Is Duke program now just like Calipari 2.0?

[SavDukeGrad]

I really like Tony Bennett and think he’s a great coach.

But don’t I remember that he red shirts most of his players? I don’t think he did with Guy and Jerome (Guy was a McD’s AA iirc), but I think he usually red shirts most of his players, especially the front court players (Hunter, Huff, etc).

This has 2 consequences that I see:
It hurts with the top recruits, since 5* players don’t want to redshirt. Which directly affects the guys he goes after.
And it really helps with player development, as you have an extra year to develop those players.

[Edouble]

Bennett has surpassed K as a Xs & Os coach and developer of talent at this point. We need to keep recruiting at a high level to keep up is essentially the takeaway here which I agree with.

Curious if you felt this way about Bennett last season, with UVA coming off of a historic loss in the first round of the NCAAs, which followed on the heels of the biggest choke job I've ever seen in a Regional Final, in 2017 against Syracuse.

Bennett is a good coach. Coach K also beat him twice head to head this season.

Virginia also got extremely lucky in several tournament games this year. Their two overtime games, in particular, could have easily ended in a defeat in regulation with better game management by the opposing team/coach.

[Hartford Dukie]

Perhaps this point has been made previously (if so, apologies) - but just to throw another log (gasoline?) on the fire, if Hampton (am a bit skeptical) and Hurt (quite confident) both come, then we are likely starting four freshmen and a sophomore next year. Hampton won't be coming to sit.

[Devil2]

They said a similar thing about the USA Team - "I could coach those NBA players to a gold medal" -- until they started losing consistently, that is until Coach K righted the ship. There are different ways of coaching, and to say he doesn't get the most out of his team is laughable.

Let's not get too enamored with UVA. They squeaked to the championship winning two overtime games and one miracle play. They helped themselves win those games but also benefited from mistakes by the opposing team and officiating. As shown below they won their tournament games by the second smallest combined margin. They also had one of the easiest paths based upon combined seeds

Point Differential by a Tournament Winner: Update

Virginia got taken to overtime, but came out with an 8-point victory in the national final, thus finishing with a tournament point differential of +45, the second lowest point differential of a national champion in the shot clock era. 1997 Arizona still holds the lowest point differential in that time span, and they also had to go to overtime to win their championship game.
Year School Diff
1997 Arizona +32
2019 Virginia +45
2014 UConn +47
1988 Kansas +53
2003 Syracuse +54

[HereBeforeCoachK]

Let's not get too enamored with UVA. They squeaked to the championship winning two overtime games and one miracle play. They helped themselves win those games but also benefited from mistakes by the opposing team and officiating. As shown below they won their tournament games by the second smallest combined margin. They also had one of the easiest paths based upon combined seeds

Point Differential by a Tournament Winner: Update

Virginia got taken to overtime, but came out with an 8-point victory in the national final, thus finishing with a tournament point differential of +45, the second lowest point differential of a national champion in the shot clock era. 1997 Arizona still holds the lowest point differential in that time span, and they also had to go to overtime to win their championship game.
Year School Diff
1997 Arizona +32
2019 Virginia +45
2014 UConn +47
1988 Kansas +53
2003 Syracuse +54

Interesting look back here. That 97 Arizona team was dead in the water versus College of Charleston in the first weekend, and somehow miraculously escaped...

[lotusland]

UVA is going to hoist a championship banner which they earned. I’m very enamered with their accomplishments this year.

[JetpackJesus]

I really like Tony Bennett and think he’s a great coach.

But don’t I remember that he red shirts most of his players? I don’t think he did with Guy and Jerome (Guy was a McD’s AA iirc), but I think he usually red shirts most of his players, especially the front court players (Hunter, Huff, etc).

This has 2 consequences that I see:
It hurts with the top recruits, since 5* players don’t want to redshirt. Which directly affects the guys he goes after.
And it really helps with player development, as you have an extra year to develop those players.

Hunter was a 4-star recruit. Huff was a 4-star recruit that was 6'11" and 190lbs when he arrived on campus.

Guy was 4-star and did not red shirt.

