MBB: NC State 88, Duke 66 Post-Game Thread

[MCFinARL]

I get the sense from K’s presser that he saw this coming almost immediately after the game started and that, while he certainly wanted and tried to win, he was also accepting of the fact that we had no shot and felt he could use this arse whipping as a wake-up call/teaching moment. We’ll see.

Yes, I thought this just from watching him on the bench. He had that look he sometimes gets where he is more resigned than angry.

I am not a believer in wanting it more. Too vague and often obscures the root cause of the problem(s) that were evident during the game.

I agree that saying a team "wanted it more" suggests some kind of psychological deficiency or entitlement in the other team that is seldom accurate or fair--but if you translate "wanting it more" in physical terms--as "being focused and energetic"--I think there is some truth to it for this game. Duke came out less focused, they were outrebounded, they had fewer steals, and--by eyeball test--they got beaten to a lot of loose balls.

[dukelifer]

What you said in bold...is, or should be, patently obvious. Athletes don't run the identical speed, jump the identical height, have the identical strength, every single game. They don't process with identical mental sharpness game to game either. There are good games and bad games, good days and bad days...and motivation, intensity, ie, WANT TO is probably the biggest factor there. Other factors include biorhythms, rest, feeling a little sick or not, etc...but "want to" is way up the list.

The other part is that State has older players - players who have been in a lot of battles together. Duke might have two slightly better players - Tre and Vernon but after that the Duke guys are not as experienced or markedly better at this stage. What is surprising is that this blowout loss came so late in the season. But State needed this. So wanting it much more is a big component. Duke will need to play hungrier and better if they want to make a run. This was a wake up call. We will see if they respond. Still proud of this team- I expected a few more blowouts but until last night they showed an ability to fight back.

[flyingdutchdevil]

1 very close win against a rival, 1 close win against a ranked team, 1 blowout win against a decent team...

I believe this Duke team thought they were invincible. A loss like this could be very good for the ego moving forward, although it likely comes at a cost.

[TNTDevil]

Disappointing to see so many all of a sudden going off the ledge and saying this is a “first weekend team”. Really? From one game, in a place where we historically have stumbled?

When you wake up tomorrow morning this will be the same team that gave us the Carolina Comeback and looked like world beaters against Notre Dame days ago. This is a solid team in a year without an incredible team in the country. All of our goals are still very achievable.

Breathe guys. Breathe.

Can't spork you so, I'll thank you here for this post.

Everybody is so critical of everything Duke MBB just because we got beat by a team that was able to play, quite simply, out of their minds. The truth(s) (as I see them) are:

• Tonight, the Pack had "it" and Duke didn't. No combination of substitution(s), time-outs or, coach's scolding was going to change that fact.
• The Pack hit every crazy/bad shot they took while we couldn't hit a <bleeping> shot at the rim.
• Duke is still a very good team with a legit shot at a great post-season.
• State (sadly) will return to being a mediocre team.

This game had all the ingredients of a Duke loss- a focused opponent, a player (or players) playing far above their level and, a Duke team that was flat.

One thing I can't figure...why would State fan storm the court instead of standing up and shouting, loudly and repeatedly "Where the #$%^ has this been the rest of the season?"

[azzefkram]

Is it me, or does Tre's D seem to be a tad on the leaky side recently? I know the numbers have Duke as a top 10 D but it seems like any team with a touch of athleticism can get whatever they want on offense. I would think that Tre, JGold, Cas, Wendell and Vernon would be a pretty good defensive unit.

[wsb3]

22-4 12-3 Conference

If you would have asked me if I would take these numbers back in October. I would have said, Yes. I still really like this team. They have good but not great players and they have to bring it each night and last night they did not bring it. And didn't we all know that the Pack would play out of their minds?

Next play.

I wish you would step back
From that ledge my friend

[Reddevil]

I was hoping this would not happen, but here is my take:

Duke drilled Wake 90-59 then lost the next two against Clemson and L'ville.

Duke drilled ND 94-60 then lost to State.

To me this is young team syndrome. They remember how easy it seemed at the end of those blowouts instead of how hard they played in the beginning to reach the coasting point.

