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  1. #1

    I love this team.

    I've been an avid Duke Basketball fan for upwards of 40 years.
    Never have we had a team with the depth and diversity that this one has.
    I never thought I'd see the day when Coach K had ten players that played regular minutes, but he is doing it fairly consistently with this group of young men.
    The best thing about the team, in my opinion is that they have only touched the surface of what they can and hopefully will become.
    To a large degree they are young and fairly inexperienced. They should only get better as the season progresses.

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by porkpa View Post
    I've been an avid Duke Basketball fan for upwards of 40 years.
    Never have we had a team with the depth and diversity that this one has.
    I never thought I'd see the day when Coach K had ten players that played regular minutes, but he is doing it fairly consistently with this group of young men.
    The best thing about the team, in my opinion is that they have only touched the surface of what they can and hopefully will become.
    To a large degree they are young and fairly inexperienced. They should only get better as the season progresses.
    I love it for the same reasons. I hope the depth continues. The announcers yesterday were trying their darndest to figure out when K whittles the rotation to 7-8 men....it never dawned on them that such may not happen this season. May not. I think this team only reaches it's potential with all ten making contributions.

  3. #3
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    I like this team. My love for Duke teams has been tempered by the disappointing Elite 8 losses of the past two years.

    This team has potential, it is deep without the stars of the past two years. Best case scenario is that someone steps up every game. Worst case scenario is that none of the players, other than Tre and Carey, are dominant.

    I like their effort. I like the defense.

    I'm very disappointed in Jack White's continuing struggle to make a basket.

    I'm rooting for them all the way but don't have great expectations.

  4. #4
    This is a different kind of Duke team than I’ve seen in my 35 years as an avid fan. I thought we might be headed to a 9 man rotation with AOC the odd man out and then he stepped up his game. I think AOC or Baker or Moore could still fall out of favor and drop from the rotation but I’m not expecting it. Having fresh legs in the second half is a real luxury for defensive intensity and shooting. I’m loving the 10 man rotation.

  5. #5
    scottdude8's Avatar
    scottdude8 is offline Moderator, Contributor, Zoubek disciple, and resident Wolverine
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    Quote Originally Posted by MartyClark View Post
    I'm very disappointed in Jack White's continuing struggle to make a basket.
    With all due respect, if you’re disappointed in how Captain Jack has been playing this year I think the issue may be your expectations and not Jack’s performance.

    Jack White has been VITAL to this team’s success. He makes winning plays every game. They just aren’t the type of plays that show up in a box score.

    Honestly, I’ve been impressed with Jack’s restraint shooting this year. We thought he might be a 40+% knockdown shooter from 3. I think he did too. That obviously just isn’t the case. But that’s fine! He’s a good, not great, deep shooter. That means he should be taking wide open 3s, but passing up marginal ones to create higher percentage looks. He’s been doing that.

    I can’t remember a Duke player who’s done more for a team without being a top scorer than Jack. It’s time we start giving him the love he deserves, and judging him not based on what we hoped he would be based on the early season last year, but on what he is. And he is perhaps the best glue guy, and one of the best leaders, this team has had in years.

    I love Jack White. And I, too, love this team.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by scottdude8 View Post
    With all due respect, if you’re disappointed in how Captain Jack has been playing this year I think the issue may be your expectations and not Jack’s performance.

    Jack White has been VITAL to this team’s success. He makes winning plays every game. They just aren’t the type of plays that show up in a box score.

    I love Jack White. And I, too, love this team.
    My hope for Jack's shooting is that he shoot at least well enough to get good minutes, because he sure can do other things, like rebound, defend, hustle, and provide energy.

    I'm a little prejudiced because he has the same name as my (late) Dad.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by scottdude8 View Post
    With all due respect, if you’re disappointed in how Captain Jack has been playing this year I think the issue may be your expectations and not Jack’s performance.

    Jack White has been VITAL to this team’s success. He makes winning plays every game. They just aren’t the type of plays that show up in a box score.

    Honestly, I’ve been impressed with Jack’s restraint shooting this year. We thought he might be a 40+% knockdown shooter from 3. I think he did too. That obviously just isn’t the case. But that’s fine! He’s a good, not great, deep shooter. That means he should be taking wide open 3s, but passing up marginal ones to create higher percentage looks. He’s been doing that.