I don't think 5-star recruits are going to shy away from UVA because of red shirts to 4-star recruits.

If you're good enough, Bennet will play you, I think. Now, if we're talking about Roy...

[jgehtland]

Yeah, none of these guys approached the level of play that Harris, Brogdon, Jerome, Hunter, and Guy did.

A tiny nit to pick: Seth Curry quite definitely DID play at their level - and may have exceeded it were it not for a season- long injury that kept him out of practice. Seth’s junior/season stats compare quite well with Guy, for example.

[indy1duke]

Let's not get too enamored with UVA. They squeaked to the championship winning two overtime games and one miracle play. They helped themselves win those games but also benefited from mistakes by the opposing team and officiating. As shown below they won their tournament games by the second smallest combined margin. They also had one of the easiest paths based upon combined seeds

Point Differential by a Tournament Winner: Update

Virginia got taken to overtime, but came out with an 8-point victory in the national final, thus finishing with a tournament point differential of +45, the second lowest point differential of a national champion in the shot clock era. 1997 Arizona still holds the lowest point differential in that time span, and they also had to go to overtime to win their championship game.
Year School Diff
1997 Arizona +32
2019 Virginia +45
2014 UConn +47
1988 Kansas +53
2003 Syracuse +54

Interesting chart. I think the calculations could be improved by using 0 as the imput for overtime games. Virginia’s 8 point victory is truly misleading in a vacuum.

[CDu]

A tiny nit to pick: Seth Curry quite definitely DID play at their level - and may have exceeded it were it not for a season- long injury that kept him out of practice. Seth’s junior/season stats compare quite well with Guy, for example.

Fair point. I will amend to say we have had one lower-rated guy to reach the level of the long list of guys at UVa this decade. And worth noting that that one guy was a transfer who had already shown elite scoring chops in college before being recruited by Duke.

[weezie]

Curious if you felt this way about Bennett last season, with UVA coming off of a historic loss in the first round of the NCAAs, which followed on the heels of the biggest choke job I've ever seen in a Regional Final, in 2017 against Syracuse.

Bennett is a good coach. Coach K also beat him twice head to head this season.

Virginia also got extremely lucky in several tournament games this year. Their two overtime games, in particular, could have easily ended in a defeat in regulation with better game management by the opposing team/coach.

This needs repeating.

[uh_no]

This needs repeating.

not really. it sounds like being a sore loser...the same kind of things we complained UNC fans said after our 2010 title.

[devildeac]

Curious if you felt this way about Bennett last season, with UVA coming off of a historic loss in the first round of the NCAAs, which followed on the heels of the biggest choke job I've ever seen in a Regional Final, in 2017 against Syracuse.

Bennett is a good coach. Coach K also beat him twice head to head this season.

Virginia also got extremely lucky in several tournament games this year. Their two overtime games, in particular, could have easily ended in a defeat in regulation with better game management by the opposing team/coach.

Interesting story my wife shared with me about Bennett from a friend who attended a UVa FB game in 2009 and met Tony outside the stadium as the new coach was handing out pocket schedules for the MBB team and inviting the FB game attendees to come to a basketball game that season. My, how times have changed...

[jgehtland]

not really. it sounds like being a sore loser...the same kind of things we complained UNC fans said after our 2010 title.

I don’t think so ... the poster is responding to people making declarative statements about how Bennet is better than K. The response to that is, essentially, “recency bias”. I don’t think anybody is using last year to say “Bennet is a bad coach” or even to say they don’t deserve this year’s title. Just that, perhaps, winning a title doesn’t automatically make you better than they guy with the most all time wins.

I could be wrong; ascribing motives to other people is a poor way to spend my time, I’m sure.

[kybluedevil]

ORIGINAL POSTER HERE:

Let's view this thread simply from an entertainment viewpoint. This year was an exception with Zion being a once-in-a-generational talent. That being said, I would argue that having kids stick around for 2+ years is simply better for Duke (or even KY) fans and basketball as a whole. It's hard to invest a lot of time and emotional energy into a squad that you will only see for 1 (or 2 years). Yes, we are not going to the final four very year. But give me a Ryan Kelly to develop over time than a 1AD.