They are obviously being coached to come out aggressively and they are saying the right things, but some lessons have to be learned the hard way. Youth always thinks they can turn it on when they need to, and they do not realize it doesn't work that way.

This is were upperclassmen need to take a stand, but even they were just sitting there looking bewildered. K has seen this before so I hope he can fire them up appropriately. It is tough on us fans because they are capable of playing so darned well.

Congrats to State. They won the intensity battle and therefore the game. Hopefully it is a lesson learned. Next play.

[devildeac]

Considering taking NCSU +30 for this weekend offered by someone in chat last PM. You know who you are...

[kAzE]

Disappointing to see so many all of a sudden going off the ledge and saying this is a “first weekend team”. Really? From one game, in a place where we historically have stumbled?

When you wake up tomorrow morning this will be the same team that gave us the Carolina Comeback and looked like world beaters against Notre Dame days ago. This is a solid team in a year without an incredible team in the country. All of our goals are still very achievable.

Breathe guys. Breathe.

I'm not sure I'd use the Carolina comeback as a reason for optimism. We played terribly that game and should have lost. If either UNC or Florida St. had hit their normal percentage from the free throw line, we would have lost those games.

This Duke team is just not that good on the road. Since the January 4 game at Miami, we have failed to defeat a team on their home court by more than single digits, even lowly Boston College.

Certainly, I don't believe Duke is a first weekend team, but does any of this make me think we are national title contenders right now? Not really. Losing by 20+ isn't something that inspires confidence.

We need to see how the team responds from this, but I honestly cannot remember the last time we got beat by 20. That was embarrassing.

[devilirium]

Is it me, or does Tre's D seem to be a tad on the leaky side recently? I know the numbers have Duke as a top 10 D but it seems like any team with a touch of athleticism can get whatever they want on offense. I would think that Tre, JGold, Cas, Wendell and Vernon would be a pretty good defensive unit.

I know what you're driving at (and have seen it) , but I didn't really see that from Tre last nite. He fought over every screen, but the help defense just wasn't there on the contain and the defensive rebounding was pretty atrocious at the conclusion of the possession.

[KandG]

Disappointing to see so many all of a sudden going off the ledge and saying this is a “first weekend team”. Really? From one game, in a place where we historically have stumbled?

"First weekend team" is a pejorative that has a particular sting for Duke over the years and is obviously the go-to around these parts when our team underachieves in a game as badly as they did last night. Clearly this team is good enough to recover and can go far.

However, this is one year that "first weekend team" doesn't feel like an insult to me. Last year's team very nearly lost in the first weekend, and that would have been a massive embarrassment given its talent level and the quality of their opponent (even if we can acknowledge UCF played at another level). But the weaknesses and youth of this particular Duke team means a bad matchup against even a lower-rung team with experience and good coaching can result in a loss. We've seen the signs frequently even in the middle of a seven game winning streak.

(Also, as others have pointed out, many of our best performances since conference play started have been at home by an order of magnitude, which befits a young team. Our tournament games will almost always feel like road games, especially if we maintain our pattern of slow starts).

I would be very disappointed if this group loses early in the tournament because I like them a lot and we always have high expectations of Duke (as we should). But as analytically inclined as I am (the numbers still reflect that Duke has been an excellent team all season), this is such an odd year that the numbers don't hold sway for me the way they have in the past. Barring a jump in level of play and consistency from one or more players outside of Tre and Vernon, a bad matchup or seeding in an unfavorable region can easily mean an early exit.

[CDu]

I'm not sure I'd use the Carolina comeback as a reason for optimism. We played terribly that game and should have lost. If either UNC or Florida St. had hit their normal percentage from the free throw line, we would have lost those games.

This Duke team is just not that good on the road. Since the January 4 game at Miami, we have failed to defeat a team on their home court by more than single digits, even lowly Boston College.

Certainly, I don't believe Duke is a first weekend team, but does any of this make me think we are national title contenders right now? Not really. Losing by 20+ isn't something that inspires confidence.

