender, at worst. The staff loves his D. And I love how you write off the other qualities when they were severely lacking on this team.


Who says Pocius didn't have a chance to show what he could do? What do you define as talent? If you watch him off the ball, he makes the same mistakes he did early in the season on D. On offense, he's still out of control a large portion of the time (look at his turnover rate). I like the kid, but I do think it's silly to suggest he didn't get a chance to show what he could do. He got it every day in practice, for one thing. The problem is, at least four perimeter players out-performed him.



Another strawman. No one deemed anyone "untouchable." I, and others, just happen to think that players earn their minutes and that Marty was in just about the right role at the end of the season. His ankle was messed up midway through the year, but otherwise, I was quite happy with him playing 5-10 minutes, and potentially more if he provided a spark (like vs. NCSU). But I think Paulus, Scheyer, Nelson and Henderson are all superior players, and that's where the bulk of the perimeter minutes should have, and did, go.



1. What I said: "look, the team wasn't successful this year. That's not going by my standards, those are Coach K and Duke basketball standards. Anyone who tries to tell you Coach K is "satisfied" with the team's on-the-court results this year is crazy."

This statement is only a strawman if Coach K actually was satisfied with this season's results. And if you can prove to me that he was, them I'll agree that this is a strawman fallacy (which for some reason people on this board love to be able to say, as if they have just pulled out some DBR message board trump card). And right after agreeing with you, then I will write a letter to the AD requesting that K be asked to step down. Nobody who has had success on K's level goes into a season hoping to finish middle of the pack and lose the only two postseason games they play. Now if you want to suggest that deep in his heart he truly felt like that's all this team could do, that is another matter. But there is NO WAY he and the rest of the staff did not want to accomplish more.


2. Jumbo said: Except this team wasn't offensively challenged down the stretch. Instead, the defense evaporated.

Oh really? These numbers (from goduke.com and live stats) disagree:

Against VCU:

-- 0 fg and 4 free throws from 8:34 of the first half to 4:03 of the first half.
12 total points from the 8:34 mark to halftime. (that's roughly a 58pts/40 mins clip)

-- 16 points in the last 9:42 of the game, including just 5 field goals. That's 5 field goals in almost one full quarter of the game.

Against NC State:

Probably the team's most consistent offensive performance down the stretch. I won't quibble with the production there, on the whole.

Against UNC at CH:

Zero points from the 11:50 mark to the 6:35 of the second half. This was the decisive stretch of the ballgame. the evil smurfs turned a 3pt lead into a 12pt lead and never looked back. Yes, the have a good team. I think that's we're hoping to have, too.

Against Maryland at CIS:

5 points after the 5:11 mark of the 1st half to halftime.
6 points in the first 6:49 of the second half. That's 11 points in 12 minutes of playing time. During that stretch, Maryland scored 22 points and turned a 1 point game into a 12 point game.

There were HUGE scoring droughts in the St. John's game, too. I could go on but I think you get the point.


This team had a problem eliminating scoring droughts. It regularly went long stretches with little or no offensive production, often during what turned out to be the decisive portion of ballgames. One could dismiss these issues if the scoring pace was so torrid at other times that the team overcame these lapses and won anyway; however, as we are all painfully aware, that is not the case. We do agree on one thing, though. The defense did evaporate, even when marty wasn't on the floor. Hmmmm.

3. Of course it's hyperbole for me say that you think "everyone" has fetishized (can i say that?) I would think that in a civilized yet casual forum such as this one that sort of obvious item would not be parsed and criticized. Oh well. I guess you set me straight.

4. Jumbo said: Well, let's see. [Scheyer] made first-team All-ACC frosh over some really good players. He tied for the team lead in scoring in conference games. He had 26 at home against UNC. He regularly covered some of the best perimeter players Duke faced. He opened the season at point guard, as a freshman, despite the fact that it isn't his natural position. Yeah, I'd say he was incredibly productive this year.

a) awards are meaningless because they 100 percent subjective. moving on.

b) team lead in scoring in conference games is objective and a good case for him playing. nice point.

c) 26 at home against UNC. good game, including a huge 1st half. but 1-game samples mean nothing. I can find one game that (almost) every player on the team had that made a great case for him being an all-american.

d) I could regularly cover some of the best players duke faced. I couldn't do a very good job of it. Scheyer had his moments defensively this year but save for 1 or 2 performances (the gonzaga game and maybe kent state -- a bit fuzzy there -- come to mind) he was not a defensive standout or anything, as you are constantly suggesting on here. And the fact is that he was the guy who got beaten many times down the stretch in close games, Maynor from VCU torched him at crunch time. Now, does this mean that somebody else could've done better? not necessarily, but we are not arguing where scheyer rates in on-the-ball defense on this team, we are arguing about his productivity relative to someone else's potential productivity. And if neither one of the players makes a difference on defense against a certain opponent, then the fact that jon may be a bit better at it in the abstract is meaningless for that discussion.

e) what scheyer did at point guard this year had almost no impact on this team, IMO. His abilities as a secondary ballhandler were valuable to give gp a break from defenses constantly harassing his handle but there's a far cry from bringing the ball up the floor and playing pg. And at any rate, the players who would have been coming in for scheyer, had he lost minutes, would have been wing players, so i don't see where this part of jon's game is all that critical to this discussion. But, I will give you that he has some value as a secondary ballhandler. that's true.


(continued)

[devildownunder]

continued from previous post:


5. Jumbo said: Adequate? No. I can assure you that [Scheyer]'s a good on-the-ball defender, at worst. The staff loves his D. And I love how you write off the other qualities (his fine grasp of duke's team D concept and his ability as a secondary ballhandler) when they were severely lacking on this team.

