Although it’s true that Duke plays many players with little college experience, we should note that Purdue’s very effective guards — Smith and Loyer — are frosh, underrated apparently. Loyer was a borderline top 100 recruit, Smith borderline top 200. And Furst, their backup big, only a soph, had averaged 5.6/4.6 in 16 mpg through their first 5 games, but had 11/10 in 24 min today. They all exemplified Purdue’s toughness, fight, energy, hustle, alertness; contrasted with Duke’s confused play, step behind most of the game. Maybe an example of Duke getting everyone’s best shot.
Blakes’s handle is not good enough, but he gets minutes because of his D. I assumed Grandison would play strong D and make 3s with some consistency. He provided valuable minutes, D and rebounds against Oregon St., but scored only 2 points in 19 minutes combined v. X and Purdue. His handle isn’t good enough, either. Not sure why Scheyer didn’t think he could help much the last 2 games. Bit of a puzzle.
More than ever, with how young the team is and given the injury recovery for two of our freshmen, I feel like there’s so much growth ahead. So this result against a very good Purdue team wasn’t as discouraging as I expected, though there are definitely some red flags that bear watching.
1) I’m still not worried about Whitehead and Lively’s ability to improve and contribute more meaningfully, though I admit to wondering a bit about Lively’s offensive ceiling. Will he always be a low usage defensive specialist who gets offensive rebounds and catches lobs, or is there more there? I noticed he took a three today (missed badly, but he wasn’t exactly alone in that regard), and would be intrigued if he started showing some evidence of an offensive game outside the length of his arm.
2) The bigger concerns overall are the shooting, general offensive execution, and guard/wing play. A few have pointed out that we’re a way below average three point shooting team by the latest KenPom numbers, and our assists/FGM is very mediocre as well (in our three games this weekend along with the Kansas game, we averaged 8.25 assists per game, a pretty damning indicator of how iso-heavy we currently are). Some of this is masked by how good we’ve been on the offensive glass before tonight’s loss, but we lack playmakers right now beyond Roach — maybe Proctor picks up more of that as he improves, maybe Whitehead has some of that in him as the rust comes off, but most everyone else goes for their own.
This weekend’s games featured all sorts of guard/wing combos with Scheyer mostly seeming to favor Roach/Proctor/Mitchell, with Blakes and Grandison getting spot minutes and not distinguishing themselves all that much over the three games. Proctor seems to have the most upside and today was a good step forward, but he’s still a little shaky passing under pressure — it was really nice though to see him slow down a little in the second half and navigate pick and rolls with much more finesse than he has so far this season. If his outside shot starts to come around, it will relieve the pressure on Roach, who had to endure his share of traps today.
3) On the positive side of things, I’ve found Young’s post play, rebounding, motor and overall composure one of the most pleasant surprises to start the season. Of course, Flip has been a monster, while Jeremy was really getting into a groove before suffering the toe injury. I hope it’s not an injury that keeps him out for any significant amount of time, because it will make our guard play and the running of our offense that much more problematic.
Wednesday will be a good marker for where we stand, right now KenPom has us 20th which feels about right. I love how this team fights and think we have a high floor given our depth and commitment to defense, but I’m as confused as I’ve ever been getting a read on how good this team will be in the next couple of months.
I’m cautiously optimistic we can be very good with a slight uptick in shooting, stable player health and more cohesion on offense, but when I’m feeling pessimistic I worry we may not be much more than an average offensive team that wins its share of ugly defensive games unless one or more of the non-Flip freshmen take some big strides forward.
Just to keep things in perspective - two days ago Purdue beat Gonzaga by a similar margin, a preseason top-3 team with a ton of experience. Everyone's preseason media darling the CHeats also has two losses (dang that felt good to write). So let's not go jumping to conclusions like saying we should be unranked and won't make it out of the first weekend. The key for me is continued improvement throughout the season, something that hasn't always happened in past years but I remain optimistic will happen for us this season.
Based on what I've seen of the combination of talent and development point of that talent so far, I think we look like a borderline top 25 team. I don't say that to be harsh. To the contrary, I'd be more upset if I thought we had a top-5 level team but nevertheless had the performances we've had against Kansas (neither team played too well), Oregon State, and Purdue.
That said, I will be disappointed if we play out the season that way and yet there still is a mass early exodus to the NBA (or G League, since I wouldn't see many of the players getting time in the NBA next year). If more players stay this year, next year could be very strong.
I think I heard that one of the Purdue players is on his 4th college team. The transfers are getting ridiculous. It's like if every single player in the NBA were a free agent every single year.
When people say things like this, my response is always along the same lines: what 20 teams are better?
Maybe we don’t “look” like a top 20 team right now based on what said team looks like in February or March. But can we say there are 20 better teams right now when many Top 25 teams are just now leaving the cupcake phase of their schedule? How can you compare us against, say, Auburn, an undefeated Top 20 team whose best wins are a squeaker over Northwestern and home against St. Louis?
