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Duke wins 81-64. My take is that Duke is a bottom half of the ACC club. We have two very solid players, Gorecki and Odom. Odom could be a future star. Her mid range game is excellent. Unfortunately, our other players are not ACC caliber starters. Additionally, our zone continues to give up way to many wide open threes. I hope I am wrong. Maybe things will change if and when we can get out pg back from injury. Go Duke!
Okay some thoughts.
First, some house-cleaning.
As you may have noticed, I'm covering DWBB for GoDuke.com. and still an article or two for Go Duke: the Magazine, which actually are different entities.
Within those constraints, I'll keep posting my impressions.
Right now, this is very much a work in progress. Losing Kyra Lambert was a big loss. No way to sugarcoat it. She checked a bunch of big boxes, experience, best perimeter defender, best facilitator.
In her absence, I think we'll see a point-guard-by-committee, with Gorecki, Goodchild, Craig, Adams, Odom and Boykin--when she returns--taking turns initiating the offense.
Unfortunately, I fear all of these players may be better playing off the ball.
Boykin? She's practicing but with limits. No contact. Duke is still saying December but I'd be surprised if we see her before the middle of the month.
Duke is very young. Suggs and Roma are the only players who use up their eligibility this season. Roma is not an ACC player. I've always thought Suggs to be the consummate complementary player, an asset to the team if you surround her with good players and don't ask her to do too much. She had a career-high 12 points today against Elon and seems to be more assertive with the ball.
Suggs is very smart and McCallie values her leadership skills.
Leaonna Odom was exceptional today, 21 points, 10 rebounds, three assists. She seemed very comfortable playing the point and is making much better decisions with the ball. When her drives are cut off, she's not driving into a turnover but rather elevating fr mid-range jumpers.
If she plays like this consistently, she's in the All-America mix. She can be that good.
Haley Gorecki, on the other hand, is struggling a bit. She has a high basketball IQ but I think she recognizes this team's issues and is trying too hard to make something happen, forcing plays that just aren't there.
Getting Boykin back will help her big time.
Duke has four true freshmen and three will play a lot this year.
Miela Goodchild missed a couple of weeks to go to India for an international tournament--she's Australian--and she's just getting back into the swing of things. She has very good ball skills but she's going to have to adjust to ACC-level athleticism.
Onome Akinbode-James is an athletic 6-4, a native of Nigeria. She can run the floor, hit the face-up jumper and she had four blocks today, in 24 minutes.
She needs to figure out what she can and cannot do at this level.
Rayah Craig is a 5-10 guard. She's a tough, physical, high-energy player. She's already ahead of Jayda Adams in the rotation.
Their youth showed today, with some early reach-in-fouls and hesitant decision-making. But they're freshmen. They should get better with time and Duke plays three games in three days later this week in Florida. Force-feeding.
Boykin is a redshirt freshmen, so she'll make four freshmen in the rotation, when she returns.
Sophomore Jade Williams might be the most important player on the team. She and Akinbode-James are the only ACC-level posts on the team, IMO, and she can be almost unstoppable when things are going well.
But her inconsistency is maddening. Duke needs to know what to expect from her day-in-and day-out and that hasn't happened yet. Still, she's three games into her sophomore season.
I can see this season going several ways. We'll find out how good a coach McCallie is this season. If Boykin comes back hale and hearty sometime in the next month, the underclassmen improve and Odom and Gorecki show they can play at an All-ACC level with some consistency, then this is a Sweet Sixteen team, maybe better.
But there are a lot of qualifiers there. If Duke can't solve it's point-guard issues, if fouls and turnovers don't improve, if some bigs don't start showing some consistency, then this could be a long season.
Duke doesn't play at home again until December 2. After the tournament in Florida, Duke plays At Wisconsin, the ACC-Big 10 Challenge.
Lots of chances to grow. And lots of growing to do.
Great stuff Jim, thanks. I needed to hear your glass is half full analysis. I sure hope our season goes that way. Regardless, I will be intently watching and pulling hard for our Devils.
You must spread some Comments around before commenting on jimsumner again.
I've got you covered.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tappan Zee Devil
I was impressed today by how athletic Onome is and how well she can run the floor. With her and Leaonna, we have two very athletic forwards, to pair with two potential high-octane scoring guards in Haley and Miela. We could be a strong running team if we had the right PG, but while Rayah and Jayda both played well today, neither seems to be someone who can effectively run the break. If Mikayla can excel in that role, we should be both entertaining and successful. I agree with Jim that Jade could be a game-changer, but both her lack of consistency and our lack of a consistent post-feeding guard are points against her actually changing many games. Again, Mikayla could potentially help here, and hopefully Rayah and/or Jayda might improve enough to offer quality PG minutes.Quote:
Originally Posted by chrishoke
The rest of our players, including Faith who was outstanding today, are role players at this level. But we either need our top players to take the next step up, or have one of our PGs take control of the team. I honestly don't know if Mikayla can be that PG, but if she isn't it's going to be an up-and-down year. As someone said upthread, it's really a shame that Kyra got hurt again.
Duke loses 71-64 to a Washington team that just lost to Tulane. The lead was double digits for most of the 4th quarter.
From what I can tell from a quick perusal of the hoopgurlz rankings over the past few years, Washington does not have a single top-100 recruit on their team (they had a couple that were in the 50 range but did not show up on the box score, so I assume they are not on the team).Quote:
Originally Posted by chrishoke
Washington was also picked pre-season to finish 12th in the PAC12. Yep, dead last.
To put it mildly, that's just unacceptable. What a mess.
Box score shows Duke had a horrendous first half, scoring only 12 points in each quarter. They won the second half (and each quarter), but that doesn't do much good when they started it off down by 13.
Eek. Positive side, nice output by Gorecki (20) and Odom (19).
And like I said upthread, those 2 are about all we have.Quote:
Originally Posted by CameronBornAndBred
Freshman Miela Goodchild shot 3-5 from three point land, for 12 points total. That's promising. She was the only other player in double digits.Quote:
Originally Posted by chrishoke
Agreed, Miela has potential. But, man this Duke team right now is bad.
Yup. To add insult to injury, Sylvia's ladies just beat #17 USF. Ugh.Quote:
Originally Posted by chrishoke
“ Positive side, nice output by Gorecki (20) and Odom (19).“
However, neither of them shot well (7-17, 6-17].
Here's hoping we get healthy and turn it around and deliver a first Final Four trip for Coach McCallie at Duke.
Since the football game is not worth watching, I checked the women's score. Big whoop-de-doo-doo. We beat a 1-win Ball State team.
Get this...29 turnovers. Holy crap, there's only 40 minutes in the game.
That's a lot better performance than the football coaches and players today. Seems like our football team has had at least 29 turnovers. At least the women's basketball WON the game against a poor team. Our football team is getting trounced by a very poor team.Quote:
Originally Posted by dudog84
The Duke women lose again today to Missouri 62-54. Really sad state of affairs.
League play could be a disaster.
We can’t score against good teams. A problem that has existed for years.
Could be the beginning of the end for Coach P.