No. I can assure you that Scheyer is an adequate on-the-ball defender. above average. no more no less. If he were very good, then he would be a stopper, which he certainly isn't, at least not in our system, which, you rightly noted, he understands quite well. There is no way to go back and track this statistically at this point, that I know of, but you yourself have acknowledged that there the team's defense isn't as strong now as it was early in the season. So even if jon were a "good" on-the-ball defender, or a spectacular one, his impact on the overall team D as a whole was minimal for most of the season because we couldn't stop anybody once we started playing real competition every time out. So, I will restate that when evaluating potential for productivity, I think aspects other than defense need to be examined.


6. Jumbo said: Who says Pocius didn't have a chance to show what he could do? What do you define as talent? If you watch him off the ball, he makes the same mistakes he did early in the season on D. On offense, he's still out of control a large portion of the time (look at his turnover rate). I like the kid, but I do think it's silly to suggest he didn't get a chance to show what he could do. He got it every day in practice, for one thing. The problem is, at least four perimeter players out-performed him.

How many perimeter players outperformed him in the ACC tournament?

I say he didn't get a chance to show what he could do in games for the vast majority of the season. And I say that because too many times we saw him make a single mistake and head back to the pine. I'm not predicting any specific results out of him. I'm saying he has demonstrated some offensive punch and, given that I don't see how he could have made team defense any worse, why not put him in there and see if he can have an impact at the offensive end. Need another rationale? You said yourself the team's defense got worse as the year went on. If that's the case, then why not try some combinations that might improve the offense, especially if jon were in the middle of one of his unproductive offensive stretches, of which there were many (not that this is something you don't expect from freshmen. I'm not trying to slam jon, here)?

7. Jumbo said: Another strawman. No one deemed anyone "untouchable." I, and others, just happen to think that players earn their minutes and that Marty was in just about the right role at the end of the season. His ankle was messed up midway through the year, but otherwise, I was quite happy with him playing 5-10 minutes, and potentially more if he provided a spark (like vs. NCSU). But I think Paulus, Scheyer, Nelson and Henderson are all superior players, and that's where the bulk of the perimeter minutes should have, and did, go.

You can use whatever label you want. You have been adamantly opposed to taking any of the four perimeter players you mentioned off the floor for any combination of minutes in order to work another potential player into the game. That, to me, says you think they are untouchable under the current circumstances. And, more to the point, you refuse to even hear arguments about it for the most part, without resorting to telling people they "don't get it" or are in some way inferior to you.

My purpose here is not to argue that marty or anyone else, in particular, was a star who never got the chance this year. My point was that when the team's level of performance is not where we all hope it will be (please, spare me this "you don't know that coach K wasn't happy with 22-11 nonsense) then options that have not been explored perhaps should have been, because obviously what was tried didn't work. Heck, maybe Zoubek should have been given more time to stumble out of the blocks until he and Josh worked together in a slow-down, half-court-style offense -- just a thought. But the argument that the guys who were in there proved they were the best in practice and so should never, or rarely, lose minutes to anyone else doesn't hold water when a team consistently fails to achieve its goal -- winning.

[devildownunder]

i meant better numbers for that particular person. meaning, if that guy got more minutes, his numbers per minute will likely improve.

plus, maggette got plenty of minutes, didn't he? seems like he played at least 10-15 a game and had some games where he played much more than that (when he was playing well). That is a huge distinction because staying in when you are doing well allows those numbers to go up. Many guys with confidence problems never get that chance. (Corey never had a confidence problem because he could dunk over superman).

This is such an intense thread -- and not within reason -- but let me offer as an aside that Corey UH-OH-MAGGETTE-OH!'S dunk against Florida where he took future NBA'er Mike Miller off the dribble all the way from out near halfcourt to the hole, put the ball on his hip, threw it down with two hands, did a chin-up on the rim and slapped the backboard before he came down has got to be the single nastiest move I have ever seen from anyone in a Duke uniform. Man, did that kid have sick talent.

[devildownunder]

Jumbo asked me in an earlier post what basketball talent was.

After just a few minutes thought, I'd say it's

1. Natural athletic ability that relates to the game (quickness, jumping ability, eye-hand coord., etc.

2. Inate understanding of the game and its principles and ability to display that understanding through actions on the court, such as having the "court vision" to make a pass that leads to an easy basket, or the awareness to seem to think a step ahead on defense.

3. Mastery of basketball skills like shooting, dribbling and passing.

[devildownunder]

Duke tries to pressure the ball, all the time. This Duke team was not very proficient at it once they got into the conference playing more skilled teams. But we are going to do it no matter what. Now these other 'quicker' teams said 'well we will just challenge that'. It started working and low and behold we never did figure that out because they just kept doing it over and over again. Why, because Duke is just not going to change.

Blame it on communications, or lack thereof, but other coaches were smart enough to see that Duke could not handle offenses that directly challenged their 'planned' defense. Because as I was told 'we do not have enough time to practice anything else' it stands to that reasoning that there was nothing else Duke could do. So, just maybe next year we will be quick enough, or we had better be, because these coaches are not going to forget about a team that 'cannot communicate'.


K had enough to practice something else in 1991, when he won his first title. In the championship game, with Laettner exhausted. K went to zone. Heck, we played a little zone this year, too. This is not an endorsement for the zone as cure all. I'm just saying this argument that we can't play anything else because we don't have time to practice anything else, one that keeps popping up, doesn't seem to jibe with what's actually happening on court. If it were true, we'd never see any adjustments at all and K made changes aplenty this year.

[chrisheery]

The NBA website has great per-minute stats readily available, and it shows that playing time isn't a big advantage for per-minute stats. For instance, among other players, Anthony Roberson and Eddie House average more points per 48 minutes than Chris Paul. First and third in the NBA in rebounds per minute? Try Dikembe Mutombo and Jeff Foster. Point is, guys with limited minutes can put up some impressive stats in garbage time.

lets just use common sense, though.

you want to compare apples to apples, please do so. you are talking about the nba. these are establised PROS. they know their role and it is clearly defined for them. you also point out that this is garbage time. can't remember the last time we had garbage time in a game.

our guys are 18 year olds who have no idea where their basketball careers will take them. not having mintues makes them think they are not very good. you can't find numbers to argue this. you just have to use common sense.

