2019-20 DWBB Season

[jimsumner]

I asked Boykin if she called "bank" and she said no, her eyes were closed.

So, some good luck for a change.

[-jk]

I asked Boykin if she called "bank" and she said no, her eyes were closed.

So, some good luck for a change.

Classic!

-jk

[Faison1]

Hopefully there will be a coaching change coming and the new coach will get the most out of these talented players and bring DWBB back to greatness!

I've been wondering why this hasn't happened sooner. How long has it been since Coach G abandoned us?

Speaking of which, does anyone know what she's up to these days? I'm sure there's something mentioned in 30 pages of this thread, but I am not a competent searcher.

We were so, so close to a championship with her.

[CameronBornAndBred]

As stated upthread, our next opponetnt, Notre Dame, is not the same team of yesteryear. How not the same?
NCSU beat them today by 34, in South Bend. That's the same NCSU team that just lost to the unranked Lady Heels (who got trounced today by FSU.)

[OldPhiKap]

Nice win, congrats!

[ehdg]

I've been wondering why this hasn't happened sooner. How long has it been since Coach G abandoned us?

Speaking of which, does anyone know what she's up to these days? I'm sure there's something mentioned in 30 pages of this thread, but I am not a competent searcher.

We were so, so close to a championship with her.

First off Coach G didn’t abandon us, our idiot of a AD back then Alleva let her contract come up without extending or renewing it! So she left for Texas after the 2097 season when they came after her with a huge contract. Biggest mistake Alleva made n then his lousy FB hires Franks n Roof. Plus originally he didn’t want Coach Cut n preferred Karl Dorrell one time UCLA HC. Also Alleva forced Mike Pressler to resign cause of the lacrosse case that Durham AD Mike Nifong tried to railroad our players on. Alleva made Pressler a scapegoat of that nightmare.

Coach G is retired i believe n had done some tv work after doing some assistant coaching in the WNBA after retiring from Texas.

[killerleft]

First off Coach G didn’t abandon us, our idiot of a AD back then Alleva let her contract come up without extending or renewing it! So she left for Texas after the 2097 season when they came after her with a huge contract. Biggest mistake Alleva made n then his lousy FB hires Franks n Roof. Plus originally he didn’t want Coach Cut n preferred Karl Dorrell one time UCLA HC. Also Alleva forced Mike Pressler to resign cause of the lacrosse case that Durham AD Mike Nifong tried to railroad our players on. Alleva made Pressler a scapegoat of that nightmare.

Coach G is retired i believe n had done some tv work after doing some assistant coaching in the WNBA after retiring from Texas.

This is an interesting version of the Coach G situation. At the very best, it is incomplete. At worst, you have made it sound like Duke was not going to renew her contract.

There is no shame in leaving a job for a more lucrative one. But this is what Coach Goestenkors did.

[sagegrouse]

First off Coach G didn’t abandon us, our idiot of a AD back then Alleva let her contract come up without extending or renewing it! So she left for Texas after the 2097 season when they came after her with a huge contract. Biggest mistake Alleva made n then his lousy FB hires Franks n Roof. Plus originally he didn’t want Coach Cut n preferred Karl Dorrell one time UCLA HC. Also Alleva forced Mike Pressler to resign cause of the lacrosse case that Durham AD Mike Nifong tried to railroad our players on. Alleva made Pressler a scapegoat of that nightmare.

Coach G is retired i believe n had done some tv work after doing some assistant coaching in the WNBA after retiring from Texas.

Mostly true. Don't blame Mike Pressler's firing on Alleva. The chair of the Duke Board of Trustees was running everything related to the LAX hoax. Pressler's forced departure was just "incidental damage."

[ehdg]

This is an interesting version of the Coach G situation. At the very best, it is incomplete. At worst, you have made it sound like Duke was not going to renew her contract.

There is no shame in leaving a job for a more lucrative one. But this is what Coach Goestenkors did.