I agree. While we did woodshed Notre Dame last week, it's worth noting that that Notre Dame team is REALLY limited. The one thing they do well (shoot 3s) is the thing we're most adept at limiting, and they don't have playmakers to break down a defense. That was one of the easier reads of the season: it just came down to whether we shot well/poorly and whether they could make the 3s they got.

The UNC and FSU games, for all intents and purposes, should have been losses. UNC controlled the game but completely blew it at the line, and FSU was uncharacteristically awful from 3 and bad from the FT line. While we had won a lot of games since Louisville, we hadn't exactly looked good doing it. That's not to take anything away from winning those games. Our guys didn't give up against UNC, and capitalized when UNC choked. And we played with real grit to hang on against FSU while tired, taking advantage of their poor shooting. If that FSU game is not in Cameron, we probably lose it.

I also don't think this is a first-weekend-loss caliber team, although it is certainly possible. I also don't think THAT many folks are suddenly saying we are. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration to the overreaction by a couple of posters. But I certainly don't feel as good right now as I did prior to the calendar turning 2020.

Hopefully they can figure out the ball screen defense. In rewatching the game I was surprised at just how pervasive it was in their gameplan last night. They ran it on the VAST majority of their halfcourt sets, and it was easily their most effective plan in the halfcourt. We had very little answer for Johnson and Daniels whenever they got the screen and could attack Carey or DeLaurier. Whenever they tried throwing it into the post or just running conventional attacks (small on small) from the perimeter, we won those matchups pretty consistently. But their half-court offensive success was driven almost exclusively by running (and re-running if necessary) those high ball screens until they could get an iso on a big.

Now, I do think that the actual degree of loss is somewhat fluky. They shot ~7-8 points better on 3s than they should have (when you factor in their expected hit rate and factor out offensive rebounds of missed 3s), and we gave away about 5 points at the FT line. So if those things play to average, we're in a tight game (perhaps even winning if it means we stop taking hero-ball shots trying to HR our way back into the game). Especially if we cut out some of the brutal unforced turnovers that led to transition points.

But still, the half-court defense, which has been a strength most of the year, looked beatable last night. And it did so because of our inability to handle the high ball screens. So hopefully we can figure that out, and soon.

[devildeac]

Office mate, NCSU fan, just stopped in to pat me on shoulder and console me briefly about the game. His main take-away: "Looks like your guys weren't interested in being there and playing hoops last PM." He also agreed with my prognostication that the Pack will look like a high school team this weekend and will likely roll over for the cheats again.

Grrr...

[Kedsy]

We need to see how the team responds from this, but I honestly cannot remember the last time we got beat by 20.

The last time was 2013, a year we made the Elite Eight. It happened twice that season - a 27-point drubbing by Miami, and a 22-point loss to Louisville in the NCAAT.

I disagree, on several counts:
1. Looking only at total layups taken has little link to shots off PNR.
2. It also ignores fouls drawn off PNR.
3. It also omits the second-chance points created by the defensive breakdown leaving us out of position for rebounds (part of why a mediocre OReb team thrived on the offensive glass against us).
4. It wasn’t just the success rate on layups off PNR, it was how easy the looks they were getting.
5. It wasn’t just rolls off the high ball screens. They also torched our bigs on jumpers when they got iso’d off those picks.

I'm not going to re-watch the game to see exactly what happened on State's PNRs. But for the game, in addition to shooting 40.7% on layups, State shot 41.9% on two-point jumpers, which to me doesn't scream "easy looks" or "torched our bigs on jumpers." As for their threes, only three of them were assisted and one of those (by Funderburk) was not a PNR. Not sure if the other two assisted threes were on PNR or not.

To me, our defensive problems were not turning them over and them hitting an unnatural percentage from three. We may not have done great on PNRs, but I just don't think that was the major problem.

Look at the hustle plays of former Duke players; Winslow, Singler, & Grayson. the ice water in your veins of one Christian Laettner, Shane, Hurley, Jason Williams.