[chrisheery]

this post has been excellent and fun. i think i will just read from here on out, at least in this thread. it seems to be getting a little too intense. i don't want to irritate anyone because things seem to be getting taken too seriously. i think this is fun and don't want to take the fun out of it.

thank you for the other perspective to the way i have seen things. i think both sides have valid points. i can't wait for next year to see how things play out. coach k rules. in the end, i trust his decisions over almost anyone in basketball.* i think this year might have been more by design for next year than we can all see right now. the funny thing is that coach k is so far ahead of our thinking that we don't even know why or how.


*i still love marty though.

[Jumbo]

This statement is only a strawman if Coach K actually was satisfied with this season's results.

No, the statement is a strawman because it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. No one was arguing whether this was a successful season. The conversation was about depth.


Oh really? These numbers (from goduke.com and live stats) disagree:

Duke played its best offense of the season in its last four games, any way you slice it. Duke scored at least 72 points in each of those games. Other teams have scoring droughts too, you know, and Duke at least improved in this area later in the year. Was the team an offensive juggernaut at the end? No. Was it offensively challenged at the end, the way it was for much of the season? No.


a) awards are meaningless because they 100 percent subjective. moving on.
Are they any more subjective than what you've passed off as "analysis" of Scheyer's game? Moving on...


b) team lead in scoring in conference games is objective and a good case for him playing. nice point.
Merci. It's good to know that I'm not a complete moron.


c) 26 at home against UNC. good game, including a huge 1st half. but 1-game samples mean nothing. I can find one game that (almost) every player on the team had that made a great case for him being an all-american.
I never said that he was an All-American. I just thought it was worth noting that in his first game against Duke's archrival, he came out and scored 26 points. That's pretty darn impressive for a freshman, wouldn't you say?


d) I could regularly cover some of the best players duke faced. I couldn't do a very good job of it. Scheyer had his moments defensively this year but save for 1 or 2 performances (the gonzaga game and maybe kent state -- a bit fuzzy there -- come to mind) he was not a defensive standout or anything, as you are constantly suggesting on here. And the fact is that he was the guy who got beaten many times down the stretch in close games, Maynor from VCU torched him at crunch time. Now, does this mean that somebody else could've done better? not necessarily, but we are not arguing where scheyer rates in on-the-ball defense on this team, we are arguing about his productivity relative to someone else's potential productivity. And if neither one of the players makes a difference on defense against a certain opponent, then the fact that jon may be a bit better at it in the abstract is meaningless for that discussion.
I'm not sure how to convince you here. I like to think that I know something about basketball, and I've marveled at his defense for a freshman. I've heard other basketball personnel do the same. The job he did on Raivio (which you mentioned) was incredible. The job he did on Thaddeus Young against Tech at Cameron was fantastic. Did Scheyer struggle at times, like most freshmen? Sure. But he was easily Duke's second-best perimeter defender, and generally did a very good job of stopping his own man (we're talking on-ball defense here). Also worth noting -- he wasn't getting torched by Maynor at cruch time. Yes, Maynore hit the winning jumper over him. But Scheyer was out of the game at the time when Maynor hit a layup to put VCU up, 76-74. Scheyer gave up a short pull-up to Maynor with 1:25 left, which you might remember from such films as "The Cause of Scheyer's Bloody Eye." Otherwise, Maynor didn't score another field goal in the game's final 15 minutes. That's not getting torched. I don't know how else to show you how much better an on-ball defender Scheyer is than not only Pocius, but many other other player in the country. I wish I could create a reference list for you, or something. I'm not making this up, though.


e) what scheyer did at point guard this year had almost no impact on this team, IMO. His abilities as a secondary ballhandler were valuable to give gp a break from defenses constantly harassing his handle but there's a far cry from bringing the ball up the floor and playing pg. And at any rate, the players who would have been coming in for scheyer, had he lost minutes, would have been wing players, so i don't see where this part of jon's game is all that critical to this discussion. But, I will give you that he has some value as a secondary ballhandler. that's true.
The point is that he had a pretty special freshman year, despite opening it playing out of position. And you've got to think that learning to play the point and distrubute might have stalled his development as a scorer a bit, don't you? Plus, I was quite happy with the job he did in relief of Paulus at the point.


So even if jon were a "good" on-the-ball defender, or a spectacular one, his impact on the overall team D as a whole was minimal for most of the season because we couldn't stop anybody once we started playing real competition every time out. So, I will restate that when evaluating potential for productivity, I think aspects other than defense need to be examined.
First of all, Duke still played great D through the first 2/3 of the ACC schedule. It really only fell apart in the last four games. And just because the team D fell apart, Scheyer's contributions to team defense didn't necessarily do the same. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "potential for productivity" in this case.


How many perimeter players outperformed him in the ACC tournament?
You discounted Scheyer's game against UNC, but now want to trumpet Pocius' perfromance against NCSU. How does that make sense?


I say he didn't get a chance to show what he could do in games for the vast majority of the season. And I say that because too many times we saw him make a single mistake and head back to the pine. I'm not predicting any specific results out of him. I'm saying he has demonstrated some offensive punch and, given that I don't see how he could have made team defense any worse, why not put him in there and see if he can have an impact at the offensive end. Need another rationale? You said yourself the team's defense got worse as the year went on. If that's the case, then why not try some combinations that might improve the offense, especially if jon were in the middle of one of his unproductive offensive stretches, of which there were many (not that this is something you don't expect from freshmen. I'm not trying to slam jon, here)?

