MBB: Duke 84, Hartford 54 Post-Game Thread

[BandAlum83]

Yup, and Amaker pressuring the point.

That too, of course. On my phone and too much typing. Lol

[Old Dukie]

Yes! It’s somewhere in the board settings function.

Predictable...can't handle the truth - or a contrary opinion. Lots of that going on at colleges these days!

[CDu]

Sorry, 79% FT is nothing to write home about. "Best on team" isn't saying much
when rest of team is sub par.

L.O.L.

[pfrduke]

Predictable...can't handle the truth - or a contrary opinion. Lots of that going on at colleges these days!

I have not ignored you (all desires to the contrary). I have simply presented facts, none of which you have responded to with contrary facts.

[Neals384]

Understanding our personnel (OAD's) means admitting they'll always struggle with man to man D. Employing Zone D at key times will mitigate that problem.

Not at all what I said. Admittedly, they have SOME interest in playing defense (to avoid the bench), but I am stating that 19 yr old OAD's can play BETTER Zone D than m-to-m. Unfortunately, you may not get a chance to really "see the light" if coaches don't.

I was one of the folks advocating early for last year's team to switch to zone as the primary D. Took a long time but K finally agreed with me. Not this year. This team is already good at M2M, and they will get better at it. DBR has people with superb basketball knowledge (not including yours truly), They have already explained why zone would be a terrible idea for this year's team.

Sometimes it's best to be quiet, listen and learn while realizing you're not the smartest person in the room. Took me many years to learn this lesson!

[devildeac]

And that followed a steal/slam immediately before it IIRC.

Indeed it was a Zion steal that lead to that play. Bad defense, indeed.

[BandAlum83]

Indeed it was a Zion steal that lead to that play. Bad defense, indeed.

We are actually within 1.6 of Virginia's adjusted defense.

[CDu]

Anyway, aside from one poster’s ridiculous hot-takes, I thought we played pretty well. We held them to 54 points on ~75 possessions. Offensively, we took good shots that just didn’t go in a lot. Two missed dunks by Zion is flukiest, as is the number of missed open 3s. With those two dunks and a 33% percentage on 3s, we are pushing 100 points in 75 possessions. Given exam time, I am not at all concerned with this one.

Loved seeing DeLaurier have a big game. Hopefully he can build off that. If he does and the freshmen stay healthy, we are going to be awfully hard to beat. This has the makings of a supremely fun season.

[BLPOG]

Predictable...can't handle the truth - or a contrary opinion. Lots of that going on at colleges these days!

I'm not trying to make this point personal, as I don't think your posts have been in bad faith and welcome disagreeing viewpoints even in cases when I think someone is totally wrong - at the very least, such disagreement can provide some contribution toward a standard by which to evaluate other opinions.

That said, I only have one word to describe the suggestion that contrary opinion cannot be handled on this forum: laughable.

Haven't you ever read our grammar tangents?!??!!

[devildeac]

I was one of the folks advocating early for last year's team to switch to zone as the primary D. Took a long time but K finally agreed with me. Not this year. This team is already good at M2M, and they will get better at it. DBR has people with superb basketball knowledge (not including yours truly), They have already explained why M2M would be a terrible idea for this year's team.

Sometimes it's best to be quiet, listen and learn while realizing you're not the smartest person in the room. Took me many years to learn this lesson!

"Smile more. Talk less."

Aaron Burr, sir.

[OldPhiKap]

I don’t know who this Swiseman guy is, but he thinks our defense may be less than crappy:

https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/...222322845.html

[Billy Dat]

This team is going to give up some backdoor layups and open 3’s at times. They are not being coached to keep themselves between their man and the basket at all times. It comes down to understanding your personnel and coaching. We pressure the ball, deny passes and overplay; relying on our athleticism to make up for mistakes. We do this because we are almost unstoppable when we create live ball turnovers and rushed shots. If only our head coach had any idea how to coach.

I thought we played better D in the 1H than the 2H when we gave up a ton of wide open 3s that Hartford missed, but your description of why that might habe happened rings true.

RJ played great, he has absorbed the lessons of the end of Gonzaga without losing the aggression that makes him special. Monster line tonight.

Zion makes so much happen through effort - how many shots does he alter? How many loose balls does he either cause or keep alive? How hard does he run up and down the court? The kid never stops!

Great Jav game!

Cam didn’t shoot well, but he kept himself in the game with passing, good D, etc. i saw it as a sign of maturity and growth that he was a presence even when his shot wasn’t falling.

Tre Pebbles did his thing.

I think K mostly got mad at times when we got separation and then a few bad possessions kept the game close. He was angry about the team failing to recognize those moments when we could have stepped on their throats.

Solid W!

[Steven43]

Old Dukie just telling it like it is. If we can't win it all in 2019 with this group, it'll never happen until DEFENSE is re-established at a higher level. Watch Michigan play and you'll see what I mean.

Why has it become almost completely about “winning it all”? So among the big boy schools only one — the winner of the National Championship — can feel good about their season and the rest are supposed to hang their heads and feel like crap? I really don’t like this way of thinking. Sure, I love to see Duke win the National Championship, but I consider a successful season to be when the team is entertaining to watch, gets better as the season goes on, plays unselfish team ball, and beats UNC at least once. If those things happen, I’m good. The National Championship is just icing.