I disagree I do believe Alleva wasn’t going to renew her contract. For some reason sure seemed like he wanted her gone. IMO if he had wanted to keep her, he never would have let her contract expire. He could n should have extended it specially with how well the program was doing under her. But I believe Alleva blamed her for not winning it all after getting so close a couple times n felt another Coach was needed to get it accomplished. But that’s just my belief of the situation n Alleva’s faulty reasoning.

[Kedsy]

I don't think this is true at all. In fact, I think it is a tinge sexist. In terms of fundamental soundness, I think I've seen more sound teams in women's that men's. I've seen a lot of men players that have a tendency to play "hot dog" ot "hero ball" at times. Very few women do that, and as a group, women seem more inclined to play as an integrated team. Women don't play as fast or as high as men, so you lose elements like one-touch passes, alley-oops, and dunks (except on very rare occasions), all of which can make the game slower and seem less fluid. But if you take fundamental soundness to mean buying into a team approach and doing the little things like boxing out, making crisp passes, faithfully executing play calls, and so on, I think it is more likely to happen on the women's side. It's one of the reasons I follow the women's game.

When people are talking about the women's team lacking "fundamentals," they seem to me to mostly be complaining about the number of turnovers and the number of missed layups. In that regard, the idea that women's teams do those things better than men's teams is demonstrably untrue.

For example, here's a table with 9 years worth of Duke women's teams' turnover% and 2pt shooting pct:

TO%	2pt%
22.9%	51.8%
23.5%	47.6%
23.7%	49.4%
21.6%	52.3%
18.8%	49.8%
19.6%	52.1%
22.7%	49.0%
22.2%	53.2%
21.8%	49.1%

In contrast, here are the last five full seasons of the Duke men's teams in those same statistics:

TO%	2pt%
16.3%	59.7%
17.5%	56.0%
16.4%	53.6%
14.3%	51.0%
16.3%	55.9%

As you can see, the men's team turns it over a lot less and makes 2pt baskets at a much higher rate. I am not willing to dig up these stats for other women's or men's teams, but I believe the above numbers are fairly representative for good teams of each gender.

What nine seasons of the Duke women's team did I use, do you ask? Well, that's the interesting part. Those high-turnover, low-2pt shooting seasons are Coach G's last nine seasons at Duke, the "glory years," if you will, starting with her first Final Four team in 1999 and going through her undefeated-in-the-regular-season 2007 team.

For those of you who think Coach P's teams are so much worse than Coach G's teams in these regards, here's Duke women's team's numbers for these stats in the nine seasons from 2010 through 2018:

TO%	2pt%
24.1%	45.2%
23.2%	44.6%
23.4%	50.2%
23.2%	46.7%
23.4%	52.4%
25.9%	47.7%
26.0%	47.8%
22.1%	50.3%
22.6%	48.6%

So, worse than Coach G's best teams, but in the same ball park. Not nearly worse enough to justify all the badmouthing around here.

Anyway, bottom line is this season and last the women's team hasn't been very good. And obviously Coach P did something to chase off players (e.g., Azura Stevens, Alexis Jones, Angela Salvadores) and assistant coaches. Her recruiting has gone downhill in recent years and if the team has given up on her it's possible the AD should look into a coaching change.

But to say Coach G was wonderful and Coach P has been terrible is overly simplistic, and frankly wrong. Especially if you factor in injuries, Coach P's best teams were pretty close to as good as Coach G's best teams. The stuff you guys are complaining about with regard to Coach P (e.g., turnovers and missed layups) was basically happening on Coach G's teams too. And honestly, it gets a little tiring listening to so many people whining nonstop about the coach. I've said it before, but I pity Coach K's successor, whenever that time comes.

[arnie]

Mostly true. Don't blame Mike Pressler's firing on Alleva. The chair of the Duke Board of Trustees was running everything related to the LAX hoax. Pressler's forced departure was just "incidental damage."