And I'm not trying to slam Marty because, quite frankly, I enjoy it when he plays well. But his struggles are not limited to defense. Maybe you've blocked this out, but he has a propensity for turnovers and silly plays, like the behind-the-back pass against St. John's. He plays too wildly at times. And it's not like he's a consistent offensive juggernaut either. He had other games where he saw enough minutes to do damage, and produced very little at the offensive end (like VCU).


You can use whatever label you want. You have been adamantly opposed to taking any of the four perimeter players you mentioned off the floor for any combination of minutes in order to work another potential player into the game. That, to me, says you think they are untouchable under the current circumstances. And, more to the point, you refuse to even hear arguments about it for the most part, without resorting to telling people they "don't get it" or are in some way inferior to you.

Not at all. I just want people to recognize that there might be some very valid reasons why Marty's minutes were reduced for much of the year, ranging form a bad ankle to mistakes in practice ot defensive lapses to wildness on offenese to playing behind four better players.


My purpose here is not to argue that marty or anyone else, in particular, was a star who never got the chance this year. My point was that when the team's level of performance is not where we all hope it will be (please, spare me this "you don't know that coach K wasn't happy with 22-11 nonsense) then options that have not been explored perhaps should have been, because obviously what was tried didn't work. Heck, maybe Zoubek should have been given more time to stumble out of the blocks until he and Josh worked together in a slow-down, half-court-style offense -- just a thought. But the argument that the guys who were in there proved they were the best in practice and so should never, or rarely, lose minutes to anyone else doesn't hold water when a team consistently fails to achieve its goal -- winning.

This, of course, is all speculation. Because there's a difference between being happy with 22-11 (which few of us are) and recognzing that the team, no matter how many minutes various guys played, just might not have been capable of doing much more. I watch the games very closely, and by the end of the season, I did not feel comfrotable with Zoubek on the floor. His lower body HAS to get strong. And when that happens, he'll be a valuable contributor. As I said, by the end of the year, I was comfortable with an eight-man rotation, with Marty as part of it, getting 5-10 minutes. Obviously, when things don't work out as we'd like, we're all prone to second-guess and search for alternatives. In this case, I think K basically tried all of his alternatives.

[Jumbo]

K had enough to practice something else in 1991, when he won his first title. In the championship game, with Laettner exhausted. K went to zone. Heck, we played a little zone this year, too. This is not an endorsement for the zone as cure all. I'm just saying this argument that we can't play anything else because we don't have time to practice anything else, one that keeps popping up, doesn't seem to jibe with what's actually happening on court. If it were true, we'd never see any adjustments at all and K made changes aplenty this year.

In fact, K went to a zone for a few possessions against VCU. Sadly, VCU scored on almost all of them.

[Jumbo]

lets just use common sense, though.

you want to compare apples to apples, please do so. you are talking about the nba. these are establised PROS. they know their role and it is clearly defined for them. you also point out that this is garbage time. can't remember the last time we had garbage time in a game.

our guys are 18 year olds who have no idea where their basketball careers will take them. not having mintues makes them think they are not very good. you can't find numbers to argue this. you just have to use common sense.

OK. I'll use common sense. I've played the game. I know darn well that games go to garbage time, and it's a great opportunity for guys at the end of the bench to put up numbers. I think last year, Boateng (if it wasn't Boateng, it was Thompson a couple of years earlier) had a ridiculous points or boards-per-minute stat. Why? Duke blew a lot of people out and the guy was able to put up stats against other teams' scrubs, who weren't as good as he was. Garbage time is a great time for padding stats, which is why some deep reserves often have better per-minute numbers. And that was what this discussion was about, not the self-esteem of players who see limited minutes.

[devildownunder]

No, the statement is a strawman because it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. No one was arguing whether this was a successful season. The conversation was about depth.



Duke played its best offense of the season in its last four games, any way you slice it. Duke scored at least 72 points in each of those games. Other teams have scoring droughts too, you know, and Duke at least improved in this area later in the year. Was the team an offensive juggernaut at the end? No. Was it offensively challenged at the end, the way it was for much of the season? No.


Are they any more subjective than what you've passed off as "analysis" of Scheyer's game? Moving on...


Merci. It's good to know that I'm not a complete moron.


I never said that he was an All-American. I just thought it was worth noting that in his first game against Duke's archrival, he came out and scored 26 points. That's pretty darn impressive for a freshman, wouldn't you say?


I'm not sure how to convince you here. I like to think that I know something about basketball, and I've marveled at his defense for a freshman. I've heard other basketball personnel do the same. The job he did on Raivio (which you mentioned) was incredible. The job he did on Thaddeus Young against Tech at Cameron was fantastic. Did Scheyer struggle at times, like most freshmen? Sure. But he was easily Duke's second-best perimeter defender, and generally did a very good job of stopping his own man (we're talking on-ball defense here). Also worth noting -- he wasn't getting torched by Maynor at cruch time. Yes, Maynore hit the winning jumper over him. But Scheyer was out of the game at the time when Maynor hit a layup to put VCU up, 76-74. Scheyer gave up a short pull-up to Maynor with 1:25 left, which you might remember from such films as "The Cause of Scheyer's Bloody Eye." Otherwise, Maynor didn't score another field goal in the game's final 15 minutes. That's not getting torched. I don't know how else to show you how much better an on-ball defender Scheyer is than not only Pocius, but many other other player in the country. I wish I could create a reference list for you, or something. I'm not making this up, though.


The point is that he had a pretty special freshman year, despite opening it playing out of position. And you've got to think that learning to play the point and distrubute might have stalled his development as a scorer a bit, don't you? Plus, I was quite happy with the job he did in relief of Paulus at the point.


First of all, Duke still played great D through the first 2/3 of the ACC schedule. It really only fell apart in the last four games. And just because the team D fell apart, Scheyer's contributions to team defense didn't necessarily do the same. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "potential for productivity" in this case.


