The 2018-19 Duke team had great offense (#7 Pomeroy; #8 Torvik) and great defense (#6 in both). Those numbers would have been even better if Zion hadn't missed six games. The team just happened to play a subpar game against KenPom's #3 team and lost by 1 point. With Zion in the lineup, the team went 29-3 (and the two regular season losses were a 2-point loss to KenPom's #2 team and a 4-point loss when Cam Reddish didn't play). So I don't think any of the criticisms mentioned in this thread (or anything, other than injuries) had much effect on the team's win/loss record. Sadly, the best team rarely wins every single game (though if it did, Duke would not have won the title in 1991, probably not in 2010 or 2015, either, so these things cut both ways).
The 1986 team started four seniors, won 37 games and had the Naismith Award winner.
1994 had a senior Grant Hill and led by 10 in the middle of the second half of the title game. Beat Purdue in Elite Eight.
1999 went 15-1 in the ACC, had McLeod and Wojo as seniors, Langdon, Brand, Battier and a 17-point lead in the second half in the EE.
2002 had Jason Williams, Carlos Boozer, Mike Dunleavy, Dahntay Jones and Chris Duhon and another huge lead in the S16. But not the officials.
2004-Redick, Duhon, Deng, Shelden Williams, Ewing, Randolph. But not the officials.
2006-Two first-team All-Americans, NPOY, ACC regular season and ACCT champs. But not the officials.
2011-Kyrie Irving, Nolan Smith, Kyle Singler, Mason Plumlee, et.al. That team had an NBA first pick, a Final Four MOP and a ACC POY and it was three different players.
2017-overcame a rash of early injuries to win four games and ACCT. Tatum, Kennard, Allen, Jefferson, Jackson.
2018-Bagley ACC POY, senior Allen, Carter, Trent, Duval.
Note that some of these teams actually got out of their regional.
IMO, every one of these teams meet the "should-have-won-threshold-as much as 2019.
And I deliberately restricted this to K-era teams.
You mean Auburn. Yes, Auburn beat all of the teams in front of them. But they couldn’t beat the zebra whistle. First it was the lack of whistle (double dribble) then came the actual whistle. Normally I don’t comment on such things but there’s never been more obvious of a darling media team gifted many mulligans in hopes they’d pull it off. Think about it. Since when were national championships ever decided by three FREE throws. And can anyone explain why they’re always called "shots” until they’re free? Duke beat both teams in the regular season and I absolutely guarantee Duke would’ve won the semis and championship by double digits. That said, Auburn was a strong, talented and deserving team. Meanwhile, they couldn’t have known when the mainstream choir leader coach and Cavaliers went out as the #1 seed the year before, the script was already being written. To bring this back to Duke — had Duke had any semblance of a decent to good outside shooting game (sans the big freshmen) or let Zion be first option — Duke would have barely lost a game if any.
UK shoulda won in 2010 and 2015....it's not a given...
"One POSSIBLE future. From your point of view... I don't know tech stuff.".... Kyle Reese
Last edited by SouthernDukie; 05-23-2021 at 09:47 PM.
Right, '98. My bad.
I think people forget how good this team was. Three future ACC POYs, two future NPOYs, a national defensive player of the year, K's only three-time first-team All-ACC player, seven players who made All-ACC at least once (not counting Nate James), five players who made All-American at Duke, maybe K's deepest team.
But they couldn't stop Wayne Turner at crunch time. GRRR!!
Sure, all very good Duke teams. None of them, except for 1999, had as much collective talent as 2019 – some are far behind. None of them, except 1994, had as big of a singular talent as 2019, but I feel like title game was a worthy outcome for that team's overall talent level. Hence why 2019 and 1999 are the biggest "ugh, that team really should have won the championship" Duke teams to me. And that feeling is only going to become increasingly intense as Zion works his way through dominating the NBA over the years.
The 1998 team had Roshown McLeod, Wojo, Trajan Langdon, Elton Brand, Shane Battier, Chris Carrawell, Chris Burgess, Taymon Domzalski, Mike Chappell and Ricky Price. It absolutely had as much collective talent as 2019.
The 2002 team had NPOY Jason Williams, Mike Dunleavy, Carlos Boozer, Chris Duhon, Dahntay Jones, Daniel Ewing, Casey Sanders and Nick Horvath. It absolutely had as much collective talent as 2019.
The 2004 team had Duhon, J.J. Redick, Luol Deng, Shelden Williams, Daniel Ewing, Shavlik Randolph and Sean Dockery. It absolutely had as much collective talent as 2019.
