2) Leadership
I have long pounded the drums on this subject and am a firm believer that at least one strong senior leader must be among our best players/contributors to make a deep run in March. I’ve posted about this
so many times, but I’ll run the numbers back for y’all. There has been only 1 Duke final four team (out of 11) that did not have a senior amongst it top ~3 best players: 1991. That team featured a bunch of mid-classmen (Laetter, Hurley, T.Hill, Davis) and some no-name freshman named Grant Hill. It overcame this senior gap by having 3 guys’ whose jerseys hang in the rafters and have a small army of rings, all American trophies, ACC POY trophies, and final 4 MOP trophies between them. The senior who played the most was Koubek @ 15mpg. Every other team had a senior in what I would call “the top 2”:
'86: Dawkins
'89: Ferry
'90: Henderson
'91: see above
'92: Laettner
'94: Hill
'99: Langdon
'01: Battier
'04: Duhon*
'10: Scheyer
'15: Cook
Half of those guys have their jersey hanging in the rafter.
*Duhon was the 5th leading scorer on the ’04 team, but was the top minutes getter, top assist man and might have been the most important player. When he went down late in the year (ACC tourney IIRC) we all were extremely worried. Again, that team overcame the lack of a big senior scorer by starting 5 NBA players (Redick, Deng, Duhon, Sheld, Ewing) and bringing a 6th off the bench (Shav, who cashed an NBA paycheck for 10 years).
Conversely, look at our teams since 2000 without a strong senior leader (or senior amongst its top 2-3 players) and in particular how far they went in March.
’02: Strong junior presence led by juniors Jwill, Dun, and Boozer and transfer eligible Dahntay, but no senior leadership whatsoever (Christensen was the senior who logged the most minutes). Sweet 16.
’07: No scholarship seniors on the roster. The worst duke seasons since ’95. First round loss.
’09: Greg Paulus begins the year as the senior who should emerge, but regresses badly and loses his starting job. 2nd round loss.
’12: Miles is the lone senior, has a decent season but only starts half the games and compiles a 6&7 stat line. An effective rebounder/post man, but not a presence you have to plan for. First round loss.
’14: Our seniors are Tyler and Josh, both marginal players at best (a combined 4.5ppg) First round loss.
After the '14 loss to Mercer, K called this issue out in his summer presser saying that we didn't have enough talented leadership. He must have started reading my emails, though I still haven't received my walk-on invitation
To the present: this team clearly lacks this person. I intentionally put this issue #1 (sort of), same as I did in the phase post linked above, b/c I view this issue to be our biggest obstacle. I want to believe that Amile or Marshall will emerge and earn 30mpg, but neither has a realistic chance to be in the top 2-3 scorers this year. The only upperclassman who does is Matt Jones, and I will get to that.