SJ starts 5 seniors. Home game for them. Lavin loves the limelight and would give his whole season to win this national TV game vs Duke.
I am officially worried.
Anyone attending? I'll be there with my son (T '02).
SJ starts 5 seniors. Home game for them. Lavin loves the limelight and would give his whole season to win this national TV game vs Duke.
I am officially worried.
Steve Lavin needs to be able to recruit top talent to St. John's and beating Duke would be a boon to his efforts. We will need to match St. John's emotional intensity over the first four minutes of the game to ensure they do not jump all over us early and stick us in a hole. I'm slightly worried about the slow starts our offense has experienced in several recent games.
Bob Green
Tell me I'm wrong, but I have a feeling this will not be the customary "home away from home" game for Duke.
I will be interested to see what level of intensity Duke brings. Will Coach K have to motivate? Will it be a test to see if Nolan can motivate? It will be hard for Kyrie to do it in his boot. Just not sure what the level of intensity will be for a noncon game with a big rivalry game (I'M KIDDING ABOUT THE RIVALRY PART) coming up.
Maybe not the customary, but I wouldn't expect the UNC-Greensboro experience.
St John's has a rich history, tradition, and fan base.
I would be shocked if MSG were not at least 75-25 in St John's camp...
Plus there is the David/Goliath theme.
It will be a hostile crowd by and large.
Good learning experience win or lose.
I'm there as well - going with a guy I went to the Gonzaga and West Virginia games last year. I hope we can keep the karma going.
This is correct based on previous meetings in MSG. It is St. Johns home court, and, unlike the periodic neutral site games in December, Duke's ticket allocation is relatively small. There is no university sponsored effort to turn out the alumni like December.
A fast Duke start to mute the opposing crowd would be nice.
The Butler game was indeed a "home away from home" game. St John's will bring a large crowd, but there will still be a sizable Duke contingent tomorrow (including me, swmbo, and our two kids). Tickets were not hard to get.
Looking forward to a good game - I missed BC due to the DC snowstorm and 48 hours without power. (Damned Pepco!)
-jk
St. Johns, like BC, is a veteran team, but stylistically it's a big change from BC. St. Johns eschews three pointers (and isn't very accurate on the rare occasions it takes threes). St. Johns does do a good job of getting to the line, however. It will be interesting to see how Duke defends them.
On defense, St. Johns doesn't defend the three very well at all, with opponents taking 41% of their shots from long range and making nearly 38% of them. Hope we don't settle for the first outside shot we see and instead work it inside or around for excellent shots.
St. Johns has played a very tough schedule (guess that almost goes without saying for a Big East team this year).
I'll be there. Section 131, row F. Let's go Duke!
Do we need a taxonomy about what constitutes a home game? How about?
"Home court:" All those familiar rims and shot lines. (E.g., Cameron.)
"Home crowd:" Majority of the crowd rooting for team. (Duke or UNC in Greensboro, but not the ACC's.)
"Home cooking:" In town at a different arena. (Butler at the Final Four in hometown Indianapolis.)
"Home contract:" Control of the arena, tickets, and seating, as against Butler in the Meadowlands. Usually results in a "home crowd."
"Home jerseys:" Like the higher seed in the ACC's or NCAA's. (Utterly useless advantage.)
"Home game:" All of the above.
sagegrouse
'BTW my faux pas on the Pre-Pre Game UMd thread jokingly intended to correct the Front Page record on the "Official UMd Bonfire" -- a wise but probably futile move by the Administration -- and make a wisecrack about burning sofas'
This got me thinking about the all too rare occurrence of playing an early round NCAA game in the Dean E. Smith Center, like we did against Boston U and SMU back in 1988. My all too quickly receding recollection of those games is they had some elements of familiarity, home crowd, even “home cooking” (did the higher seeded team get to go to class that day as Butler did last year?), but they were in a somewhat different category. How about “Home court by someone else’s father”?
Speaking of playing in the Dean Dome, I am circling March 5th as our first chance in 20 years to have a .500 record playing there. I guess that puts us at the opposite end of the scale from poor Clemson… [Oh, now there’s a sickening thought: losing my “Clemson will never win in Chapel Hill” bet by a tiger Dean Dome victory in a NCAA early rounder…]
No doubt, but there is a big difference between having a lot of supporters concentrated in sections near the court and in the lower levels rather than scattered through MSG. I've been to many Duke games at MSG, including several against St. Johns, and the pro Duke crowd has never been close to the "home away from home" games in December. As -JK noted, there will be plenty of Duke fans in attendance, but with the interest in the Johnnies on the rebound, Duke fans will be severely out numbered. This was my point.
I'll be there as well with a friend from b-school. Will be great to see the guys in person. Heading over early to watch warmups.
I know others are worried but I just don't see us losing to a team this bad, regardless of the home court / emotion factor. It's true that this game means WAY more to St. John's than it does for us, but that will be true for every game the rest of the way (UNC games excepted). And there should be enough Duke fans there to keep the crowd from truly being "hostile." I haven't seen St. John's play but I don't see anything in their 4 factor breakdown on either side of the ball that makes me worry, other than it looks like they do a decent job of forcing turnovers and we've certainly had spells where we've committed a few. We have a size advantage, a dramatic skill advantage, and a much better X's and O's coach. I hope Lavin wins enough games at St. John's to stay out of the broadcast booth forever, but I don't think today will be one of them.
Agree, but we have had our problems with the Storm (I really miss the "Redmen") in the past.
Here's the Daily News article on the game prep. http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/co...its_dukes.html
Rubin generally pretty good, although he thinks the Plumlees are twins...