Who do we think the starters will be...Tre, Carey, Hurt, Cassius, AOC?
Don't poke the bear, Kris. Don't poke the bear.
Never hurts to give Duke some bulletin board material.
- Chillin
Who do we think the starters will be...Tre, Carey, Hurt, Cassius, AOC?
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
I am a spectrum legacy TWC customer and they refuse ACCN for us holders-on. They want me to switch to Spectrum. Not gonna happen.
So what's the best (and cost-effective) way to stream it?
At a bar tonight and I saw a K interview, Jonesin I tell ya.
Gotta to see tomorrow night's game
Do you have any way whatsoever to stream off the ESPN app? You'll need to log-in through a TV provider. Maybe TWC doesn't work, but do you have a friend or relative with a service that will work? Spectrum, Verizon FiOS, Comcast, etc? If you can get a log-in for the ESPN app you can stream it there.
If not, there are a whole host of subscription services you could pay for (YouTube TV, e.g.) that will stream it but you'll have to pay for it. Unless you can get a free trial (YouTube TV I think is running 2 weeks free).
If you don't like either of those options, I'm sure there are advanced internet hacks you could do that may or may not be legal. But I'm not advanced enough to help you with those.
I'm not one of those people up in arms over the TWC/ACCN debacle. I have Spectrum and everything works like a charm for me. I even have a Google Chromecast and can cast the games right from my phone to my TV. If you are particularly pissed off at TWC for phasing out their service to Spectrum, why don't you really stick it to them and just get YouTube TV? It's something like $50 a month, so you're likely saving money AND you get to watch Duke games AND you are pointing a particular finger at TWC. Just sayin'.
- Chillin
I would guess same starters as before. JGold isn't long for starting, but we'll make the change after a loss or a bad game relative to competition.
Could it be AOC eventually as a starter? Maybe. He'll need to back up the KU game with more decent defensive performances, and let's hope he starts shooting well this season, too.
Ratther than ask who will start, I would ask who will get thee most minutes.
Tre
Cassius
Jack
Matthew
Vernon
Big men tend to get a few less.
The other likely players to see significant minutes are AOC, Jordan, Javin and Wendell and I expect Joey to become a part of the players with significant minutes and will believe that until coaqch K makes a comment that indicate4s he is in the dog house. Could have been illness or missing academic classes or something of the like. A strong 6'7" athletic kid who can shoot is too valuable not to play.
While I know this team's current strength revolves around playing good-to-great defense and turning teams over in hopes of getting easy transition buckets, I really hope to see this team run some moderately effective half-court offense tonight. I think offense will be a work-in-progress all season, but games like this should be a good opportunity to build some confidence in the system and each other.
#GODUKE
Digging into CSU a bit more, I see a pathway to an uncomfortably close game if Duke doesn't shoot well. CSU last year (and coach Niko Medved's history at other stops) has all the hallmarks of a pack-it-in scheme. They give up tons of 3-pt attempts, don't foul much, don't force turnovers, and are pretty good on the defensive boards. Their center Carvacho was the third-best defensive rebounder in the country last season, so we might not get the offensive boards we would usually expect against such a small team. Additionally, CSU was 30th in the country last season in percentage of possessions in transition, so they will absolutely push the ball off Carvacho's rebounds. If Duke's not shooting well, can we get the ball inside? As a program, we're pretty bad at entry passes (imo), which reared its head a bit against Kansas, and CSU will be crowding the lane... Essentially, if Duke doesn't shoot well to extend the defense, if we're struggling to make entry passes into a crowded lane, if we're not offensive rebounding at a high level, and if CSU is pushing the ball down our throats after defensive rebounds and turnovers, then we're most of the way towards a shocking upset.
On the other side of the court, CSU's offense will in some ways provide an opposite challenge to Kansas, who played caveman basketball. It starts with CSU putting 4 shooters on the court, so we will see Vernon and Javin play 1-on-1 post defense against Carvacho as opposed to all the double teams against Kansas; let's see how that goes. Remember, if Duke is eventually forced to double-team Carvacho, doubling off a 3-pt shooter is very different from doubling off a non-shooting big. Finally, with multiple small guards in the rotation, they should do okay handling the pressure and driving the pressure at times. When CSU drives, can we help without giving up tons of open 3-pt attempts? Essentially, if Carvacho is scoring 1-on-1 in the post and drives are additionally resulting in open 3-pt shots, those are the final pieces to the upset puzzle.
Now, I don't expect all the "ifs" in this post to fall in CSU's favor, of course. But if a shocking upset occurs, what would it look like? I think it looks like the above.
Agree with UCake that there is a strong possibility for a letdown game tonight with this young team, whether that's from not being able to bounce back quickly after the emotional trip to NYC (and it wasn't just a game, it was like a four day trip), a false feeling of invincibility, the emotion of playing in Cameron Indoor for the first time, et al
He also may need to cut his hair again.
Hard at work making beautiful things.
I like this post for its "what would an upset take?" perspective. I hadn't thought about it that way.
But I do question the assertion that they put "4 shooters on the court". That's generous. They put 4 guards/wings on the court surrounding Macho Carvacho, but I'm not sold that they're particularly adept shooters. Thistlewood (the biggest of the 4 players) is fairly solid at 38.7% on 137 attempts last season. But CSU lost JD Paige and Anthony Masinton-Bonner who combined for 106 out of 267 for 39.7% on 3s. Those two were solid shooters. They also had Lorenzo Jenkins who was over 40% from deep but only played in 11 games so shot ~40 attempts.
It's unclear that the remaining cast of characters are good shooters outside of Thistlewood. Martin was 33% last year. Moore was 32% last year. Both shot over 100 attempts. Hyron Edwards shot less but with good reason as he was 29%. Maybe the freshman Stevens is good? He was 1-3 in his first game. Their tempo was 204th last year, so pushing it on fast breaks doesn't seem particularly consistent to their gameplan, although perhaps possible. They also didn't assist very much at 14 per game and don't steal very much at 6 per game (both last year), so I'm not seeing a team that disrupts, passes ahead, and finishes.
I take the point though that they play 4-out and will generally shoot 3s (~23 per game last year). That's fair and true. But they lost their 3 best bombers, by 3P%. It's unclear if they'll be able to replicate that sort of production, and if anything the objective stats point to a fall off. So I'm not really concerned. But your points are all helpful to frame the "bid-ask" spread for those trying to box their expectations for tonight.
- Chillin
Hello DBR posters. This is my first post on the DBR forum. As a life long blue devil fan, I've always enjoyed reading the posts from you folks.Excited about our team this year and looking forward to being a part of these discussions about the season. Hopefully tonight's game against CSU will be a little easier than Kansas. Maybe a few threes from Tre, some improvement from Wendell and some minutes for Baker tonight. Go Duke.