MBB: St. John's 81, Duke 77 Post-Game Thread

[Les Grossman]

no improvement on D, turnover fest, lack of hustle.
Coach?

[CameronDuke]

As many of us are diehard, avid fans of Duke Basketball, I ask politely - are we bigger fans of this program's success than many of these one and done freshmen we recruit now? I guess what I'm trying to say is, this loss today will sting for me personally until we play at UNC Thursday. As they all do. Do some of our freshmen feel the same way? I will still think about this loss after this season and for many years. Can the same be said for one and done freshmen Duke players who will be collecting a check in a few months that is more than I'll make for a long time? Again all due respect to how hard the young student athletes work. But it seemed many Duke players didn't have the same level of desire for a win today as maybe us fans always have. Seemed they just didn't have the fire, the juice, the go get it in them today in the second half. With all due respect.

[MrPoon]

A bit of a perfect (red) storm for this one. Big win last game, road game against a poor team by record but better than that.
Young team looking ahead to UNC and who believes we are invincible even when we don’t play our best.
Probably should have prepared myself for this one even if the team didn’t.

I still say this team will have these ups and downs and be at risk for a surprise ending to the season if GA can’t find himself. To me its almost a separate thread. He has just not been the backstop type player we need when the game gets rocky. Cook would get a stop or a shot to help the team when the freshmen struggled. GA hasn’t. He’s been good in a lot of ways but this team needs him to be more and I just cannot understand it. There is no way teams are building their defensive plans around him any longer. Not with Carter, Bag, and Trent out there.

I’m baffled.
It will be a good season, it already is and can be so much more. I don’t even really care about this game. Freshmen teams lose games they shouldn’t. But we need GA back.

[SupaDave]

I'd be surprised if Allen and Duval were 1st round picks.

They are indeed first round picks - however, Duval is slipping and will need to work on several aspects of his game - including free throw shooting, 3 point shooting, dribbling into corners, seeing the double team, and letting his man get in front of him and picking up ticky tacky fouls.

For the record, the refs certainly weren't giving it to Duke today (also somewhat in his defense).

[AGDukesky]

The sad thing is I expected this type of game. Our team make up and typical road performances give me zero confidence. I would be shocked if this team gets beyond the Sweet Sixteen and put the O/U at one win in the NCAAs. We should all appreciate 2015 even more given that is the anomaly of modern Duke basketball...

[CameronDuke]

What is the worst loss in February/March for an eventual national champion (RPI wise)? If Duke were to capture the 2018 Men's Basketball national championship in San Antonio in April, this would have to be the worst loss for an eventual national champion (gauging by RPI) in February/March ever. St. John's cannot have a good RPI, though I haven't checked yet. Could someone prove me wrong if Duke did win it all this year?

[fraggler]

Exactly. Trent was focused on not fouling a 3PT shooter at the end of the shot clock. He did everything he could do in that situation.

And this is a great example of why this board has disappointingly become almost unreadable. There are maybe a dozen members who understand basketball well enough to discuss beyond knee jerk reactions, simplistic observations, and hot take hits against individuals. Like you said, Trent played that situation the way he was supposed to, but because Ponds hits an incredible three, some posters want to burn the program down.

We made too many mistakes and missed too many crucial free throws to win this, but St. John's earned it, too. They played out of their minds and shot well above normal. It isn't always a failing on Duke's part when someone plays a great game. We still have time to get better. Even if we don't, I am going to support them and cheer them on.

Let's go, Duke. 9F!

[KandG]

If the 2015 Duke team is this team's ceiling and 2014 is the team's floor...well, today was clearly the floor. This was the recipe for how a super talented team can lose in the first round of the tournament. Other team wants it more, plays with more composure, gets to all the 50-50 balls, attacks our few weaknesses and relies on some luck and some of our inexperience to tilt things their way.

(feel free to insert "the ceiling is the floor" jokes here)

To their considerable credit, I thought St. John's played outstanding defense and were allowed to be very physical until midway through the second half. The turnovers were a killer for us in the first half, the missed FTs in the second (consecutive missed one-and-ones, plus those fateful missed Duval FTs). Limiting us to 11 points in nearly 11 minutes of the second half was Virginia-like, and they cut up our zone the moment we went to it.

In fact, the way they shredded our zone was arguably the turning point of the second half, and allowed them to get their lead up as much as they did.

Because this Duke team is so talented, naturally we vaporized the deficit within a few minutes once we buckled down a little on defense, contained Ponds temporarily, and stopped giving up the easy pick and roll baskets. But St. John's also had some luck and were able to extend the clock frequently down the stretch with the way they hustled after offensive rebounds.

Unfortunately, I do think these types of outcomes will continue if we don't get Grayson contributing more on offense sooner (he shouldn't be making his first basket with 30 seconds left) and don't get something...anything...from the bench. With that said, I was encouraged by Bolden's limited minutes when Bagley was in foul trouble, and hope he can build on what he did this afternoon.

Even though Duval missed the FTs, I thought he was a big part of how we were able to come back, and I mostly liked how he attacked in the second half. I think our offense needs to find other ways to get the bigs the ball, and the players just need to be quicker with their decisions...the turnovers too often were a result of just not being strong and decisive with the ball. Bagley looks especially frustrated lately with how poor some of the entry passes are, and he's settling for questionable threes when there's nothing inside for him.