We will never know, but did Alleva even stand up for Pressler? I doubt it, just as he didn’t “stand up” for football or baseball improvements. Seemed to be an AD with no vision or plan - just take the easy road with money raising as 100% focus.

[Indoor66]

We will never know, but did Alleva even stand up for Pressler? I doubt it, just as he didn’t “stand up” for football or baseball improvements. Seemed to be an AD with no vision or plan - just take the easy road with money raising as 100% focus.

You make some rather large assumptions.

[CamrnCrz1974]

I might be wrong, but the first I saw of our second (tied for) leading scorer was her entrance in the 2nd quarter. I don't understand P's reasoning for sitting Goodchild on the bench, maybe it was disciplinary. But she also sat lots in the last few games, and she's proven (both at UVA and tonight against VT) that we need her on the court.

Goodchild is a great three-point threat, but she needs to work on her ballhandling and defense. Thing is, she is an incredibly hard worker (per my AUS inside source, who is in close contact with Goodchild's former WNBL coach) and always eager to learn, so I cannot imagine that it was disciplinary.

If anything, Goodchild is a little one dimensional at this point, having not yet consistently developed the pump fake from three, two dribbles, and pull-up or floater. But against a team like Virginia Tech, she is a good matchup with someone like Dara Mabrey.

[CamrnCrz1974]

Duke women's basketball's suffocating defense decide overtime contest against Hokies
Spencer Levy (The Chronicle)
https://www.dukechronicle.com/articl...against-hokies

Boykin-led Duke women's basketball takes down Virginia Tech in overtime thriller
Joe Wang (The Chronicle)
https://www.dukechronicle.com/articl...rtime-thriller

“It’s about not being satisfied with anything that we’ve done. We played great against Louisville, but we did not bring it to the next game. We’re all in the process of fighting human nature: you do not exhale, and you cannot relax,” head coach Joanne P. McCallie said. “What we have to do is fight it and celebrate the process that we’ve had today. We need to bring it [next Thursday].”

[sagegrouse]

We will never know, but did Alleva even stand up for Pressler? I doubt it, just as he didn’t “stand up” for football or baseball improvements. Seemed to be an AD with no vision or plan - just take the easy road with money raising as 100% focus.

The LAX "crisis" totally neutered the athletic department. Alleva reported to Tallman Trask and then to a fairly new President Brodhead. Robert Steel, Chair of the Duke Board, provided direction and made decisions.

Here's an extensive para. from a Men's Journal article from 2014, based on interviews with former BoT chair, Bob Steel (his words in quotes):

But often, chaos reigned. “It was pretty clear this situation had accelerant,” he said. “It’s a bit like the McNamarian ‘Fog of War,’ that when you’re in war, it’s not going to be clear what’s going on around you.” Adhering to established principles was essential. “I believe boards have four functions,” he said. “Number one is they choose the strategy; two, they choose the leader; three, they monitor the leader’s actions relative to strategy; and four, they’re available for consultation. That’s what boards should do, in my opinion. It’s pretty straightforward.” He said that while the board made a few mistakes, overall the situation was handled well. “Our principles were right, that, one, the legal process has to be the predominant thing,” he said. “I think there are some things we could have done better. I think our support of the students was deficient, and if I could wave a magic wand, I think we could’ve done a better job. It was complicated by the decisions that the coach should be relieved, because the coach” – Mike Pressler, the lacrosse coach who was fired April 5, 2006 – “would be the normal person that you would use as your valve to the students…. The key person in these boys’ lives was the coach, and when the decision was made to relieve the coach, who takes the place in these boys’ Duke lives as their key contact, confidante, looks them in the eye and basically says, ‘If you have any problem, call me’? Who takes that job? I don’t think we did it very well.”

The boldface quote is a bit of a mea culpa, but makes clear that the decision to relieve Pressler was made at the highest levels of the University.

[-jk]

Enough LAX; back to Women's hoops please!