[Kedsy]

It's late and I'm tired, so I'm keeping my comments on each stat to a minimum again. I'm working on the explanations for each stat and hopefully will get that done within the next week.

ADVANCED STATS

Possessions: 72.73

OFFENSE

oRtg: 1.16 (our adjusted oRtg was 1.13, maybe our worst performances of the season).
eFG%: 54.3%
3pt%: 19.2% (this was basically our offensive problem tonight)
2pt%: 69.8%
%threes: 37.7%
FT rate: 18.8% (we need to get to the line more than this)
OR%: 43.2%
TO%: 17.9%
a/to: 1.38:1
%assisted: 51.4%
fast break pts: 36 fb pts for 42.9% (wow, 43% of our points came on fast breaks!)


DEFENSE

dRtg: 0.74 (adjusted that's 0.76, our third straight game with an adjusted dRating under 0.8)
eFG%: 33.3%
3pt%: 29.6%
2pt%: 35.3%
%threes: 39.3%
FT rate: 14.8%
DR%: 69.8%
TO%: 28.9% (third straight game over 25%)
a/to: 0.62:1
%assisted: 65.0%
fast break pts: 3 fb pts for 5.6% (this number looks even more impressive when you consider Duke had 36 fb points)
block%: 16.4%; 29.4% of 2-point shots (almost one-third of Hartford's 2-pointers never made it to the rim)


That we could win by 30 while shooting 19% from three-point range could be considered by some as a good sign.

[JetpackJesus]

Why has it become almost completely about “winning it all”? So among the big boy schools only one — the winner of the National Championship — can feel good about their season and the rest are supposed to hang their heads and feel like crap? I really don’t like this way of thinking. Sure, I love to see Duke win the National Championship, but I consider a successful season to be when the team is entertaining to watch, gets better as the season goes on, plays unselfish team ball, and beats UNC at least once. If those things happen, I’m good. The National Championship is just icing.

Because it's so easy, obvi. That's why in the last 30 years the team with the most championships has won it all 5 times. I think that school is located in some city in NC called Durham.

And the team with the most titles ever (since 1939) has a whopping 11. They even won one of those after 1975!

Winning an NCAA title is hard.

[dragoneye776]

3. Can you mute people on here?

Click their username to go to their profile. Then click, "Add to ignore list" on the top left. Confirm, and that's it. It has done wonders for some of the trolls around here.

[HereBeforeCoachK]

I was one of the folks advocating early for last year's team to switch to zone as the primary D. Took a long time but K finally agreed with me. Not this year. This team is already good at M2M, and they will get better at it. DBR has people with superb basketball knowledge (not including yours truly), They have already explained why zone would be a terrible idea for this year's team. !

I too was an early zone advocate for last year's team, and to hear Coach K explain it, he stayed with man a little longer to teach the principles they would need in their ultimate zone. But this year's team is totally different. They may not be a great defensive team, but they can be very good, and they can be in uncharted territory in how they score off turnovers. That attacking style definitely suits this personnel.

[fraggler]

Click their username to go to their profile. Then click, "Add to ignore list" on the top left. Confirm, and that's it. It has done wonders for some of the trolls around here.

The main issue with this is when people quote the offenders and I still get glimpses of what I'm trying to ignore. It would be neat if the board software could still hide the content when quoted like on other forums I have seen. Oh well.

[budwom]

halfcourt defense may be boring for some guys (I'm not saying these guys) but everyone seems to enjoy pressuring, run/jump defense...Hartford handled it pretty well in the first half.
There will be more nights when teams pack into a tight zone and our shots don't fall...just have to grind through it, hit the offensive glass, etc..

[Troublemaker]

I've written this before, but one quick way to go from a top-3 recruiting program to a top-25 recruiting program (assuming that's the floor for Duke) is to become a zone-first program. You can't just advocate for starting every season in zone without discussing the recruiting implications. To continue recruiting at the highest level, Duke should always exhaust all possibilities to play m2m first before turning to zone (if indeed that Duke team plays zone better than m2m). Luckily, this season's team seems to be a very good fit for m2m, but hopefully the zone will still be practiced and used as an occasional curveball within games to get an opponent that's playing well to become out-of-sync; we should not become a 100% m2m team.

This team is going to give up some backdoor layups and open 3’s at times. They are not being coached to keep themselves between their man and the basket at all times. It comes down to understanding your personnel and coaching. We pressure the ball, deny passes and overplay; relying on our athleticism to make up for mistakes. We do this because we are almost unstoppable when we create live ball turnovers and rushed shots. If only our head coach had any idea how to coach.

This team should run. I’ll give up some layups on backdoors to get the runouts on rebounds and steals this team can generate.

Yep.

Basketball is not a shutout sport unlike baseball, soccer, hockey, heck, even football (although they're becoming rarer in that sport). In basketball, you're never going to win 90-0. You can win 90-60 and have played great defense, depending on the number of possessions, and adjusted for opponent. Many posts upthread have already explained why Duke's defense was good against Hartford using these methods already.

So, more to the point. If:
(1) The opponent is clearly using a backdoor offensive strategy, and
(2) Basketball is not a shutout sport (i.e. the opponent WILL score some of the time)

Then when the opponent DOES score, what will it look like? Probably backdoor layups, right? But you have to balance that against steals, rushed shots, and the damage Duke does in transition.