You discounted Scheyer's game against UNC, but now want to trumpet Pocius' perfromance against NCSU. How does that make sense?



And I'm not trying to slam Marty because, quite frankly, I enjoy it when he plays well. But his struggles are not limited to defense. Maybe you've blocked this out, but he has a propensity for turnovers and silly plays, like the behind-the-back pass against St. John's. He plays too wildly at times. And it's not like he's a consistent offensive juggernaut either. He had other games where he saw enough minutes to do damage, and produced very little at the offensive end (like VCU).



Not at all. I just want people to recognize that there might be some very valid reasons why Marty's minutes were reduced for much of the year, ranging form a bad ankle to mistakes in practice ot defensive lapses to wildness on offenese to playing behind four better players.



This, of course, is all speculation. Because there's a difference between being happy with 22-11 (which few of us are) and recognzing that the team, no matter how many minutes various guys played, just might not have been capable of doing much more. I watch the games very closely, and by the end of the season, I did not feel comfrotable with Zoubek on the floor. His lower body HAS to get strong. And when that happens, he'll be a valuable contributor. As I said, by the end of the year, I was comfortable with an eight-man rotation, with Marty as part of it, getting 5-10 minutes. Obviously, when things don't work out as we'd like, we're all prone to second-guess and search for alternatives. In this case, I think K basically tried all of his alternatives.


Will someone PLEASE tell me how to get the multiquote function to work?

*sigh*

anyway, here i go again, the hard way:


1. My opening comment that u call a strawman fallacy was relevant because it was directed at your attitude about all of this discussion regarding depth/playing time, etc. Enough.

2. Other teams do have scoring droughts, true. They tend to stand out more when they occur in the mid to late portion of the second half of games that you lose. That's what happened to this team down the stretch more than just a couple of times. When that happens, to me it says you are offensively challenged. Obviously you disagree.

3. Yes, actually my comments about scheyer are quite a bit more objective than postseason awards. I spoke about the team's defense and his role in it and how they are related, i refered to specific skills that he has. What I didn't do, and didn't try to do, was break down his game frame-by-frame. And I never said that I would. Don't think I suggested it either. I merely addressed the team's performance in many ways while he was in and asked why, given the results, that his contribution -- in every game -- was so critical. Exhaustive analysis? No. More objective than a bunch of sportswriters? Absolutely.

4. Well, I know you thirst for my approval, so I have to throw you a bone every now and then. :p

5. Yes, scheyer's offensive performance against unc, especially in the first half, was excellent.


6. We've been back and forth on how good a defender jon is. The "for a freshman" part doesn't mean anything to me. I'm not taking that into account for purposes of this discussion and I don't see why you should either. It may just be an issue of semantics. I can tell you that from very early on in the season, jon appeared to "get" both the team d and the individual d concepts better than almost anybody on the team -- and he executed them better, too. He positions himself well and displays good balance. He has had to handle some tough guys this year and lesser players wouldn't have fared as well as he has. But, and it's a big but to me, IMO "good" means you are making an impact. A real impact. You have to be able to shut people down a reasonable portion of the time and really make it tough on almost everyone you play. "Great" to me would mean even better than that. A Billy King type.

So we may be caught up in some semantics here. You may use those terms differently. I tend to be quite miserly with the superlatives.

7. I think it is quite fair to say he had a fine freshman year. He went through rough patches as all freshmen do but he was able to shine at times, as well. He has a very bright future. Thank god he's back for next year. I didn't have any real problem with his work at the point guard spot either. He was a backup pg and, IMO, was quite adequate, for a backup. Perhaps you rate his performance more highly. I'm not ready to blame his offensive issues in spots on his pg prep, though. But, really, how could we measure that empirically?

8. The "potential for productivity" point i'm making, basically, is that if the team's d was so crappy, how much worse could it have been if he weren't in there? so, arguing that he has to be in for his defense doesn't really seem to make much sense. Almost no one on the team was a sure bet for offense, so why not try as many options as possible.

9. I don't really think i discounted scheyer's game against unc, i just said you can't point to one game he had and say that proves no one else should ever get any of his minutes.

10. No, I haven't blocked out marty's mistakes. I just think he got yanked to quickly for some of them early on and that his confidence probably took a beating as a result. Again, no real way to measure this directly.

11. And regarding your last couple of grafs, I don't really disagree too much with what you are saying but the tone of your posts suggests that none of these pt decisions are even debatable. Now, you may be 100 percent comfortable with them but isn't that just your own speculation on what's best? All I want is for some acknowledgement that maybe, just maybe, everybody who wants to discuss the rotations this year isn't an idiot just because they dare suggest that K may not have hit upon the absolute best strategy. I love K but, c'mon, he can make mistakes, too. And if people suggest that he has, they shouldn't have to post an annoted graduate thesis to avoid being attacked, not debated, attacked. That's it.

And finally, as usual, our views on the team actually aren't all that different. It's more about tone where you and I diverge.

[devildownunder]

In fact, K went to a zone for a few possessions against VCU. Sadly, VCU scored on almost all of them.

yeah, that's true. they shot the eyes out of that zone. I still don't blame K for trying it. McRoberts didn't come out of that game, paulus played nearly every minute, if not all of them. I suspect he was trying to steal a bit of rest and couldn't get away with it. BUT that's entirely speculation on my part.

[Lulu]

Lulu wasn't countering me. If Lulu was attempting counter me, he/she did a poor job. For one, Lulu included teams that lost, like VCU and Wisconsin. And, interestingly, both those teams use their benches about the same amount Duke did. Plus, teams like UNLV barely played more bench minutes than Duke. The only super-deep teams, who gave extended minutes beyond the eight-deep Duke went, were UNC and Tennessee.

I feel as though I'm being dragged into a fight here...