Not going to get involved with the culture war about one-and-done the way some folks are...inexperienced, shallow team playing on the road, this is going to happen. And I'm going to emphasize that I like this team a lot. They're not mercenaries, they bleed for Duke as much as any four year senior that's played for us.

But I would like to see the coaching staff do more to get the one senior more involved and get Bolden & DuLaurier more effective minutes in future games. I can't be too optimistic about the team -- as awed as I am by the talent -- if it's going to be five players against the world the rest of the season.

[Les Grossman]

Not gonna be fun walking down the halls of Tobin (the business school) at SJU on Monday...or teaching. Glad I low-keyed it, thinking that we would be in for a game...yuck

hahaha! My boss is a Johnny. Sent him a quick Congrats text at the buzzer. Fortunately, had not done any pre-game woofing. Knew better.

[MrPoon]

I hate how these threads after a loss fall apart into some inditement around so and so and their draft ranking and or their class ranking. This is a really good team who clearly takes long stretches of games off especially against out classed teams.

We’ve seen this too many times. The team is insanely talented but they lack consistency and they struggle with pick and roll defense. To draw too much more from this game... walk away from the iPad a little while.

They have been trending the right way. Bolden looked a little better, Bagley has had a few below Bagley games, but we need GA back.

[SupaDave]

What is the worst loss in February/March for an eventual national champion (RPI wise)? If Duke were to capture the 2018 Men's Basketball national championship in San Antonio in April, this would have to be the worst ever. St. John's cannot have a good RPI, though I haven't checked yet. Could someone prove me wrong if Duke did win it all this year?

1990 UNLV lost to UC Santa Barbara at the end of the year - 78-70. So naw... Too easy.

[CameronDuke]

1990 UNLV lost to UC Santa Barbara at the end of the year - 78-70. So naw... Too easy.

Did they track RPI back then or no? If so, what was UCSB's RPI? If not, you aren't really answering my question. I'm talking since RPI has been tracked. Good point though.

[Dukehky]

As many of us are diehard, avid fans of Duke Basketball, I ask politely - are we bigger fans of this program's success than many of these one and done freshmen we recruit now? I guess what I'm trying to say is, this loss today will sting for me personally until we play at UNC Thursday. As they all do. Do some of our freshmen feel the same way? I will still think about this loss after this season and for many years. Can the same be said for one and done freshmen Duke players who will be collecting a check in a few months that is more than I'll make for a long time? Again all due respect to how hard the young student athletes work. But it seemed many Duke players didn't have the same level of desire for a win today as maybe us fans always have. Seemed they just didn't have the fire, the juice, the go get it in them today in the second half. With all due respect.

Oh yeah? You care more about Duke winning than they do? This is ridiculous. Get off your high horse. Why are you talking about freshmen when Bagley Carter and Trent in particular are willing us to these comebacks?

[Devilwin]

Our team has way too much talent to play like this. Totally unacceptable to turn the ball over like we do. And missed fts. And getting out hustled. This team like I said is super talented, but an early exit may be in the cards again if they don't get it together, and soon. Play like this against UNC we will get hammered, because, they are certainly better than St John's. This loss is more than embarrassing, it's downright humiliating. 3 of our 4 losses have been to unranked teams..Go figure.

[jipops]

We've got 3 guys we can count on to produce something. 2 guys who have a tendency towards completely disappearing and who represent the back court. And then really nothing else...maybe a few minutes from Bolden.

[CameronDuke]

Oh yeah? You care more about Duke winning than they do? This is ridiculous. Get off your high horse. Why are you talking about freshmen when Bagley Carter and Trent in particular are willing us to these comebacks?

I talk about the (one and done) freshmen because in 4 months they'll be history for Duke basketball. I'll be back in November caring as much as I ever did about this program's success when they're long gone and on an NBA roster.

[westwall]

Too many turnovers, too many missed free throws, too many times getting beat to loose balls, rebounds, etc.

First post to cover it all — unfortunately.

[SupaDave]

Did they track RPI back then or no? If so, what was UCSB's RPI? If not, you aren't really answering my question. I'm talking since RPI has been tracked. Good point though.

That I can't answer but Santa Barbara was 21-9 that year and lost in the first round of the conference tourney and in the second round of the NCAAs. Meanwhile - that UNLV team is considered one of the most dominant of all time...

[dukelifer]

We shot our season FT percentage which isn’t great. But I think this loss is pretty clearly related to our 18 TOs and their 16 Off Rebs. They generated 14 more FG attempts for the game.

Yes that put Duke in a bad position of having to fight back but when you have the lead with two minutes to go- you have to execute. That means hitting the free shots. Duke did not. The 3 Ponds hit was crazy but Allen matched. Duke did not execute in crunch time. Let’s see what happens the next close game.

[CoachJ10]

Free throws, turnovers, hustle...and the D-U-K-E effect have already been addressed. I have nothing more to add to that.

The refs today were the worst I have seen all year, and that is saying a lot. They were just atrocious. From calling simple things like out of bounds wrong, to letting the SJ players mug Carter and Bags inside the ENTIRE GAME, followed up with pathetic offensive fouls...to phantom fouls on SJ drives. They were just terrible. You could tell it was getting to K even more than usual.

There are 13 people on the court affecting play...and seemingly 3 of these people are allowed to do their thing with impunity, no matter how bad. Today was embarrassing.