-jk

[dm9e24]

When people are talking about the women's team lacking "fundamentals," they seem to me to mostly be complaining about the number of turnovers and the number of missed layups. In that regard, the idea that women's teams do those things better than men's teams is demonstrably untrue.

For example, here's a table with 9 years worth of Duke women's teams' turnover% and 2pt shooting pct:

TO%	2pt%
22.9%	51.8%
23.5%	47.6%
23.7%	49.4%
21.6%	52.3%
18.8%	49.8%
19.6%	52.1%
22.7%	49.0%
22.2%	53.2%
21.8%	49.1%

In contrast, here are the last five full seasons of the Duke men's teams in those same statistics:

TO%	2pt%
16.3%	59.7%
17.5%	56.0%
16.4%	53.6%
14.3%	51.0%
16.3%	55.9%

As you can see, the men's team turns it over a lot less and makes 2pt baskets at a much higher rate. I am not willing to dig up these stats for other women's or men's teams, but I believe the above numbers are fairly representative for good teams of each gender.

What nine seasons of the Duke women's team did I use, do you ask? Well, that's the interesting part. Those high-turnover, low-2pt shooting seasons are Coach G's last nine seasons at Duke, the "glory years," if you will, starting with her first Final Four team in 1999 and going through her undefeated-in-the-regular-season 2007 team.

For those of you who think Coach P's teams are so much worse than Coach G's teams in these regards, here's Duke women's team's numbers for these stats in the nine seasons from 2010 through 2018:

TO%	2pt%
24.1%	45.2%
23.2%	44.6%
23.4%	50.2%
23.2%	46.7%
23.4%	52.4%
25.9%	47.7%
26.0%	47.8%
22.1%	50.3%
22.6%	48.6%

So, worse than Coach G's best teams, but in the same ball park. Not nearly worse enough to justify all the badmouthing around here.

Anyway, bottom line is this season and last the women's team hasn't been very good. And obviously Coach P did something to chase off players (e.g., Azura Stevens, Alexis Jones, Angela Salvadores) and assistant coaches. Her recruiting has gone downhill in recent years and if the team has given up on her it's possible the AD should look into a coaching change.

But to say Coach G was wonderful and Coach P has been terrible is overly simplistic, and frankly wrong. Especially if you factor in injuries, Coach P's best teams were pretty close to as good as Coach G's best teams. The stuff you guys are complaining about with regard to Coach P (e.g., turnovers and missed layups) was basically happening on Coach G's teams too. And honestly, it gets a little tiring listening to so many people whining nonstop about the coach. I've said it before, but I pity Coach K's successor, whenever that time comes.

Wonderful post. Thanks.

Would love to see the same research done on the departure of Coach G as the departure of Pressler. My recollection of the Coach G years were the 100 layups they missed in the National Championship game against Maryland and the short time they stayed in the NCAA tournament after the undefeated regular season. I am not sure they even won the ACC tournament that year. They had great success in the ACC, but unlike Muffett McCraw, never were able to win the big one in the NCAA tournament. And her record at Texas with that big contract and a private plane was pedestrian. As far as Coach P, it is probably time for a change, but I don't think I have ever seen as many injuries to key players as have happened under her watch

[AustinDevil]

When people are talking about the women's team lacking "fundamentals," they seem to me to mostly be complaining about the number of turnovers and the number of missed layups.

***

[H]ere's a table with 9 years worth of Duke women's teams' turnover% and 2pt shooting pct:

TO%	2pt%
22.9%	51.8%
23.5%	47.6%
23.7%	49.4%
21.6%	52.3%
18.8%	49.8%
19.6%	52.1%
22.7%	49.0%
22.2%	53.2%
21.8%	49.1%

***

What nine seasons of the Duke women's team did I use, do you ask? Well, that's the interesting part. Those high-turnover, low-2pt shooting seasons are Coach G's last nine seasons at Duke, the "glory years," if you will, starting with her first Final Four team in 1999 and going through her undefeated-in-the-regular-season 2007 team.