I really wasn't trying to counter Jumbo's post. When I read his/her post the first question that popped into my mind was "what about the other 6?" so that's what I set out to answer, mostly just for myself, but I posted what I found anyway. As I said in my original post, while the remaining teams in the sweet sixteen were slightly more deep than us, it really wasn't significantly so except for a couple of them (UNC and Tennessee), and again, this is just one game. Even if they had been significantly more deep, it would have only been 6 of 10 anyway. I also brought up post depth, which is another question altogether, and said that some were probably sad not to see Zoubek get any minutes, and that that is what was stirring up the argument. We were playing a small team in VCU; I do not know the merits between trying to exploit that with our own height, or trying to match up with them as we did, though I certainly wish I did and could know the outcome of employing each strategy. And I am not trying to say that I think K did anything wrong; I simply don't know and have to have faith in this situation. I have observed in the past that this is almost always Duke's strategy, though, to match up instead of exploit, and that is true for all years I think. I can only trust coack K and wish that I could know the outcome otherwise, just to "prove" to myself that what we do is best (I'm like that).

Thank you for your support imagepro. Honestly, even if momentary, it really didn't make me feel that good to be told I had done a poor job, even if it was referencing an argument I wasn't trying to make. Also, no offense taken, Jumbo, and I'm glad you took the time to look up those numbers originally and start this thread. It's a worthwhile point to be made.

Um... why can't anyone who knows more about the McRoberts situation give us anything... anything at all... more that just "he is gone". If there is nothing more to know, can we at least know that? Maybe it's just the obvious fact that it's always been his goal and the money is good and there is risk his draft stock might not get any higher, but after these rumors about problems with the coaching staff etc hitting the board I think a lot of us are dying to know. In fact, even if there is indeed something more to know and however whoever knows you're just not allowed to tell us, can we at least know that much? Fact? Speculation? Inability to even clarify? Source of info? It's just tough to be told something as though it's fact and yet not know why, or even why we should believe. I'm not even that concerned if he does leave though.

This is nothing more than an observation, probably best for another thread, but I was just thinking how it always seems we have one very good post player, and one who doesn't pan out. It's a bit weird. We had Brand, Boozer, Williams; but also Boateng, Randolph, Thompson, Burgess, Sanders... Horvath, Christensen, and Domzalski probably met expectations in my book, but probably had less expected from them at the start. McRoberts is a tough one to place, because he never really became the absolute superstar everyone expected, especially last year when we also had Williams. Now this year McRoberts came around a bit, but Zoubek seemed to fall short of what we had heard. It's been since we had Battier and Boozer together that we actually had two good (even starting) post players for the season, but Battier was pretty far from your typical post player anyway, really almost more a small forward. I really have no point here, it's just something I think about sometimes. It seems like every year I'm just wondering to myself if Williams has demoralized Randolph in practice too much, if Brand has demoralized Burgess, if Boozer demoralized Sanders, etc etc. I guess I'd just love to start a great big-man combo one of these years, but suppose that's a rarity in college bball these days. I'm sure we wonder Duke's Oden or Durant is... but K's just not going to recruit one-and-dones is he? (Livingston was weird, and if anything has probably guaranteed we won't be looking for too many more like him.) Ok, done rambling.

[MulletMan]

2 words: operation puerto

next time, do a little research so then there's less possibility of looking ignorant.

I'm not going to get into the parsing and arguing that is going on in this thread, however, I can't resist responding to this comment. Especially because it takes the time to directly insult another poster.

If you had any idea about what went on with Operacion Puerto you would know, 1. that a number of the high-profile riders who were originally implicated in the case, including Jan Ullrich, Joseba Bolki, Ivan Basso and the ENTIRE Comunidad Valenciana team have been completely cleared of wrong doing due to the fact that it was a witch hunt; and 2. That the case, as a whole, has actually been thrown out of the Spanish courts for lack of evidence on a technicality. While the investigation will continue under the guidance of WADA and UCI, hopefully determining who, of the remaining accused actually was doping, it is far from a confirmation that ALL cyclists are doping, or that they are the only athletes invovled, as Fuentes' records also included a number of football, baseball and tennis players.

Don't make counter arguements calling someone ignorant and accusing them of not doing research if you do not plan to hold yourself to similar standards.

[hughgs]

2 words: operation puerto

next time, do a little research so then there's less possibility of looking ignorant.

Careful for what you wish for. I have been following Operation Puerto since the very beginning. Since you think Operation Puerto shows that "most" cyclist dope, then point me to an article (not opinion page) that demonstrates how Operation Puerto gives evidence that "most" cyclist dope.

I don't think you have any clue about the world of cycling. There's more to cycling than just pedaling over different terrains. There are strategies involved which would make you wince. Do you even understand what a professional cyclist is? How about the different levels of professional cycling? I'll tell you what, simply explain to me how the UCI ranks their races and I"ll believe that you know a little about cycling. Until then, you should try and avoid make blanket statements about athletes in sports that you know nothing about.

Get back to me when you've found your answers to my questions on Operation Puerto. In fact, I'll point you to a good, unbiased web site:

www.cyclingnews.com

[throatybeard]

Before this becomes a complete thread hijack, could we all agree at least on the assertion, as forumlated so:

Endurance comparisons between freshman basketball players and cyclists are flawed partly because more cyclists participate in blood doping than do freshman basketball players.

[hughgs]

Before this becomes a complete thread hijack, could we all agree at least on the assertion, as forumlated so:

Endurance comparisons between freshman basketball players and cyclists are flawed partly because more cyclists participate in blood doping than freshman basketball players.

Coward :)!

[throatybeard]

At least this has re-sensitized me to the idea that "Lance doped; no he didn't" ought to be in the Handy Pocket Reference.

[mapei]

Hmmm. I go away from the board for a couple of days, come back to this thread, find it too time-consuming to read in its entirety, and skip to the last page. Imagine my utter surprise to see a mini flame-war going on about my real favorite sport.

