Pitt is an impressive rebounding team, despite not having traditional bigs as important players. They got strong guys all over the court. I don’t know whether Roach’s and Steward’s quickness can overcome the toughness disadvantage.
I’m hoping that Johnson and Moore are big and athletic enough to slow down Champagnie a bit. Maybe Wendell and Jalen for 20 minutes each, hoping to keep Champagnie off the boards some. Hurt at the 5, relief from Williams a little each half.
Play the usual 3 guards, relief from Brakefield and Baker on the perimeter.
Could Coleman’s strength help against Champagnie, or is he just too inexperienced?
Last edited by gumbomoop; 01-19-2021 at 11:27 AM.
That was the initial surge but Duke is back out to a 4-pt favorite now and 4.5 in some places. Very close to what I predicted -- 3 points for what the computer spits out and another 1 point for our "bye week."
Not that any of this matters.
Play good defense, make your threes (in conference games, Pitt ranks last in the conference in giving up 3-pt attempts), and let's win a road game against a pretty decent Pitt team, Capel's best so far in his three years there.
I keep forgetting about Baker, which isn't fair because he actually showed some real fire last game.
The topic of his shooting was discussed quite a bit in the VTech post-game thread. Many contended that we aren't looking for him enough. I am actually part of the contingent who argues that Joey does not get himself ready to shoot well enough. Nearly every time I see him catch the ball, he is squared to the guy passing him the ball rather than preparing to square to the basket. Rather than make the defense think, he nearly always zips the ball right back where it came from. He has shown that he can catch fire from 3, and we really need shooting on this squad, yet he has been more effective driving the ball of late - obviously very limited sample size based on his lack of minutes.
I feel like his gritty play last game will earn him an early look tonight (assuming it carried over to practice this past week), I hope he does something with it!
I dunno. With Jalen's return, I think Joey might get squeezed as we move towards a 7-man rotation; the three guards and Matt/Jalen up front as the starters, Jaemyn and Wendell off the bench.
Joey has the worst turnover rate on the team at an incredible 34%. Like you, I'm on team "Joey's reluctant to shoot / not ready to shoot" and so amazingly he's been overall a huge negative on offense, sporting a 72 offensive rating. For context, Wendell is actually higher with an 83 offensive rating, hahaha. This needs to change. I think a Joey that's a (huge) negative on offense is a Joey that is out of the rotation soon.
In order to win this game, Duke is going to have to want it more than Pitt and play with full tilt energy the entire game. Substitution patterns to keep player fresh will be key. Right now in our development, we have no margin for error.
"This is the best of all possible worlds."
Dr. Pangloss - Candide
If Moore was playing the 2/3 and Johnson was at the 3/4 with a true rim protector behind them, then yes. But not in our current lineup which has them both playing the 4 with three 6'1-6'2 guards in front of them and Hurt being the other big. In a zone defense there would just be too many gaps, the passing and driving lanes would be wide open and the corner threes would be there all night.
Could not agree more. We have not been able to sustain this element in any game this season (except maybe the first) and there have been games where we never equaled the other teams competitive drive and energy. We just need to leave it all on the floor. It's time for this team to get to the free throw line and get some 50/50 balls.
GTHC
Hey Troublemaker ! Give us your pick on the Duke game tonight !
VaTech is also a good rebounding team for playing so small, and they were definitely better than us on the boards early in the game. But due to 2 exceptional possessions in the 2nd half we beat them on the Oboards (VT didn't miss as many shots as we did) and they bested us overall by 1. I don't know how much JJ's presence will impact our rebounding, but scrappy teams rebound well vs. this Duke squad.
I might rather see Tapé instead of Williams. Neither has done anything spectacular on the year, but in the ACC games that Mark started he did not look good and contributed to the sluggish team start by turning it over several times and not being adequate on defense. I think Tapé's experience, strength, and composure are an upgrade over Williams right now. I'm not sure i want either of those 2 starting vs Pitt tonight.
Capel's tenure at Pitt has been great so far. In just 2.5 years he has Pitt playing competitive ball, maybe even being a bubble team. Bravo, Jeff.
Joey has shown real fire in most of the games this year. He surprises opponents, i think, and gets more blocks and steals than a "bad defensive player" ought to get. His shooting hasn't shown much fire this year, but he has been finishing at the rim better later.
JJ is better at drawing FTs than Wendell, Joey Baker or any of the bigs we play aside from Hurt, so maybe that'll be an area Duke improves at tonight.
I just had a thought: early in the year K said that Jaemyn was under a no-dribble restriction. With Joey Baker also a player whose focus ought to be hunting down and shooting 3s, we had two guys who weren't expected to be driving to the rim and scoring there. Ironically, lately at least, both Jaemyn and Joey aren't making 3s at all, and both are scoring most of their points off the drive. I don't know if that's a confidence thing, a shift in the focus of the offense, defensive strategy, or whether they are improvising and going off-script. Regardless, the team's 3FG shooting has suffered lately as well...