Someone has to start it so it may as well be me.
In the first game, Matt Hurt was held to 7 points. He must be more productive Saturday. The defense was torched by Caleb Love to the tune of 25 points. The defense cannot allow a repeat.
Bob Green
Thanks for taking one for the team, Bob.
There was a thread over the summer, would you want to see Duke play Carolina in the Final Four. My view was no and it was because it would put too much on the line. All arguments with Heels fans would boil down to that one game. If Duke wins or loses, all arguments would end "well, what about 202X?" and that would be the end of it.
There isn't that much on the line this weekend, but there is a lot. I can't say that I am looking forward to this like I normally would.
Win this game, and our goals are still within reach.
But seriously, do we need motivation to win this? Let's wipe the smiles off of some smug Tar Heels on Saturday
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Facing Carolina is motivation both necessary and sufficient. It now has an our-new-SuperBowl feel. I think I care about this rather more than whether we sneak into the big dance as a highly suspect NCAAT team. As in football, the farther from contention you get, the more like a championship the archrivalry game looks.
If Duke whacks Carolina this weekend, I will feel much better about the season no matter how it turns out. And given UNC's loss to Syracuse, if Duke wins and UNC loses it's first game in the tourney, they may get on the bubble themselves. They would be 4-7 in their last 11, not very good. It would be great being a part of the run that knocked them out of the tourney. And we would all thank Wojo for helping out, too.
9F
I will never talk about That Game. GTHC.
High probability this is a close game within a bucket with less than a minute to play. Sound familiar?
Yeah, that's definitely going to happen against UNC. Just the nature of their style of play. You just hope to limit it to a couple of times in a game rather than 5-10 times.
It's the type of thing that more experienced teams (that face UNC more than twice in their careers) are probably better at limiting. But, c'est la vie, unfortunately.
I'd feel the same way but uh-no I guess it's hard to break a bad habit of rejoicing after a made basket. Kids can't help themselves.
As for the game, we'll have to do a much better job of defensive rebounding. The Cheats have some big front court players. Let's hope Hurt and Williams can stay out of foul trouble. Might see more minutes from Coleman III this game.
GoDuke!
Here's Coach's media availability today, with an appearance by DBR's own BlazinDW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysVf31aRajk
if only our coach could teach our guys to not be high fiving while UNC is running the floor
It's like the quick pitch in baseball or the quicksnap in football. I feel like you have to be deliberate about NOT wasting time after the made buckets. Honestly, I wish more teams took that part of UNC's game.
1200. DDMF.
It only happened a few times in that game. Twice they scored within 8 seconds of our score, 2-3 more times they scored within 12 seconds of a Duke make. So we did an ok job of avoiding it in game 1.
Hopefully we do as good a job at it and UNC doesn’t go bonkers from 3 again.
Maybe Duke should take a page out of the Moses Wright playbook and deliberately grab the ball hesitate for a second or 2 and then throw it to the refs to prevent the secondary break.
In other opinions: Is it possible for Duke to get an at-large bid anymore? If so, what would that need to entail? Would it require defeating UNC and making it all the way to the ACCT finals game?