My points, in no particular order:

1. Cyclingnews.com is a great web site, one of my favorites. But I don't think it is completely unbiased, since it does play to its English-speaking audience and favors English-speaking riders and teams somewhat.

2. Anyway, it's a VERY thin line between what is/should be legal and what isn't/shouldn't be in cycling, e.g., oxygen-deprivation tents are OK to increase your red-blood-cell levels, but EPO isn't, "nutritional supplements" are OK, asthma medicines aren't (with exceptions), and so on. My personal opinion is that these rules have gotten so convoluted trying to keep up with technology that they have become arbitrary and no more fair than the things they are trying to prevent.

3. While not all cyclists are doping, you can bet that many, including our American heroes, are at least pushing the envelope of legality as far as they can. Sometimes they cross over. And guess what? That's true of every other pro sport.

4. And, if you think that college basketball is somehow inherently more pure, then you had better take a closer look at the academic profiles of our sport's student-athletes. Even Duke has recruited players from prep schools under investigation for being academic shams.

5. Whoever said that there were a lot of non-cyclists on Dr. Fuentes's list is absolutely right.

6. Are you guys crazy? Am I? This has nothing to do with basketball. :)

7. While I wouldn't say that the peak-training methods employed in endurance sports are completely irrelevant to basketball, which puts very different demands on the body, I don't think they are totally transferable, either.

[tbyers11]

Before this becomes a complete thread hijack, could we all agree at least on the assertion, as forumlated so:

Endurance comparisons between freshman basketball players and cyclists are flawed partly because more cyclists participate in blood doping than do freshman basketball players.

If this is true, ESPN will have to find a new nugget of wisdom to have their sideline reporters repeat ad nasueum next year. ;)

[Zeke]

Basketball is an anaerobic sport -- lots of stopping and starting. FWIW, I think the fatigue a team endures is more the result of practicing hard all week, catching up on studies at a tough university, balancing all that time, etc., than two 40-minute games a week. And I think the fatigue might be mental as much as physical.

Right on Jumbo. You are elequent.

[dukie8]

I'm not going to get into the parsing and arguing that is going on in this thread, however, I can't resist responding to this comment. Especially because it takes the time to directly insult another poster.

If you had any idea about what went on with Operacion Puerto you would know, 1. that a number of the high-profile riders who were originally implicated in the case, including Jan Ullrich, Joseba Bolki, Ivan Basso and the ENTIRE Comunidad Valenciana team have been completely cleared of wrong doing due to the fact that it was a witch hunt; and 2. That the case, as a whole, has actually been thrown out of the Spanish courts for lack of evidence on a technicality. While the investigation will continue under the guidance of WADA and UCI, hopefully determining who, of the remaining accused actually was doping, it is far from a confirmation that ALL cyclists are doping, or that they are the only athletes invovled, as Fuentes' records also included a number of football, baseball and tennis players.

Don't make counter arguements calling someone ignorant and accusing them of not doing research if you do not plan to hold yourself to similar standards.

if you had read the entire thread, you would have realized that the "direct insult" actually was what was verbatim written previously by said poster TO ME.

i don't feel like hijacking this thread and turning it into a cycling discussion and will defer to mapei because most of what he wrote was spot on. however, i will address several of the points made. first, i was NOT the original poster who brought doping up but rather just concurred with what he wrote. with that being said, there is an ENORMOUS difference between saying that ALL of the cyclists are doped and MOST of them are. i'm not a former pro cyclist but i know enough of them to know that, as mapei noted, far too many of them are doping. it's a dirty sport and to compete at that level, help is needed. as mapei noted, it's no different from many other sports (eg, the nfl). i actually do know a thing or 2 about OP and the fact that the case against eufemiano fuentes was tossed out due to a weak case against him is highly irrelevant regarding what actually was found on his premises. you can pontificate all you want about how it was a "witch hunt" (which, by the way doesn't absolve one of wrong doing in a legal matter) but the fact of the matter is that A LOT of blood nicely linked to many top riders along with all the goods to properly administer it were found there. the evidence was enough for the 2 co-favorites to win the tour de france last year, basso and ulrich, to be kicked out of the event right before it started and for t-mobile to fire ulrich. you can believe what you want about this case and whether hamilton is a chimera and whether bonds or marion jones is involved with balco but i have seen enough to know that these are not clean athletes.

then i come across this wippersnapper:


I don't think you have any clue about the world of cycling. There's more to cycling than just pedaling over different terrains. There are strategies involved which would make you wince. Do you even understand what a professional cyclist is? How about the different levels of professional cycling? I'll tell you what, simply explain to me how the UCI ranks their races and I"ll believe that you know a little about cycling. Until then, you should try and avoid make blanket statements about athletes in sports that you know nothing about.

you have no idea what my athletic background is so you might want to hold back your taunts regarding what would make me wince. this is the kind of post that should be in the form of a pm so i won't waste much bandwidth attempting to prove to some anonymous person on dbr that i know the difference between paris-roubaix and the giro d'italia. however, if you ever are in the nyc area and would like to time trial in central park, tete-e-tete, send me a pm and i am game for it (and i won't be doped for it).