Also, this may be a moot point with the NBA rule sunsetting. But I doubt Coach K will be at the helm to take advantage of mentoring/coaching student athletes in the mid 2020's.

Interesting comments re: Bennet getting guys ranked in #30-50s. Duke didn't seem to be having same success prior to 2010 season with McDonald AA's and returning players.

Go Duke

[RPS]

Let's view this thread simply from an entertainment viewpoint.

Interesting thread, with reasonable arguments on all sides. However, it appears to me that the key issue has not been addressed: How is big-time college basketball (either/both the Duke/UVA models) consistent with the mission of a major research university?

[75Crazie]

Interesting thread, with reasonable arguments on all sides. However, it appears to me that the key issue has not been addressed: How is big-time college basketball (either/both the Duke/UVA models) consistent with the mission of a major research university?

Thank you for stating the key issue so succinctly, but I would quibble with one thing … you frame it for a "major research university" … I would make it broader and frame it for any institution of higher learning. And I would answer that for many P5 universities, it is NOT consistent, primarily because those basketball programs have positioned themselves (due to circumstances only partly under their control) as the only feasible path for progression to professional basketball for those high school players who are not quite ready to jump directly to the NBA. The system works for those percentage of players who can compete to some degree in the academic world of such institutions … it fails for those players who have no ability or inclination to compete in that world.

[jgehtland]

Interesting thread, with reasonable arguments on all sides. However, it appears to me that the key issue has not been addressed: How is big-time college basketball (either/both the Duke/UVA models) consistent with the mission of a major research university?

I would argue that a University's main jobs are:

1) to prepare students to participate in a vocation after they leave school, and
2) to be a center for research

Varsity athletics of all types are fertile ground for all kinds of research, which I'm sure is part of the package of being a student athlete. More particularly, some of the athletes that roll through major universities intend to pursue that sport as their livelihood (more in basketball and football, I'm sure, but also golf, tennis, and the like. This is even true of some of the "olympic" athletes). When a golfer leaves after two years, or a tennis player, etc., this handwringing seldom if ever arises. More importantly, and I've brought this up a before, nobody cares when the guy who founded Bungie dropped out after his sophomore year to start a video game company, and nobody cared when the kid left after his freshman year to be a LucasArts designer. If you come to school to get better at what you want to do with your life, and then you get an opportunity to go do that thing, it is PART of the mission of the school to send you merrily on your way, and WELCOME YOU BACK if you decide more education is wanted/needed.

While on campus, athletes should have to meet the same requirements as the rest of the student population to maintain good standing; otherwise, if you get a chance to jumpstart your career (in whatever field) why not take it? And why should the University care?

[Ian]

I don’t think so ... the poster is responding to people making declarative statements about how Bennet is better than K. The response to that is, essentially, “recency bias”. I don’t think anybody is using last year to say “Bennet is a bad coach” or even to say they don’t deserve this year’s title. Just that, perhaps, winning a title doesn’t automatically make you better than they guy with the most all time wins.

I could be wrong; ascribing motives to other people is a poor way to spend my time, I’m sure.

Of course winning a title doesn't automatically make you the best, Kevin Ollie has a title too. But Bennett has a much larger body of work than that, winning the title is a big deal for him because it was the only thing that was keeping him from being called the best. If you take the last 3 seasons as a whole, no other team, not even Duke, has a comparable regular season record, conference record, and now after his title, no team has a better NCAA Tournament record. And he has accomplished this without landing the kind of heralded recruiting classes that Duke has been getting.

Now it doesn't make him a better coach than Coach K when you compare careers, but recency bias or not, Coach K is at the tailend of his career, and Bennett is in the prime of his, so I think a good argument (and one that I'm inclined to agree with) can be made that right now and for the near future, Bennett is best coach in college basketball.

[RPS]

Thank you for stating the key issue so succinctly, but I would quibble with one thing … you frame it for a "major research university" … I would make it broader and frame it for any institution of higher learning.

I completely agree with your point. I was merely framing the issue for Duke.