For those of you who think Coach P's teams are so much worse than Coach G's teams in these regards, here's Duke women's team's numbers for these stats in the nine seasons from 2010 through 2018:

TO%	2pt%
24.1%	45.2%
23.2%	44.6%
23.4%	50.2%
23.2%	46.7%
23.4%	52.4%
25.9%	47.7%
26.0%	47.8%
22.1%	50.3%
22.6%	48.6%

So, worse than Coach G's best teams, but in the same ball park. Not nearly worse enough to justify all the badmouthing around here.

***

I do not agree that turnovers per possession or "layups missed" encapsulates all or nearly all of the concerns about a lack of fundamentals.

I do not agree that two-point FG% somehow stands in for "layups missed."

I do not agree that you've proven that a 23.8% turnover average and a 21.9% turnover average (G's average for the years you used versus P's average for the same)--or a 50.5 2-point FG% and a 48.2 2-point FG% (ditto)--are collectively "in the same ballpark," but that's such subjective phrasing that it is fairly meaningless.

Last, you seem to be using the year indicator as the year in which the season ended (e.g., "1999" for the 1998-99 season). If that's the case, why did you ignore the 2018-19 WBB season, when Duke's turnover results were fairly bad and field-goal shooting percentage (all FGs, I did not bother to track down the 2-pt percentage separate from the 3-pt percentage) was atrocious? The trend line matters...

[jimsumner]

Texas offered Goestenkors more money than she was making at Duke.

Duke declined to meet the offer.

I wish they had.

But they didn't and she left.

And she didn't do all that well at Texas, FWIW. As Professor Hill said, got to know the territory.

And I'm not a big Joe Alleva fan. But I would not blame him for Pressler's firing.

But I would blame him for hiring Bill Hillier as baseball coach, arguably the worst hiring in Duke history.

But we're wandering a bit afar here. A good win yesterday. Duke is real close to being 4-1 in the ACC, even 5-0. The devastating losses were all OOC. But the schedule is front-loaded and Duke is going to have to beat somebody--or several somebodies-like NC State or Florida State to have a prayer at the NCAAs. Duke needs to be 10-8 ACC and win at least once in Greensboro to even be in the discussion and with the OOC disasters it probably will take more.

Still an uphill struggle.

[CamrnCrz1974]

Texas offered Goestenkors more money than she was making at Duke.

Duke declined to meet the offer.

I wish they had.

But they didn't and she left.

And she didn't do all that well at Texas, FWIW. As Professor Hill said, got to know the territory.

Let's keep context and history in mind.

After leading the women's basketball team to 10 consecutive Sweet 16 appearances, 7 Elite Eight appearances (in the prior 10 seasons), two national championship games and a record-shattering 2006-2007 season (when she was honored as women's basketball coach of the year), head coach Gail Goestenkors left Duke for the University of Texas.

--- Top administrators did a poor job of demonstrating to Goestenkors how much they valued her contributions to the University.
Neither President Richard Brodhead nor Director of Athletics Joe Alleva showed up at a March 29 rally outside Coach G's office, even though Brodhead was a conspicuous participant in a similar 2004 rally to persuade men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski to stay at Duke.

--- When AD Joe Alleva was asked why Goestenkors' compensation pales in comparison to Tennessee's Pat Summitt and Connecticut's Geno Auriemma, he said:
"They've both won a lot of national championships and are part of programs that make money for their institutions. They bring in profit for their athletic departments, and that's not the case for our women's program. I'm sure some of these other institutions will offer significantly large packages to encourage her to go."


During a time when Texas was recruiting her, Alleva diminished and devalued her accomplishments -- and did so very publicly. And although Alleva contrasted the program's (lack of) profitability to its rivals at Connecticut and Tennessee, he did not explain how at least four Big Twelve schools guaranteed their coaches total compensation between $540,000 and $800,000 for 2006-2007.

Texas Women's AD Chris Plonsky seemed to provide everything that Alleva did not: respect, admiration, control, etc.