    I can’t remember a Duke player who’s done more for a team without being a top scorer than Jack. It’s time we start giving him the love he deserves, and judging him not based on what we hoped he would be based on the early season last year, but on what he is. And he is perhaps the best glue guy, and one of the best leaders, this team has had in years.

    I love Jack White. And I, too, love this team.
    You make some very good points concerning Jack White.

  8. #8
    RE Jack White:

    Scoring is not the only way to be of value to your team. It that was the case, they would play with 5 balls rather than one.

  9. #9
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    Jack White reminds me of David McClure. Not looking to star, but does all of the things necessary to contribute. He will continue to be a valuable member of this team.

  10. #10
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    Washington, D.C.

    Straw man much?

    Quote Originally Posted by scottdude8 View Post
    With all due respect, if you’re disappointed in how Captain Jack has been playing this year I think the issue may be your expectations and not Jack’s performance.

    Jack White has been VITAL to this team’s success. He makes winning plays every game. They just aren’t the type of plays that show up in a box score.

    Honestly, I’ve been impressed with Jack’s restraint shooting this year. We thought he might be a 40+% knockdown shooter from 3. I think he did too. That obviously just isn’t the case. But that’s fine! He’s a good, not great, deep shooter. That means he should be taking wide open 3s, but passing up marginal ones to create higher percentage looks. He’s been doing that.

    I can’t remember a Duke player who’s done more for a team without being a top scorer than Jack. It’s time we start giving him the love he deserves, and judging him not based on what we hoped he would be based on the early season last year, but on what he is. And he is perhaps the best glue guy, and one of the best leaders, this team has had in years.

    I love Jack White. And I, too, love this team.
    The OP was only talking about Jack's shooting, not how he has been playing this year.

    While your points are valid, they shouldn't be made in response to the OP.

  11. #11
    scottdude8's Avatar
    scottdude8 is offline Moderator, Contributor, Zoubek disciple, and resident Wolverine
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    Quote Originally Posted by MChambers View Post
    The OP was only talking about Jack's shooting, not how he has been playing this year.

    While your points are valid, they shouldn't be made in response to the OP.
    Fair enough. I think I was more responding to the idea that being “very disappointed” by Jack’s shooting is a bit of an overreaction given the rest of the circumstances. But you’re 100% right. This could very well be a case of “tone” being lost in text...

  12. #12
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    I love Jack White and what he brings to the team. That said, I think it's quite obvious that he would be so much more effective on the offensive end if he could shoot. Nobody is asking him to be a top scorer on the team, just to make a decent percentage of the shots he should be taking in the framework of the offense. What I see happening is that Jack is missing 3's or we are moving the ball and get an open 3 and he doesn't take it. At that point our offense often breaks down and we have to reset. Note I've seen AOC have the same issue.

    I don't consider this being overly critical of Jack, it's just what's pretty obvious watching him play.

    Back to the OP and the affection for this team. I really like what we have with this team. Seems like we have some flexibility that can be used in two ways. First of all, we can match up with teams however we want. We can go big or small, or whatever. Secondly if someone is having an off game we can sit them and have the next guy up give it a go. Add to the fact that we just play a lot of guys, keep them fresh and finish a game with whatever's working and we can be really good. I also feel like this team has a lot of room to grow. RJ and Zion were so good from day 1 last year that it seemed like we didn't have to grow all that much but with this team I feel like a bunch of these guys are just getting started (Hurt, Moore, Joey Buckets...).

    It's just very different than last year. I loved last years team but mostly because of Zion and Tre. I was bummed when we lost and still think avoidable mistakes were made (get Zion the ball every time down the floor!!!!). The one and done wears on us as a fan base. It just sucks so much when we lose in the tournament because we don't get Zion or Marvin or RJ or Brandon or Jason back to try again (thank you Tre!!!).

