It's less than 24 hours to the Devil's next ACC contest. Time to move on from Saturday. Post your thoughts here.
Paulus' line against NC State in Cameron a year ago:
22 points, 5-of-8 from three, 6 assists, and 3 steals, as well as an incredible behind the head toss to Markie for a slam dunk in the second half.
Let's hope for more of the same, and for no green shirts to be in attendance.
If Duke limits the times McCauley gets the ball they will win.
It will be a rough game for me too watch, but with the youth of state's guards duke should run this one out.
Hope to be a good game
This seems like a scary game to me. Seriously. Duke is in a letdown spot, with this game immediately following a top-15 battle with Georgetown and before that, two physical road games. I think Duke's frame of mind for this game will be to exhale a little bit, which will cause trouble because NCSU does have talent.
The Wolfpack should also have confidence against Duke. They were beating us very solidly in Raleigh last year before we made a hellacious comeback at the end to win; they must feel like they let one slip out of their hands there. And even in the game in Durham, they were leading at halftime before we blew them out in the second half.
Miles Plumlee should get some run again in this game. Neither Costner nor McCauley are good matchups for Zoubek; just like against Georgetown, it's questionable whether Z will be able to stay on the court as we'll probably want to play our more mobile bigs. It should be a good game for Lance, though. We'll probably press most of the game and utilize his defensive talents to try and cause turnovers. And NCSU isn't a good defensive team so he'll even get his chances to score.
The spread for this game is 19.5 but I think it ends up much closer than that with the game still in doubt late in the 2nd half. I hope I'm wrong.
I think you are right. I think this will be a lot like the game at CIS last year. State will go up early, and hold a lead for a good while. But in the end, I think Duke's depth will prevail.
4 of the Wolfpack's 5 losses were decided in the final 2 minutes. And in the loss to Clemson, they were tied with about 10 minutes to play, and Clemson pulled away late in the game.
So State could EASILY be 15-1 right now. But they do not finish well. They did have a great finish against GT on Saturday, but that was it.
They do not hold leads well at all. Whether its the East Carolina game, or the Florida State game.
So I think State will hold a halftime lead, and keep that lead for the first 5 or 7 minutes of the second half, but Duke is much deeper and does not lose in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
I like to Duke to win, but they better watch out, because State is not going to role over in this game.
Last edited by wolfpackdevil; 01-20-2009 at 02:49 PM.
If anyone catches somone wearing one of those stupid green shirts like in the first half last year, rip it off of them! Get rid of those things and don't even take them into Cameron tonight! It was hilarious being at that game last year watching everyone chunk those shirts out onto the floor! LOL!
Their guards should give us a huge advantage. Farnold might have an All-ACC first name but he's pretty prone to make mistakes. McCauley and Fells can hurt us. If Costner warms up that could be a good matchup between two versatile big men with different styles in him and Singler.
I see a tight game until the close of the first half where we pull away. Had to give up my tix bc of the weather so hopefully its in HD.
If we appy pressure to State's guards, we should come away a winner. I look for turnovers from their guards that leads to fast break points for us. However if we let them set up and get the ball to their big men we could be in big trouble. In other words, play Duke D and we win by 12-15 pts. Go Duke!
Contain Costner and McAuley and I think we cruise. Our perimeter is head and shoulders above NC State's.
I'm not saying we can't lose and though Hickson was the most talented player on their team last year, you have to wonder what effect he had on the team's chemistry.
That being said, unless we come out plain flat (which is always possible with 18-22 year-old kids), this game shouldn't be much of a problem.
PS - Interesting stat from Pat Forde of ESPN:
"He [Henderson] never took more than 10 shots in Duke's first 10 games; now he hasn't taken fewer than 10 in the last seven games."
Music to my ears...
I agree that this is a game that Duke needs to be careful to concentrate on. In addition to the timing, everybody in the area is having a bit of a goofy day because of the snow.
I would like to see Miles get more time mostly because I'd like to get him up to game speed and effective before the tournaments. I disagree about McCauley vs. Zoubek. I think McCauley is the type of guy that Z will be effective with. He's more mobile than Z but not so much so that it'll negate Z's size difference. I think Z can very effectivly eliminate his effectivness down low.
Wish I was going to get to see the game...
Does anybody know if there's freely accessible online audio feed of the game ?
byah almost game time.
GO DUKE!!!
www.wsfl.com
Let Bob Harris and John Roth be your guides.
zoubek back in the lineup...
link to live stats here
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Any where I could get a live video feed online? Here in Virginia I'm stuck with the UVA/Maryland game and my audio on my computer isn't working well for some reason.
You gotta love holding the opposition without a field goal for the first 6 minutes, under any circumstances.