I’m willing to be patient with Jon, and the injuries have obviously been a factor (as they always are). I think Duke needs a change in macro strategy. The reliance on one and done has run its course in my opinion. We’ll see what happens with this years team, but Duke needs more players like Wendell Moore or Tre Jones who stay at Duke more than one year. I know the days of a four year player are done, but perhaps the new rules will make it possible to actually develop talent rather than merely manage it. But perhaps I’m just nostalgic and it’s to be new guys every year from now on.
Oh for sure. It's not a perfect comp. But it's better than either the 2017 or 2021 Duke comps. Or at least it's better than the 2017 Duke team comp. Though the 2021 Duke team did finish the season on a similarly positive run. We just ran out of time that year to make up in the W/L column.
I'm just frustrated with these "one and done" players each and every year ... and next year it will be the same. We throw these McDonald All-Americans together and expect them to have good teamwork. I was kinda hoping Jon Scheyer would go back to recruiting players who will develop over a 2 or 3 year time. Forget the All Americans and recruit some "moldable" talent.
I'm fully expecting to get raked over the coals for my comment.
Wendell Moore was #25 RSCI. Tre Jones was #13 RSCI. Those guys only stayed multiple years because they didn't play well enough their freshman year (or in Moore's case, freshman and sophomore years) to get the draft position they wanted. How exactly are you supposed to recruit for that? Also, we have one of those players on this year's team, in Jeremy Roach.
I suspect that when we recruited them, Duke thought at least a few guys like DJ Steward (#24), Mark Williams (#25), Cassius Stanley (#33), and Trevor Keels (#19) would still be around this season.
No, if you recruit top 25 players, you can't expect them to stay multiple seasons. You have to shoot for players like Jaden Schutt (#59) and Jaylen Blakes (just outside the top 100). Which Duke did. The problems with that strategy are (a) your team won't be all that good if you fill it with lesser players; (b) if you supplement your multi-year guys with top talent (which you have to do if you want to be a championship contender), then the multi-year guys often end up playing their multiple years somewhere else (see, e.g., Jaemyn Brakefield (#33) and Henry Coleman (#49)).
Maybe we win a close game or two more if K is coaching but this team is not good at shooting the ball. It leads to poor spacing for the bigs because no one respects the shot. If Whitehead was scoring as advertised; if Lively had the serviceable jump shot we heard so much about; if Proctor and Roach shot to their potential, we would be MUCH better. Unfortunately, that is not the case right now. I think Jon will be fine.
You can bet that if that were Coach Elko in the same situation, you would have seen a totally different reaction. It would not surprise me to see Coach E go out and tackle the ref to get his point across (sort of kidding here). Maybe Coach J was more concerned with coaching the last minute of the game, rather than concentrate on the bad call?
Jon is doing fine, but even when you recruit the best high school players, they don’t always turn out to be the best college players.
Last time Duke had the top two recruits, they scored a combined 45 ppg. This season it’s a combined 12 ppg, so the won-loss record is about what you would expect under the circumstances.
I agree, he could have earned some real credibility there if he would have really gone nuts. However, I was in the Smith Center the other night and the crowd booed the Leaky ejection and it seemed like we were being unfair. The truth is, we did not see the replay of the foul. They did not show it out of respect for the injured player. Having said that, Jon may not have seen the punch. Obviously, it was not intentional, but it was still a punch to the throat. (would love a GIF of that play, if available)
I think it should have been called an FF1.
I think your coach is doing a fine job. He is far from a finished product at this point. We were ready to sacrifice HD last season and you saw how things ended. Some of the success the team had at the end of the year was due to HD making changes and some of it was due to the players improving and playing together as a team. There is still a ton of season to go. I can tell by the spacing on the offensive end that your kids are well coached. It is also obvious that the talent on your team does not live up to the talent you have had in the past few years. During the covid year, you guys had to same situation. Everything looks better when the ball goes in the basket.
When your kids show little effort, you have a problem. I did not see that last night. When you have kids not playing together, then you have a problem. I did not see that last night. Whitehead came out of the locker room to watch the end of the game, to me, that shows a teammate that cares. That's a good sign.
Following a legend is a tough gig. The stresses this coach and the young players feel is immense. Be patient with them and it will pay off.
Ah, a level-headed reply from a UNC fan will always perplex this board.
I agree with almost everything you have said. Hubert was being raked over the coals 12 months ago. Then he clearly overachieved in March (much to our chagrin) and seems to have settled in a bit this season.
It's possible Hubert gets UNC rolling again the right time of year. It's possible that Jon finds his groove with this team in the next few weeks.
More likely, both teams have some re-working to do before we return to the lofty heights we have seen over the last several decades.
It's really hard for me to compare a rookie head coach with the GOAT. Sure, you can discuss K's early Duke teams, but he had been the head coach at Army. I'm going to wait a few years before I say Jon isn't the Coach for Duke University. There's only been one perfect person and that wasn't Coach K.
GoDuke!
That's my wife. Surprised you know her.
I wholeheartedly agree you cannot compare Scheyer with Coach K. I don't know if Scheyer is the right choice; I really don't. I'm on record saying I think Caach K's coaching tree sucks and I don't think much has changed. We'll see if Scheyer is like Wojo/Dawkins or more like an NBA Quin Snyder (hopefully not the NCAA Snyder).
I do know that Scheyer has a lot to learn. Whereas we can criticize Coach K for poor game management, it's tough to do that with a 35-year old first timer.