Kyle Singler started and played 24 minutes in a game Duke lost 74-47. Justise Winslow started and played 27 minutes in a game we lost by 16 at home. Grayson Allen started and played 38 minutes in a 14-point loss at Pitt, started and played 26 minutes in a 16-point loss at FSU, and played 17 minutes in the second half against South Carolina when we lost the half by 14. Jason Williams lost by double-digits three times to Maryland (and almost twice more). Shane Battier participated in two of those double-digit beatings (and both the "almosts"). Christian Laettner lost by 20 at home to UNC in 1989, and he and Bobby Hurley both lost by 17 at Virginia and 22 to UNC (in a year we won the national championship), not to mention losing by 30 to UNLV in 1990.

Sometimes you just get beat.

[Highlander]

Duke effectively has two reliable offensive weapons:
- Dump it down low to Carey
- Let Jones drive and create something out of nothing.

That's it.

Now don't get me wrong, both of those are above average options. But they are not terribly difficult to defend against if you have a couple of capable bigs, especially when the rest of our team just stands around the perimeter and watches Jones/Carey operate and try to get open. There's very little motion from our wings. And everyone not named Tre is not adept at making entry passes to Carey.

On defense, teams are attacking our m2m by spreading us out, setting a high ball screen, and then driving on our bigs. Lather, rinse, repeat. We haven't shown an ability to stop that with any consistency. And as good as Carey has been on offense, he routinely gets beat on this set. DeLaurier is better, but what he makes up for on Defense is offset by the loss of a major offensive option and a dip in rebounding. I don't know why Carey never hedges on that screen, but he's obviously being coached not to. I remember Bolden was excellent at that last year and it disrupted the timing of the guard coming off the pick.

State certainly played above average for them, especially from the perimeter. Even so, they had at least 5-6 shots that didn't even draw iron. That being said, Duke somehow managed to play worse. We were absolutely awful in almost every facet of the game. Waaay too many unforced errors due to sloppy play. I recall one series in the first half where Duke committed 3 straight turnovers without even attempting a shot - a double dribble, a pass out of bounds, and a lazy entry pass. K finally called a timeout. We made a nice run to put the game into reach, and then reverted back to the norm with 4-5 empty possessions in a row. That we only cut it to 12-14 points is a testament to the size of the hole we dug.

As noted above, Jordan Goldwire was our third leading scorer and third option on offense (based on # of shots). I love what Jordan has brought to the team this year on both sides of the ball, but he should never be the third option on offense, and shouldn't be the fourth option unless we're playing Javin and Jack at the same time. We need a third option on offense, and logically that should probably be Stanley, Moore, or Hurt. All 3 were invisible last night. Duke simply isn't good enough to win with only two reliable scorers.

@Ray_Holloman on Twitter said it best: "On a team defined by depth, there was none. On a team defined by defense, no one could stop a drive. On a team that was angling for a one seed, there was a compete level of an exhibition. Just as bad a game as Duke has ever played."

[Steven43]

Coach K shouldn't throw anyone under the bus, but hopefully he doesn't let any of the players ride it home.

Ha, that’s funny 😆.

Seriously, though, do you not think the coaching staff shares in the loss? It is a team sport — including coaching — after all.

[Steven43]

I'm thinking he might walk home with them.

If we are a 10 deep team, we certainly did not show it tonight. The GOAT did not seem very energized or willing to roll out our "reserves" in an effort to spark something. Something was seriously off tonight, for the players and Coach K.

I don't think this was a learning game. It was something else; I hope my foreboding is misplaced.

What is this hidden darkness to which you allude?

[CDu]

I'm not going to re-watch the game to see exactly what happened on State's PNRs. But for the game, in addition to shooting 40.7% on layups, State shot 41.9% on two-point jumpers, which to me doesn't scream "easy looks" or "torched our bigs on jumpers." As for their threes, only three of them were assisted and one of those (by Funderburk) was not a PNR. Not sure if the other two assisted threes were on PNR or not.

Well, I DID rewatch the game, and came away even more concerned about our handling of the high ball screens than I was when I mentioned it last night. That was clearly the focus of their half-court offense, and they went to it repeatedly. The vast majority of their offense was predicted on running that high ball screen to get a guard isolated on a big. Sometimes the guard drove, sometimes he pulled back to set up the straight iso. But it was pretty effective.