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by porkpa View Post
    I've been an avid Duke Basketball fan for upwards of 40 years.
    Never have we had a team with the depth and diversity that this one has.
    I never thought I'd see the day when Coach K had ten players that played regular minutes, but he is doing it fairly consistently with this group of young men.
    The best thing about the team, in my opinion is that they have only touched the surface of what they can and hopefully will become.
    To a large degree they are young and fairly inexperienced. They should only get better as the season progresses.
    i have also enjoyed this team a lot, tantalizing potential! I do want to take issue withe highlighted part. We have had several teams with this much depth and diversity. I think one of the things that makes it appear like we have more depth is that we have several players who are either really good on offense or really good on defense, but not both. Diversity to me would be players who are good at both. Another aspect of "diverse" players are those who can play multiple positions, and we do have a few of those. Jack White is a very versatile defender but not a versatile offensive player. Moore is a fairly versatile defender whose offensive versatility is a bit less. None of the other players really seem to be overly versatile (or diverse, as you put it), although most can play 2 positions at least. To me it appears our diversity/versatility is derived from having players who each have a different set of skills, rather than having players who each have lots of skills.
    Back to depth: it is a great blessing to this team that we basically have 2 players who can cover every position on the floor competently, and that indeed is a good form of depth to have as it helps keep legs fresh. There is a strong argument to be made that depth composed of fewer players but each with more 2-way prowess may in fact be a better depth to have, but the coach is still required to manage either version to its maximum for the potential of "depth" to have value. K is managing the depth he has this season very well, and may well maximize the value of the depth this year relative to others. It seems that he's got the players to have fully bought in to their roles, and it seems that each guy is pretty good at their role.

  14. #14
    You can have players with diverse skill sets but you can also have teams with diverse players - players with different strengths. I read porpka’s comment as the latter. Coach K has a diverse set of player pieces that he can weave together in different ways for maximum effectiveness. The proof is in the depth of the rotation for our first two ACC games. Over my 35 years I can’t remember this deep of a rotation this late into the season. It’s fun to watch.

  15. #15
    I did not see this coming, but I completely agree with the original poster. This team is really, really fun to follow, and our style of play and diversity of talent means there's never a dull moment. More specifically, I never thought I'd enjoy watching a Duke defense this much, but between Tre and Goldwire and to a lesser extent Cassius and Wendell, our perimeter lockdown ability is just beautiful. Really anxious to see how we fare against Miami this weekend. I get the feeling this team is built well for those tough ACC road games, but this will be the first real test.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by ShaneRyan View Post
    I did not see this coming, but I completely agree with the original poster. This team is really, really fun to follow, and our style of play and diversity of talent means there's never a dull moment. More specifically, I never thought I'd enjoy watching a Duke defense this much, but between Tre and Goldwire and to a lesser extent Cassius and Wendell, our perimeter lockdown ability is just beautiful. Really anxious to see how we fare against Miami this weekend. I get the feeling this team is built well for those tough ACC road games, but this will be the first real test.
    Agree with your enthusiasm and observations about this team. Is there any other team that has two perimeter defenders the equal of Tre and Goldwire? Can they slow down Chris Lykes?

    On "the first real test", don't forget about our December win in Blacksburg, where we have had some very good teams go down.

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by roywhite View Post
    Agree with your enthusiasm and observations about this team. Is there any other team that has two perimeter defenders the equal of Tre and Goldwire? Can they slow down Chris Lykes?
    And Goldwire is arguably the third or fourth best of our perimeter defenders (at least in a halfcourt setting). Stanley and Moore are quite good as well. Our perimeter defense can be absolutely stifling when we have our defense-first group in there.

    Quote Originally Posted by roywhite View Post
    On "the first real test", don't forget about our December win in Blacksburg, where we have had some very good teams go down.
    Yeah, Virginia Tech - on short rest and essentially without Stanley - was in my opinion a tougher test than Miami with regular rest and a full complement of players available. Not that we can't lose to Miami. Clearly, as the SFA game shows, we can. But I don't think Miami is any bigger a test than the MSU game at home, the neutral-site games against Kansas and Georgetown, or the road game against Va Tech were.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by porkpa View Post
    I've been an avid Duke Basketball fan for upwards of 40 years.
    Never have we had a team with the depth and diversity that this one has.
    I never thought I'd see the day when Coach K had ten players that played regular minutes, but he is doing it fairly consistently with this group of young men.
    The best thing about the team, in my opinion is that they have only touched the surface of what they can and hopefully will become.
    To a large degree they are young and fairly inexperienced. They should only get better as the season progresses.
    At this point in the 2007-08 season, Duke had 11 different players who played 12+ minutes in at least one game. The 9th guy played 10+ minutes in 7 of the 13 games. The 10th guy had 6+ minutes in 6 of the 13 games. In one game, the 9th guy played 19 minutes.