I'll blindly support Scheyer until January 2025. If Duke is still underperforming based on their talent levels (or if recruiting has fallen off a cliff), I'll change my tune.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
President of the "Nolan Smith Should Have His Jersey in The Rafters" Club
I think there's really two parts to this question:
Is Jon doing a good job?
Was he the right hire?
And it's possible to be lukewarm on the first question while still being in agreement with the second. You can say he's not as good as K, but also say he was the best person for the job. Because for those who think there are things he should be doing differently or better, you'd have to ask what Amaker or anybody else would be doing in comparison if they were in his shoes. I personally believe that a more experienced coach would likely be better and X's and O's, but I can't imagine anyone else recruiting any better and I also think you can't overstate how big a challenge it was to replace K and to handle the media pressure and fan pressure that comes with it. On that front Jon has been amazing. Probably 50% of young college coaches out there would not have taken the job if offered simply because they wouldn't want to face that kind of pressure, but Jon has faced it head on and even embraced the challenge.
Jon really has two goals that he has to work towards simultaneously: winning games right now and building up the program in his mold. K has talked about how in his first couple seasons at Duke he lost some games but felt he was doing things his way and that eventually it would pay dividends. It's hard to quantify how those goals may conflict and how much they affect things in the short term, but it's going to take a few seasons to really know whether Jon should be our coach for the forseeable future.
As for yesterday's game, the biggest problem I had was going for a Proctor three when we were down two instead of going inside for a bucket. Maybe Flip wasn't physically well enough to have the play called for him after receiving the throat punch, and maybe we didn't want to take our chances in overtime. Proctor had just hit a big three on the previous possession so maybe he was feeling confident. But scoring inside has been our bread and butter all season, I'd rather dump it into Young than take a Proctor three. I also would love to have seen what he had drawn up on the last possession that got broken up. It looked like an elaborate set to free both of our guards to cut towards the inbounders, but VT made a good defensive play.
I don't think it's sad at all. While it certainly does make our fanbase seem entitled and impatient (and we are both), it also shows we care about the program.
We got spoiled for ~40 years with K. We are now in this realm of uncertainty with a new coach. The only thing we know about this new coach is he can recruit.
Asking questions about Jon's coaching effectiveness is fine, IMO. Asking if he is the right person for the job is also fine, as long as you take into consideration his experience. Asking for his head - 9 months into the job - is not fine.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
President of the "Nolan Smith Should Have His Jersey in The Rafters" Club
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill
President of the "Nolan Smith Should Have His Jersey in The Rafters" Club
If we want to assess the head coach, can we talk about how, on an adjusted basis, Duke just put up their best offensive performance of the season? T-Rank has Duke's game against VT being the highest adjusted offensive efficiency of the year. This is for a team that had a lot of trouble scoring the ball of late. We are seeing the team grow and develop in real time. Proctor is now the PG and is doing a pretty good job (13 pts/3.5 ast/1.3 tov last 4 games) while Roach is more or less the same player he has been throughout his time at Duke. I think the Proctor-Roach backcourt, while not as good as Tyus Jones-Quinn Cook, can work. Filipowski is clearly the go-to scorer for this team. They need complementary scorers and hopefully Grandison or maybe even Schutt can help in the backcourt while Young helps in the post. Mitchell has shown that he can do a little this and that and Lively can be a difference maker on defense. The team has rebounded from a low point against NC State. Is Jon doing a good job this season? I think so, but it's too early to tell. He's making adjustments. He's getting his players to play together and communicate with each other. The results will hopefully be there soon.
I know a lot of posters do not go into the recruitment threads. If you did, you might notice that Coach Scheyer and staff are recruiting players that are going to be around for a couple of years.
The current roster include a pair of upperclassmen, Ryan Young and Jaylen Blakes, that should be on the roster next season.
Among the current crop of freshmen, at least 3 players - Tyrese Proctor, Christian Reeves, and Jaden Schutt - are very likely going to be on the team next season. There's a good chance that one of Kyle Filipowski or Mark Mitchell will be there as well. At the beginning of the year, I would have thought that Filipowski would be more likely than Mitchell, but that could be changing.
In next year's class, only one player of the 5 that have been recruited - Mackenzie Mgbako - is a clear one-and-done player. The rest of the players are all highly-rated recruits in the top 50 of their high school class. However, at least 3 and as many as 4 of them appear to be destined for 2 or more years in college.
In the class of 2024, the first and so-far only player that has committed - Darren Harris - is another player similar to Jaden Schutt that appears to be a multi-year college player.
If you are looking for Coach Scheyer to rely less on one-and-done players, that is what is happening. They are still going to after a few one-and-done types. Hopefully we will all be happy to see these multi-year guys grow and develop.
I am all in on Jon Scheyer. I dont feel the need to argue with other who are not because they are wrong.
Go take up bobsledding as your winter sport, and come back in a few years when it's more comfortable for you.
https://media.tenor.com/bYWBosysH4EAAAAM/odme-602.gif
At least one sports writer agrees that it should have been an F1...
Duke loses to Virginia Tech after lengthy review of throat punch leads to controversial no-call
A flagrant foul could have been called after Duke's Kyle Filipowski took a fist pump to the throat
https://www.cbssports.com/college-ba...rsial-no-call/
Collins probably didn't mean to strike Filipowski in celebration, but there doesn't need to be intent to call a Flagrant 1. Given the situation, the review and the point differential, the Hokies may have gotten away with one.