The 2011 team had Kyrie Irving, Kyle Singler, Nolan Smith, Seth Curry, Mason Plumlee, Miles Plumlee, Andre Dawkins and Ryan Kelly. It absolutely had as much collective talent as the 2019 team.
As others have pointed out, the loss to Michigan State didn't come out of nowhere. Duke struggled against UCF and VT and was lucky to win either. For a team with that much collective talent to struggle three games in a row suggests maybe that team didn't have as much collective talent as you think.
Note that none of the above mentioned teams had anyone comparable to Javin DeLaurier starting.
As an aside, are we comparing collective talent or singular talent?
Amen, and a few things that I think are important to consider:
2019 was 3-1 vs Final Four teams, including an impressive 2-0 against the UVA squad that cut down the nets.
We were matched up against a UCF team that was coached by the closest person that Coach K has had to a son. That UCF team also featured the biggest X-factor player in the tournament. That was a trap game for anyone, but especially bad for Duke.
VT... conference foe (never like these in the NCAAs) with an incredible amount of extra motivation: we had beaten their archrival twice.
Hard at work making beautiful things.
There is one huge problem with this idea. If we had ended up with the best three freshmen in the country (as expected based on their HS rankings) then maybe.
Barrett was supposed to be #1, but of course that turned out to be Zion. Barrett was really good but he was a mediocre FT shooter at 67%, and he missed two down the stretch and managed to make one he tried to miss, which I have never seen any other time.
Which brings us to Cam, who was supposed to be the best outside shooter in the class. Instead, he shot 36%/33%, which was a huge disappointment. In fact, he only made 3 FGs a game in the ACC and NCAA, which is mediocre at best. By the time the draft came around, he had slipped to #10, and considering that he has shot 38%/31% in the NBA, that’s way too high.
Maybe if Jack or anyone else had stepped up on threes then the team would have been unstoppable, but that did not happen so we were lucky to squeeze by in a couple of games until these deficiencies caught up with us.
All excellent teams with great players that I think fondly of. Bump this thread in 5–10 years and I suspect that no one will dare to argue that a team like 2004 had anywhere close to the talent of 2019.
Totally agree with you that the loss was not a fluke. The team was not playing that well at the end, a combination of injury, the best basketball talent in Duke history not getting a shot at the end of a close game, and miramar's point above Cam not playing up to his talent level.
Cam Reddish was the 6th freshman taken in the 2019 draft. I understand 6 is not as good as 2 (his recruiting ranking), but it's not so far off as to be an explanation why the team lost in the Tournament.
RJ Barrett shot 66.7% on FTs against Michigan State, almost exactly his season average which was (a) better than both Jason Williams and Chris Duhon in 2001; and (b) better than almost half our rotation in 2015 (Okafor, Winslow, and Jefferson). RJ's FT% was also better than Zion's. So I don't believe it was RJ's mediocre free throw shooting that kept the 2019 team from greatness.
Finally, I don't think our weak outside shooting "caught up with us" and caused the loss to Michigan State. For one thing, we shot 33.3% from three in that game, which isn't very good but also isn't so horrible that any reasonable assessment would say it was the reason we lost the game (Michigan State shot worse (31.6%) from three and yet were still able to win). The more likely culprit was one that few people saw coming -- turnovers, on both sides of the ball. On offense, Zion and RJ combined for 12 TOs in that game (in our other 37 games, Duke as a team only averaged 12.7 TOs; in the MSU game we had 17) and on defense, a Duke team that was 9th in the country in steals was only able to force a normally sloppy Michigan State team into committing 7 turnovers.
Losing a tournament game doesn't necessarily expose some fatal weakness. In most cases (including the 2019 Duke Elite Eight game, IMO), it just means you got outplayed in one game.
Missing the 2019 FF with a generational talent AND an additional top-10 in the country player was a pretty massive letdown. It’s hard to ever assume a title but not getting to the FF with Zion was hugely disappointing. I liken it to 1984 UNC missing the FF with MJ.
1998 was really good but not even the best team in the ACC. Really good team but only a minor bummer.
2002 had a way of just not quite being as good as it should have been. Was not surprised when they bowed out.
2006 had two studs but was otherwise very flawed. Bummer but again not a surprise.
2018 played well in the tourney, lost a coin flip game to a good Kansas team, and arguably got a raw deal on Carter’s 5th foul. No regrets.
2011 was derailed by Kyrie’s injury.
Among the teams that did reach the FF, only the 1999 loss left my gutted. 1994 overachieved getting to the title game. 2004 got hosed by lousy reffing.