And while they did miss several open looks generated, they were still very open. Through the 5-minute mark of the second half, I had 33 half-court possessions for State in which they ran that high ball screen. We defended it well on 12 of them (note: this doesn't consider the outcome, just the process; sometimes we defended okay/well and they scored - two of Johnson's 3s come to mind, sometimes they defended poorly and got bailed out by bad decisions by State). I had them at just over 1 point per possession in those situations, which is pretty bad for a supposedly good half court defense (usually teams are comfortably under 1 in half court and well over 1 in transition, and the VAST majority of their half court points came out of this action.

They were extremely ineffective whenever they tried other things (guards attacking guards, bigs posting up bigs, bigs posting littles).

To me, our defensive problems were not turning them over and them hitting an unnatural percentage from three. We may not have done great on PNRs, but I just don't think that was the major problem.

To be clear, I think all 3 of those things were problems. If we had turned them over a bit more and if they'd hit fewer 3s, maybe it is a 10 point deficit. And if we make a normal rate of FTs, it's a close game. But we were bad in how we handled high ball screens.

And also to be clear, it wasn't JUST pick and rolls, which is just a subset of the high ball screens. There were only 2 or 3 actual pick and rolls. It was the high ball screens in general: the plays that forced our bigs to play defense out of their comfort zone. That resulted in 4 of Johnson's made 3s (all when either iso'd on a big or when the big sagged way too far off and left him wide open) and Hellems' made 3 (when Johnson drove and drew the entire weakside defense in, leaving Hellems wide open on the wing) and Daniels' made corner 3 late in the game (same concept but to the corner shooter not the wing shooter). It also resulted in almost all of Daniels' points, either on uncontested/lightly contested layups or on drawing fouls on drives.

Also, it's worth noting that 3pt defense and turnovers are not independent of handling the high ball screen. As I mentioned above, the high ball screen did create numerous wide open looks on jumpers, some of them 3s. It more often resulted in shots in/around the paint, but it most certainly led to wide open 3s. And by running those plays and making the big defending the perimeter the focal point, it took the guys who are most adept at forcing turnovers out of the equation.

[House P]

Is that potentially a historic flip from massive blowout to getting massively blown out?

As far as I can tell, last night is the only time that a Duke team under Coach K followed a 30+ point win with a 20+ point loss in the next game.

Since the 1980-81 season, there have been two instances of Duke following a 20+ point win with a 20+ point loss:

In Feb 1998, Duke lost to UNC by 24 after beating Georgia Tech by 21 in the previous game.
In Mar 1991, Duke lost to UNC by 22 in the ACC tournament after beating NC State by 21 in the previous game.

The 1991 season ended OK, so that is the precedent that I am going with!

[Kedsy]

To be clear, I think all 3 of those things were problems. If we had turned them over a bit more and if they'd hit fewer 3s, maybe it is a 10 point deficit. And if we make a normal rate of FTs, it's a close game. But we were bad in how we handled high ball screens.

And also to be clear, it wasn't JUST pick and rolls, which is just a subset of the high ball screens. There were only 2 or 3 actual pick and rolls. It was the high ball screens in general: the plays that forced our bigs to play defense out of their comfort zone. That resulted in 4 of Johnson's made 3s (all when either iso'd on a big or when the big sagged way too far off and left him wide open) and Hellems' made 3 (when Johnson drove and drew the entire weakside defense in, leaving Hellems wide open on the wing) and Daniels' made corner 3 late in the game (same concept but to the corner shooter not the wing shooter). It also resulted in almost all of Daniels' points, either on uncontested/lightly contested layups or on drawing fouls on drives.

Also, it's worth noting that 3pt defense and turnovers are not independent of handling the high ball screen. As I mentioned above, the high ball screen did create numerous wide open looks on jumpers, some of them 3s. It more often resulted in shots in/around the paint, but it most certainly led to wide open 3s. And by running those plays and making the big defending the perimeter the focal point, it took the guys who are most adept at forcing turnovers out of the equation.

All fair points.