MBB: Duke 79, Georgia Tech 57 - Post-Game Thread

[JBDuke]

Put your post-game thoughts here.

[uh_no]

Put your post-game thoughts here.

wow....what a second half...THAT is the national championship contender...

[Duvall]

Good to have Sheed back.

[Dev11]

We started slow, then we figured out to move the ball and get to the rim, and we won. I'll take 79-55 ACC games all day.

[FerryFor50]

Great game!

Positives:

- much better effort and defense overall
- less hero ball and settling for contested 3s
- more drives and getting to the line
- Amile, Sulaimon, Hood and Dawkins
- monster effort on the boards

Negatives:

- Parker still struggling on both ends, but showed signs of life on offense a little
- Miller scored at will for the most part
- still allowed some easy points in the paint
- wide margin of victory will not allow me to spend the next 5 days arguing in this thread whether the season is over
- 1-17 ACC prediction utterly incorrect

[Dukehky]

Amile 10 boards. We started hitting threes and pulled away. I thought Marshall played well in his 2 minutes. Would have liked to see him a little more, but whatevs. Good win. I don't like playing at Clemson, but you gotta play who and where the schedule says we're supposed to play.

17-1 ACC prediction still in play. Why not, right?

[Saratoga2]

Great production from Rodney and from the combination of Andre and Rasheed. Jabari is still trying to find his way in the ACC. He has what it takes. Prefer hearing from those directly at the game.

[CDu]

That second half was a thing of beauty. We dominated in nearly every way after a pretty poor first half.

The ONLY quibble is that we had no answer for Miller inside. Thankfully, Georgia Tech was content to ignore him for much of the game. Well, and another not-so-hot performance from Parker. Hopefully that gets corrected soon.

Aside from that, we just dominated the second half. 45-24 in the second half. And we even outrebounded Tech - the first team to do so this year (though some of that may be a function of them losing their best post player).

Nice to see Hood stepping up. Solid game from Sulaimon as well. And Dawkins did a good job of producing even when his 3pt shot wasn't falling tonight. That's great to see.

Loved Jefferson's work on the boards. He fought valiantly inside to keep Miller from getting many offensive rebounds.

I'll take it. It wasn't a thing of beauty early, but it was gorgeous late.

[DukieInBrasil]

After a chunky start, the offense came alive quite nicely: 5 guys in double figures, Hood with 27, very nice balance.
Also nice to see Andre contributing in so many ways, particularly when his shooting was off. He got to the line, rebounds, a steal, a block and an assist, nice balance.
Rasheed had a very solid game as did Amile.
Even though neither Quinn or Jabari shot all that well, they both played well enough.
Our defense totally disrupted GT in the second half, turning a 1pt game at the half to a 22pt win.

[CLW]

shots fell in the 2nd half were they didn't in the 1st. this team can score no doubt about it but the defensive concerns with dribble penetration and post defense were again exposed for quite a bit for a final game total of 94.4 points per 100 possessions.

glad to see the +8 on the boards and the free throw shooting was excellent all night.

[Furniture]

Tyler's and Josh's stats vs Rasheed's and Amiles justifies K's starters tonight...

Player PTS AST OR REB STL BLK TO PF FG FGA FT FTA 3P 3PA MINS +/- **
Rodney Hood * 27 3 2 6 0 0 1 1 8 12 6 6 5 7 39 17
Quinn Cook * 13 5 0 1 0 0 1 1 4 10 4 4 1 4 37 10
Jabari Parker * 12 0 3 6 0 0 2 4 4 12 4 4 0 2 22 5
RashSulaimon * 11 2 1 5 0 0 1 1 4 7 1 2 2 2 36 13
Andre Dawkins 10 1 0 3 1 1 0 0 2 7 5 6 1 5 25 6
Amile Jeff. * 6 1 2 10 0 1 0 2 2 3 2 3 0 0 28 19
Marshall Plumlee0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 -3
Matt Jones 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 -3
Tyler Thornton 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 0
Josh Hairston 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 -7

How long will it be before Amile gets a double double?

[FerryFor50]

Tyler's and Josh's stats vs Rasheed's and Amiles justifies K's starters tonight...

Player PTS AST OR REB STL BLK TO PF FG FGA FT FTA 3P 3PA MINS +/- **
Rodney Hood * 27 3 2 6 0 0 1 1 8 12 6 6 5 7 39 17
Quinn Cook * 13 5 0 1 0 0 1 1 4 10 4 4 1 4 37 10
Jabari Parker * 12 0 3 6 0 0 2 4 4 12 4 4 0 2 22 5
RashSulaimon * 11 2 1 5 0 0 1 1 4 7 1 2 2 2 36 13
Andre Dawkins 10 1 0 3 1 1 0 0 2 7 5 6 1 5 25 6
Amile Jeff. * 6 1 2 10 0 1 0 2 2 3 2 3 0 0 28 19
Marshall Plumlee0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 -3
Matt Jones 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 -3
Tyler Thornton 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 0
Josh Hairston 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 -7

Eh, hard to get stats in such limited minutes.

