Decourcy Article

[Buckeye Devil]

Has the Decourcy article on the impact of Coach K's involvement with Team USA been erased from the board already? In it he suggests that Duke has not benefited from this but has suffered instead, primarily in recruiting.

For example, per the article, Team USA training camps are in July at the same time of many summer tournaments, etc. with elite prep players, making it difficult to do both. He cites the lack of frontcourt power as the cause of tournament problems the past 2 years and basically says that there is a lack of ability to identify what players fit the system (the reason for this being the number of players transferring out, esp. T. King). Decourcy also mentions that in spite of the praise of LeBron, D Wade, for Coach K that it is no "cooler" now to come to Duke than it was before.

Then in a bit of a strange turn, he says that last year was a great accomplishment given the lack of frontcourt depth and says that it was among Coack K's most impressive coaching performances. He finishes by saying that Duke fans might conclude that Team USA was a factor in the tournament results of the past 2 years, even though it is somewhat of a leap to do so. He clearly believes that it was a contributing factor when he says that Duke fans will fairly be able to claim a greater share in the glory obtained by Team USA than other college programs who have not had the same sacrifice.

It's just his opinion, obviously. Thoughts..?

www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=427542

[Bob Green]

DeCourcy's job is to sell papers, or in today's internet age, website hits, so do not read too much into his comments. Duke is fine...recruiting is fine...the 2008 season is just around the corner!

I expect the USA to win the Gold Medal in Beijing and I expect Duke recruiting efforts to continue to sign quality players and miss on quality players.

[Classof06]

Personally, I'm not willing to say Krzyzewski's involvement with Team USA is hurting Duke but I'm not going to totally write the notion off, either. I think this upcoming season will do a lot to prove or disprove that theory.

The one thing Decourcey says which I agree with is that Duke seems to have had more difficulty identifying players that fit the system. Michael Thompson and Shav Randolph were the first players I noticed who just never seemed comfortable in their time at Duke. McRoberts, Boateng and King are other examples.

If you want to talk about current players, I'm not here to revive the constant referendum on Paulus but when was the last time Duke had a PG that was all but incapable of defending dribble penetration and/or other PGs? Especially when we consider ball pressure a staple of Duke basketball. When you look at Greg's strengths and weaknesses, there are many times where Paulus looks like an undersized 2-guard (SG) playing the point. And for as hard as I am on Lance Thomas, I don't think he planned on having to consistently guard centers when he signed with Duke and he seems to be another player playing out of position. Some of that has to do with Zoubek's injuries but it's still hard to clearly pinpoint what Lance is supposed to provide this team and averaging 4 ppg and 3 rpg last season tells me he's not being used the way he should be.

What this trend means or what it has to do with Team USA is really not for me to say because I have no clue. But I do think we'll have a better idea after next season; another 1st weekend knockout in '09 would lend much more credence to what Decourcey is saying. We shall see..

[bhd28]

I will say that I agree with his contention that Coach K being the olympic coach and the praise from the NBA guys doesn't really appear to be creating any noticeable help to recruiting, which I had hoped might happen. I know that he has been one of the top recruiters for a while, but I had hoped that the praise from LeBron, Kobe, et al. would help bring a few guaranteed lottery guys our way.

That said, if this gig helps the USA and it helps Coach K, it is okay in my mind that it hasn't helped Duke.