[hughgs]

if you had read the entire thread, you would have realized that the "direct insult" actually was what was verbatim written previously by said poster TO ME.

i don't feel like hijacking this thread and turning it into a cycling discussion and will defer to mapei because most of what he wrote was spot on. however, i will address several of the points made. first, i was NOT the original poster who brought doping up but rather just concurred with what he wrote. with that being said, there is an ENORMOUS difference between saying that ALL of the cyclists are doped and MOST of them are. i'm not a former pro cyclist but i know enough of them to know that, as mapei noted, far too many of them are doping. it's a dirty sport and to compete at that level, help is needed. as mapei noted, it's no different from many other sports (eg, the nfl). i actually do know a thing or 2 about OP and the fact that the case against eufemiano fuentes was tossed out due to a weak case against him is highly irrelevant regarding what actually was found on his premises. you can pontificate all you want about how it was a "witch hunt" (which, by the way doesn't absolve one of wrong doing in a legal matter) but the fact of the matter is that A LOT of blood nicely linked to many top riders along with all the goods to properly administer it were found there. the evidence was enough for the 2 co-favorites to win the tour de france last year, basso and ulrich, to be kicked out of the event right before it started and for t-mobile to fire ulrich. you can believe what you want about this case and whether hamilton is a chimera and whether bonds or marion jones is involved with balco but i have seen enough to know that these are not clean athletes.

then i come across this wippersnapper:



you have no idea what my athletic background is so you might want to hold back your taunts regarding what would make me wince. this is the kind of post that should be in the form of a pm so i won't waste much bandwidth attempting to prove to some anonymous person on dbr that i know the difference between paris-roubaix and the giro d'italia. however, if you ever are in the nyc area and would like to time trial in central park, tete-e-tete, send me a pm and i am game for it (and i won't be doped for it).

Actually, the original poster simply said that in his opinion that most riders cheat. And clearly stated that it was his opinion. You then said "most of them are doped". I asked you to prove that claim. You then claim that Operation Puerto is proof that "most" cyclist are doping and I asked you to prove it. You then say that since riders were kicked that they must have been doping. You obviously aren't following the case very closely or you would understand that the "evidence" that was used to support the suspension of the riders had to do with the fact that they were implicated and nothing to do with any evidence of doping. So, once again I ask you to show me how Operation Puerto demonstrates that "most" cyclist are doping.

And, I stand by my declaration that in your previous posts you were showing your ignorance. Ignorance is not an insult but merely a statement that don't have the knowledge of a particular subject, in this case professional cycling. We are all ignorant of many things.

[hughgs]

1. Cyclingnews.com is a great web site, one of my favorites. But I don't think it is completely unbiased, since it does play to its English-speaking audience and favors English-speaking riders and teams somewhat.

I simply meant that Cyclingnews.com, to me, was unbiased with regards to straight new reporting. Yes, their news tends to be Australian, but I think their coverage on Operation Puerto has been unbiased. I should've been more clear about that.


3. While not all cyclists are doping, you can bet that many, including our American heroes, are at least pushing the envelope of legality as far as they can. Sometimes they cross over. And guess what? That's true of every other pro sport.

And just to be clear, that is a far different indictment than saying that "most" cyclists or any particular cyclist is doping.


6. Are you guys crazy? Am I? This has nothing to do with basketball. :)

Well, that's true, but if you remember, I will always lash out at posters who make blanket statements about cycling and doping. And, besides, it's the off season and Contador just won Paris-Nice (though he has to wear that uninspiring white jersey).

[mapei]

I say let's make it a team time trial and all kick *** in the Park.

[dockfan]

At least this has re-sensitized me to the idea that "Lance doped; no he didn't" ought to be in the Handy Pocket Reference.

Lance Thomas did NOT dope!!!!! ;)

[throatybeard]

Did Armstrong?

[dukie8]

If you had any idea about what went on with Operacion Puerto you would know, 1. that a number of the high-profile riders who were originally implicated in the case, including Jan Ullrich, Joseba Bolki, Ivan Basso and the ENTIRE Comunidad Valenciana team have been completely cleared of wrong doing due to the fact that it was a witch hunt; and 2. That the case, as a whole, has actually been thrown out of the Spanish courts for lack of evidence on a technicality. While the investigation will continue under the guidance of WADA and UCI, hopefully determining who, of the remaining accused actually was doping, it is far from a confirmation that ALL cyclists are doping, or that they are the only athletes invovled, as Fuentes' records also included a number of football, baseball and tennis players.

Don't make counter arguements calling someone ignorant and accusing them of not doing research if you do not plan to hold yourself to similar standards.

really? you seemed so sure that op merely was a witch hunt and that basso was "completely cleared of wrong doing" (whatever that means) and then the bombshell comes out this week that basso fully admitted to doping in op:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2007/may07/may08news

[hughgs]

really? you seemed so sure that op merely was a witch hunt and that basso was "completely cleared of wrong doing" (whatever that means) and then the bombshell comes out this week that basso fully admitted to doping in op:

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news.php?id=news/2007/may07/may08news

Once again, you misinterpret what happened. Basso has not admitted to doping, merely to giving his blood for the purposes of doping. While the penalty is the same (according to Basso) you cannot equate the two actions. But, don't let the facts get in the way of your opinions.

And, at the time Mulletman responded, Basso was totally cleared of any doping. Mulletman merely reported what had occurred. You're the only one who has an agenda.

[Lord Ash]

Oh lord, it's BIKE RIDING. Who cares?

:D

Back to basketball! Only a few hundred days to go!

[dukie8]

Once again, you misinterpret what happened. Basso has not admitted to doping, merely to giving his blood for the purposes of doping. While the penalty is the same (according to Basso) you cannot equate the two actions. But, don't let the facts get in the way of your opinions.

And, at the time Mulletman responded, Basso was totally cleared of any doping. Mulletman merely reported what had occurred. You're the only one who has an agenda.

i don't have an agenda. i just don't have my head in the sand when it comes to doping and pro sports. basso never was "totally" cleared of any doping and i don't even know what that would involve. moreover, how does op amount to a witch hunt it turns out that the lab actually was involved with illegal sports doping. the fact is that bags of blood with his code name were found in a major international doping operation. now you can go on believing he was just playing around giving blood to the lab but most everyone else know what they were doing there -- the same goes for barry bonds and marion jones with respect to balco.

[throatybeard]

Wow, this is astoundingly relevant in a basketball thread in May.

[SilkyJ]

Just to stay relevant

I HATE UNC

9F 9F 9F!!!!!!!!!