[kAzE]

Some observations:
- Thornton and Hairston's minutes went down the drain
- Jefferson and Sulaimon played very well
- Offense was good throughout, got much more action in the paint (big improvement over the ND game), better passing, finding the open man
- Great job rebounding against a good rebounding team, beat them on the glass 33 to 25
- Defense on the perimeter was better, defense inside still lacking
- 22 of 25 from the foul line (88%) Home court is good
- Dawkins can drive!!
- Still not much of a transition game, not forcing many live ball turnovers


Parker's playing a bit too aggressively, he needs to slow down and just try to make the easy play. He's pressing and forcing things to get out of his slump right now. That's not the way to do it. His interior defense is also really bad right now. We're going to get mauled by below average big men all season long if he can't push guys a bit off the block.

[_Gary]

Eh, hard to get stats in such limited minutes.

My only concern with those stats are that only 6 guys got the majority of the minutes. I'm very happy we won, and did so in nice fashion in the 2nd half. But I sincerely hope we don't dip down to primarily 6 guys the rest of the way. I think we'll be seriously gassed come March if that continues. Other than that, I was pleased with what I saw in the 2nd half all the way around.

[sagegrouse]

Shiver me timbers! We outrebounded the Yellow Jackets 33-25 in the prelim totals.

Arrgghh! That Amile has some Bill Russell/Dennis Rodman qualities in seeing and grabbing the ball. it is fun to watch him work underneath.

Rodney was the star, but Andre had a very good all-around game (except for 3-pt shooting).

I thought the largest part of the improvement in our defense was that, in the second half, the Yellow Jackets quit making every shot they threw up. Some times the defense is good, but yu still ahve to walk the plank.

[kAzE]

Tyler's and Josh's stats vs Rasheed's and Amiles justifies K's starters tonight...

Player PTS AST OR REB STL BLK TO PF FG FGA FT FTA 3P 3PA MINS +/- **
Rodney Hood * 27 3 2 6 0 0 1 1 8 12 6 6 5 7 39 17
Quinn Cook * 13 5 0 1 0 0 1 1 4 10 4 4 1 4 37 10
Jabari Parker * 12 0 3 6 0 0 2 4 4 12 4 4 0 2 22 5
RashSulaimon * 11 2 1 5 0 0 1 1 4 7 1 2 2 2 36 13
Andre Dawkins 10 1 0 3 1 1 0 0 2 7 5 6 1 5 25 6
Amile Jeff. * 6 1 2 10 0 1 0 2 2 3 2 3 0 0 28 19
Marshall Plumlee0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 -3
Matt Jones 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 -3
Tyler Thornton 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 0
Josh Hairston 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 -7

How long will it be before Amile gets a double double?

Thornton's value was never quantifiable by stats to begin with.

[CDu]

Thornton's value was never quantifiable by stats to begin with.

Well, theoretically it should be captured by +/-. Of course +/- is very limited as a stat (especially over just a 6-minute sample size).

Still, I don't think Hairston or Thornton did much good or bad. It was more a situation where Georgia Tech didn't have much size at PF (hence we could go small and didn't need Hairston) and our other wings were having really good games (lessening the need for Thornton).

This was an example of the "ceiling" difference between our true seniors and their counterparts.

[Furniture]

Well, theoretically it should be captured by +/-. Of course +/- is very limited as a stat (especially over just a 6-minute sample size).

Still, I don't think Hairston or Thornton did much good or bad. It was more a situation where Georgia Tech didn't have much size at PF (hence we could go small and didn't need Hairston) and our other wings were having really good games (lessening the need for Thornton).

This was an example of the "ceiling" difference between our true seniors and their counterparts.

Who knows. Maybe K thought its time to give the true talented starters a chance and also give them plenty of minutes. It doesn't mean however that he will always give these 6 the majority of minutes. He may back off again next game.

[CoachJ10]

Shiver me timbers! We outrebounded the Yellow Jackets 33-25 in the prelim totals.

Arrgghh! That Amile has some Bill Russell/Dennis Rodman qualities in seeing and grabbing the ball. it is fun to watch him work underneath.

Rodney was the star, but Andre had a very good all-around game (except for 3-pt shooting).

I thought the largest part of the improvement in our defense was that, in the second half, the Yellow Jackets quit making every shot they threw up. Some times the defense is good, but yu still ahve to walk the plank.

One of the downsides of taking everyone's best shot (the Duke effect)...is teams do hit a higher percentage of high difficulty shots against us. The crown is a heavy thing to wear!

Also, can someone set up one of those online petitions to have Len Elmore banned from "calling" anymore Duke games. Our opponents' home radio announcers are more objective than he is.

[dukelifer]

Happy with the win and the greater energy in the second half. Amile is really doing his job well. If they would pass to him inside - he probably would score as well. But he is boxing out and bounding with strength. Jabari will get it back but the team needs learn to play when he is not on. This bench sitting will help Jabaru relax and help the other guys to step up. Andre did a great job of driving and Rasheed continues to get better. Still wish he would pull up and not try to take it to the basket. Cook is an enigma. He never seems to be the guy dictating the flow of the game and makes a lot of unforced errors. He has moments but he does not impose his will enough. Hood is an excellent shooter - a huge weapon. He is definitely playing with confidence now. The D remains a huge concern as does the lack of inside scoring. Tech is not a good team and Duke eventually won my the margin I expected. Clemson will be a big test for Duke.