I’m gonna stop to avoid piling on, and also because my sentiments here are similar to others regarding what a “second weekend” team looks like (or similar). I think we all need to listen to kako’s sage wisdom.
You’re viewing everything in a vacuum.
No Edey = more offensive rebounds, second chance points, less foul trouble for Flip, easier chances at the rim, less need to shoot threes.
If the offense scores more baskets close to the rim, they get better looks from 3.
If they are in the lead, they don’t need to shoot as many threes - especially forcing them up late in the game.
We not only waited an entire season for Giles to get better, we also waited several seasons for Bolden.
High school rankings don't always pan out the way you think they will.
Don't get me wrong, I loved both Giles and Bolden and supported them 100%. Both of them showed flashes of brilliance from time to time, too, but ultimately neither one of them did what we hoped they would do.
I am hoping that Lively and Whitehead will not be similar. I already like both of them. They play hard and do their best. Maybe a light bulb will click at some point, I hope before ACC play starts, but the one never knows.
Playing well has to include shooting well. 2 for 19 3's is ugly. We make 6/19, we're completely in the game.
Wonder why Jon didn't choose Zone earlier. It was much more effective.
Captain Obvious -- this is overall a young team, and it shows. Too many not smart fouls.
I like the tenacity of this team.
And Purdue is a really strong, well-coached, mature, cohesive team. They clearly deserve a much higher ranking, which now they shall surely get.
“I love it. Coach, when we came here, we had a three-hour meeting about the core values. If you really represent the core values, it means diving on the floor, sacrificing your body for your teammates, no matter how much you’re up by or how much you’re down by, always playing hard.” -- Zion
It’s a weird argument to make that if you take away one player you might have won. I mean do the Warriors win the championship without Steph Curry? It also makes it sound like we played well but one guy happened to beat us. We weren’t beat by an other worldly performance, we didn’t play winning basketball and didn’t deserve to win this game.
Couldn't agree more...it was beautiful team basketball from a bunch of experienced players. Those were juniors and seniors I think and its really hard for our freshmen to understand and know how to play together like these guys did….big difference other than the 7’4 guys was that Purdue passed the ball around and we dribbled it around which is an inferior way to attack the defense….we will see how good a coach Scheyer is as he has a season worth of instructional tape in one game for our guys…disappointed with our composure and don't really see much in our offense that resembled set plays which I think is a key to any win...hopefully by the end of the season these freshmen will not be freshmen...but Purdue to my eye has got to be the early favorite to win it all...our guys should look at that game film weekly imo and my bet is Coach will be on it. Lot to learn from that game. Bet Purdue jumps to inside Top 5...they deserve to be there, imo
On another note, would have loved seeing the matchup between Mark Williams and ole Edey bet we would have held our on with that matchup and for sure Roach could have used Trevor as a running mate...and my guess for sure Keels wishes he were back...dude is costing him a lot of money playing in G league with a non guaranteed contract...he would have made NIL money this year probably matching what he makes this year and bet he would have been a top 20 pick net w guaranteed money...unfortunately he'll be lucky to ever get back to the "bigs". Feel sorry for him.
"I wanted it to be in my hands," Roach said of his game-sealing drive. "I wanted to take—I wanted that moment."
"Definitely was a bit personal for me," Roach added. "I mean, what happened last year, obviously, but just wanted to come out here and do anything I can to get this win, and we did that." Duke-Carolina, Cameron Indoor, Feb. 4th 2023
People who didn’t do their homework on Lively or the 2022 class are now mad because they expected him to be a star based on a zero-context recruiting ranking.
https://twitter.com/BrotherhoodCBB
Lively wasn’t the #1 recruit. Victor Wembanyama was, but he’s an international. Scoot Henderson was, he went G-League.
Which puts Lively as the 11th best player in his class & aligns with his ranking on draft boards. This was fully documented coming into the season. He was not expected to be a superstar or someone to play thru offensively. He averaged 8 PPG in AAU. I picked him 4th team All-ACC.
From a person I follow on Twitter.
That’s not the argument I’m making.
I’m combatting this notion of “Edey didn’t beat us” when it’s painfully obvious he was *the* reason Purdue beat us and the Zags.
They were playing fine till about midway through the first half when Edey asserted his dominance and the Duke bigs got in foul trouble. Then the wheels came off.
This was our last chance to beat a ranked opponent until Feb 4 vs unc (who I’m counting on being ranked then - and Iowa is about to fall out). And that’s followed by at Miami and at UVA. That’s going to be a brutally rough stretch.
Even though it’s a loss in November it’s still a very important loss when it comes to factoring anything in March. I see an uphill battle for this team all season long. We can’t lose many of the games we’ll be favored to win coming up in Dec and Jan. Also, Ohio St is now a huge game. Maybe it’s jumping the gun calling it a must win (for tournament hopes), but sort of feels like it.