    The comparative minute distribution, after 13 games looked like this:

    Code:
    man	2008	2020
    1	396	369
    2	363	307
    3	348	289
    4	336	282
    5	311	278
    6	221	259
    7	207	232
    8	175	194
    9	140	191
    10	69	182
    11	32	33
    If Tre and Cassius hadn't missed games this season, or if Dave McClure (the 10th guy in the 2008 grid, who had only 69 minutes after 13 games but ended the season with 268 minutes) hadn't started hurt that season, the numbers might look even more similar.

    By the time we got to our 1-pt win over a 15-seed and our 2nd round loss in the 2008 NCAA tourney, our 9th and 10th guys were playing 2 to 4 minutes, and our 7th and 8th guys were playing 8 to 14 minutes. But my point is, after 13 games and going into the New Year, what we're seeing this year, while unusual, is not unprecedented. Obviously, we'll have to wait and see how it goes for the rest of this season before drawing further conclusions.

  19. #19
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    Nov 2007
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    Vermont
    Very much a modular team this year. AOC, Hurt and Baker can all be streaky, hopefully at least one of them is shooting well on any given night. Would've paid a lot for just one guy who could shoot last year.

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kedsy View Post
    At this point in the 2007-08 season, Duke had 11 different players who played 12+ minutes in at least one game. The 9th guy played 10+ minutes in 7 of the 13 games. The 10th guy had 6+ minutes in 6 of the 13 games. In one game, the 9th guy played 19 minutes.

    The comparative minute distribution, after 13 games looked like this:

    Code:
    man	2008	2020
    1	396	369
    2	363	307
    3	348	289
    4	336	282
    5	311	278
    6	221	259
    7	207	232
    8	175	194
    9	140	191
    10	69	182
    11	32	33
    If Tre and Cassius hadn't missed games this season, or if Dave McClure (the 10th guy in the 2008 grid, who had only 69 minutes after 13 games but ended the season with 268 minutes) hadn't started hurt that season, the numbers might look even more similar.

    By the time we got to our 1-pt win over a 15-seed and our 2nd round loss in the 2008 NCAA tourney, our 9th and 10th guys were playing 2 to 4 minutes, and our 7th and 8th guys were playing 8 to 14 minutes. But my point is, after 13 games and going into the New Year, what we're seeing this year, while unusual, is not unprecedented. Obviously, we'll have to wait and see how it goes for the rest of this season before drawing further conclusions.
    I'm not sure if I agree on this comparison when looking deeper into those games. While at the surface they look similar, a perusal of the close games over those first 13 in 2007-08 and 2019-20 shows some differences. In 2007-08, we had 7 of the first 13 games decided by less than 20 points. In those 7 games, only twice did the 9th man see 5 minutes of action. And one of those two was an overtime game in which we saw substantial foul trouble. So close-ish games basically saw the same type of minutes distribution as you cite for the end of season NCAA tourney games.

    Comparatively, we've had 7 such games this season. And in all 7, the 9th man has gotten 5+ minutes (and in all but 2 the 9th man has gotten 8+). Now, small caveat that one of those games this year was an OT game, so if you want to subtract one from this season's 5+ count (the 9th man got 6 minutes in that game), that's fine: 6 of 6 non-OT sub-20 point games this year versus 1 of 6 in the early part of the '08 season. That looks quite a bit different. Heck, we've had more close-ish games with the 10th man getting 5+ minutes this year (3) than we had with the 9th man getting 5+ minutes (2).

    If this season's trends in close/meaningful games hold as they did in the 2007-08 season, we should expect to see 9 or even 10 guys playing 5+ minutes in the NCAA tournament. Obviously things can change, but I'm not sure that the 2007-08 season is a super-strong argument that we should expect the rotation to whittle to 7-8 again.

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