MBB: Duke 80, UCLA 63 Post-Game Thread

[JBDuke]

Put your post-game thoughts here.

[hurleyfor3]

Second half was a good ol' Seventh Avenue Freeze Out.

[Potato Head]

Great game for Rasheed's confidence, and the team's confidence as well to get a big win. UCLA beat themselves in that second half, but it was nice to see our guys execute against a top team.

[miramar]

Good Parker 23 points

Bad Parker 2 points

[Troublemaker]

Great second half for Duke! Held UCLA to 26 points, attacked the zone much better.

We may have found two "new" starters.

[vick]

For all the crying this year about "free throw contests," this game moved at a nice pace (about 1:50 of real time). It turns out it is possible to play basketball without fouling every possession!

[GGLC]

Great job by our guys. Really happy to see Rasheed and Amile out there at crunch time.

[gocanes0506]

It was good to see the team attack the zone alittle more in the 2nd half. It definitely lead to better chances and getting to the free throw line more. The 2nd 10 minutes in the 1st half were tough to watch.

Im glad Sul has been doing better in practice and getting into the game today. That 3 with less than 2 left was the dagger.

Marshall Plumlee is hard to watch. He brings energy but his skill level/coordination really lacks for the collegiate level. Hopefully he can put it together sometime soon.

[davekay1971]

Held the number 3 scoring team in the nation to 26 second half points. Yes, UCLA left a bunch on the table, but Duke played some better defense, as well. Oh, and nice to see Sulaimon put the dagger in them. And Amile had a nice game. And more coherent thoughts may come later. Very good 2nd half, very good win.

[subzero02]

Without looking at the numbers, I thought our defensive rebounding was great in the second half... Amile and Parker had the inside position consistently and secured the ball when they got their hands on it

[CLW]

Much better defense the 2nd half with a game total .900 defensive efficiency. My guess the 2nd half was WAY better than the 1st. Hopefully, the team can build off the 2nd half defensive effort and become a solid team on that end of the court.

Looks like Sheed may be shaking out of his funk as well and Jefferson played well. I think the unit with the highest ceiling is Jefferson, Parker, Hood, Sheed, Cook with Dawkins, Thornton and Josh off the bench.

[dukelifer]

Great to see Sheed get confidence. Amile played well but HAS to hit free throws. Overall a strong second half.

[Troublemaker]

Oh, and nice to see Sulaimon put the dagger in them.

Yes! And seeing our coaches and players on the bench go nuts for Sheed. Goosebumps. This is family.

[kAzE]

Tony Parker and Tarik Black averaging a combined 9 points and 9 rebounds a game. Safe to say we dodged a couple of bullets there . . .

Great to see Sulaimon back in the mix.

[brevity]

I've covering Tony Parker's postgame press conference. I'll report just as soon as it's over.

[Matches]

Best game Amile has played at Duke. He was terrific tonight.

Great step in the right direction for the team as a whole.

[CLW]

Tony Parker and Tarik Black averaging a combined 9 points and 9 rebounds a game. We sure missed out!

they certainly haven't panned out for KU and UCLA but MP3 ain't exactly putting up the stats either. It would still be nice to have someone with some beef to put out on the floor.

[Dukehky]

That Alford kid looked like kind of a punk in the first half, glad he got shut down in the second stanza.

Good, solid win. Defense looked better but ucla also missed a ton of shots they made in the first half which were contested anyways.

David Wear? Seriously?

[Saratoga2]

The most effective group in my mind was one consisting of:

Quinn
Rasheed
Rodney
Jabari
Amile

They played exceptionally well together. Amile does need to work on his foul shot, but otherwise the guys looked good and stayed aggressive. Amile also picked up guarding Anderson later in the game. He tried but that kid is really good and hard to stop.

For those thinking we needed more opportunities for Marshall, we may have been dissuaded by what we saw of him tonight. To me he seemed to lack aggression tonight and didn't provide anything much positive. Maybe Marshall is not going to contribute much this year, although he should have additional chances against some of the weaker teams.

Josh, Tyler and Andre provided good support and I think that Matt was in but didn't recognize him out there. Did Semi get in?

[DukeHLM'13]

David Wear? Seriously?

He doubled his total for made 3's on the season.

But as with much of UCLA, he was pretty much shut out in the second half. Pretty much have to like everything that we did in the second, figured out how to attack the zone and got a lot better on the rotations on D and stopped giving up the wide open long jumpers that we were in the first half.