MBB: Duke 59, Miami 81 Post-Game Thread

[Matches]

Saturday was better. I enjoyed it more when we were awesome. The sequel - bleh, 1 star, would not recommend.

[Alan_Wilson]

The defining play of the game was Omier under the hoop, covered by three Duke players, and is able to muscle his way to the hoop for a layup, basically untouched.

Agreed.

[UrinalCake]

Aside from mental and physical fatigue, the lack of any practice time was apparent. Our advantage was inside and Lively and Young did have big scoring games (Flip too, though much less efficiently) however we had no game plan whatsoever to get them the ball even though they were open most of the game. The turnovers and missed layups pretty much eliminated any chance at keeping the game competitive given how poorly we shoot.

[scottdude8]

But...what did we really see Saturday? Aside from the result, which is always great beating the Cheats, did we really see anything that impressive?

I'm not melting down, I chuckled at tonight. Mainly because I've realized this roster just doesn't have championship composition. And it won't get there. The ceiling just isn't very high.

I guess that's why this week I've found myself already wondering who'll be on the roster next season. But that's an exercise in futility.

Man, I’m not sure where to start with this one. If you couldn’t see promise in the performance Saturday in the heat of that rivalry, with Lively’s performance, Roach stepping up, Tyrese running the show, I’m not sure you’re ever going to be happy with anything that isn’t a blowout victory.

Also, we still are missing the guy who was almost universally expected to be our best player preseason. There’s that little detail.

This was an ugly, ugly game. But at the end of the year each loss only counts as one loss, just like each win only counts once. What matters is whether or not we respond Saturday.

I get the sense sometimes you’ll only ever truly enjoy watching Duke basketball when we’re winning a national championship. I hope I’m misreading things, because that’s a hard way to be a fan. So what if this doesn’t look like a national championship team? It’s Scheyer’s first year. We’ve had an unusual amount of adversity with injuries. We’re historically young. Maybe all our expectations were way too high.

But then again, UNC looked wayyyyy worse at this time last year, and look what happened. So don’t give up just yet.

[WHOneedsSOX]

I would've just pulled everyone sooner. Make them watch the final 10 minutes on the bench. A loss is fine. That effort and focus was just terrible.

[CDu]

Miami did not look at all like a bad defensive team tonight. Makes me think their lack of defense thus far has been more about effort and motivation than ability. Tonight they looked locked in and played really hard, perhaps the opportunity for payback in front of their first sellout crowd added the missing motivation.

Miami definitely played with more purpose defensively tonight. We certainly helped them though with our lack of poise.

Tough night. The team didn’t come to play, and they got rightly pounded for it. Hopefully our guys show up ready on Saturday.

[lotusland]

I wouldn’t know where to start. Hope Saturday goes better.

[DukieInBrasil]

the loss was expected. the lack of composure and complete inability to compete was not. oh well. the heart of this team is still questionable.
2 guys played worth a d**n. Lively and Young. Everyone else looked like a HS JV team.

[trinity79]

I would've just pulled everyone sooner. Make them watch the final 10 minutes on the bench. A loss is fine. That effort and focus was just terrible.

because this is not the first time this has happened, I concur wholeheartedly.

[DCDevil9194]

Very disappointing. Expected us to lose. But frustrated with the lack of poise, sloppiness, and lack of toughness. Miami was outstanding, but Duke didn’t compete, at all. It started with Duke’s missed layups in the first half, and then finished with Miami’s dunk show at the end.

[heyman25]

A poster on the in game thread wondered if the team will get one or two days off before resuming practice. The answer should be no days. No hours. This team should be on the floor at midnight tonight. Practicing. Practicing mad. I don’t care if this guy or that is tired or sore. Get over it. You can rest later. The message has to be sent that this type of no-show in terms of effort is simply unacceptable. We couldn’t have been more lazy or sloppy with the ball, slower to loose balls, or more disinterested defensively.

If Jon isn’t spitting mad about this performance, then he never will
be.

Very disturbing how soft this team was. The worst was how balls were being grabbed right out of their hands. This was the worst guard play of the season and the bigs all missed point blank shots off the glass and near the rim. Where is the Pride?

[wavedukefan70s]

Well my wife ordered pizza with ranch on it.this game was the same a big plate of yuck.

[BlueandWhite]

This was over right when it started.

Truly a bummer that we got 2 Monday night road games right after a Saturday game.

Miami is a bad defensive team, like really bad. Fatigue was of course a factor but tonight was also indicative for how bad this team is offensively.

It was nice to have a small and unexpected glimmer of hope for the ACC race. That’s gone now. Hope the guys rest up for Saturday.

I disagree - Miami is not a bad defensive team. Perhaps not a great defense team, but not bad. Yes Duke’s guards played poorly tonight but much of the reason was due to Miami’s intensity and team effort on D - credit to them.

[Mak P]

I've been pretty much done with OAD's since last year team only returned 1 starter while UNC returned 4. It's equivalent to a department with high turnover rate, you're going to get inconsistent results

[freshmanjs]

I've been pretty much done with OAD's since last year team only returned 1 starter while UNC returned 4. It's equivalent to a department with high turnover rate, you're going to get inconsistent results

Do you think unc is getting better results?

[dyedwab]

Miami definitely played with more purpose defensively tonight. We certainly helped them though with our lack of poise.

I have always wished we had a statistical category similar to tennis' "unforced errors". Miami's defense was not nearly as good as it looked because so many of our turnovers were unforced.

On the other hand, as soon as our guard with the ball crossed half court, they doubled/trapped him. Roach and Proctor NEVER adjusted to that, nor did we do anything to mitigate that play. So, their guards really defended ours well.

But that doesn't explain the passes to nowhere, or the sloppy dribbles, or the weak layup attempts. That was all us.

[CDu]

I disagree - Miami is not a bad defensive team. Perhaps not a great defense team, but not bad. Yes Duke’s guards played poorly tonight but much of the reason was due to Miami’s intensity and team effort on D - credit to them.

No, they ARE a bad defensive team. They weren’t bad tonight obviously, but on the season they are quite bad defensively.

[Saratoga2]

We were embarrassed tonight. Our guards had 13 turnovers and it looked like more. They were totally unable to handle the swarming aggressive defense and unable to feed the post well. Miami defended the three well so we had great difficulty scoring while Miami was hitting everything. I thought flip played well. until the end when he tried to drive against them and picked up a couple of turnovers. Lively also had a good game. The team was slow to the ball and not tough enough near the basket. Young helped some on offense by running the floor but was lost on defense against the quicker Miami players. Scheyer tried different lineups, zone defense even applying pressure but nothing he tried closed the gap appreciably. Just an awful beatdown.

[CameronDuke]

As a result of tonight’s loss, Duke dropped from 30 overall on Kenpom to 37. The O dropped from 44 to 53. The D dropped from 28 to 31.

Not much to add to what’s been said. Very disappointing loss and execution in pretty much everything. 21 turnovers obviously is inexcusable and doing that won’t beat many ACC teams. Lively II had a solid game with 11 points, 6 boards, and 5 blocks. We all knew this would probably be a difficult game to win. I don’t think many of us saw Duke losing this egregiously bad. I certainly know Vegas didn’t predict that. I think Duke closed +4.

Where does Duke go from here? On paper, Saturday will arguably be as tough or tougher than today’s game. I am hoping Duke can get some rest these next 4 days and work on the areas they struggled in: taking care of the ball and team defense.

[heyman25]

I just hope this team will look inside a real soul searching look and rebound Saturday.Virginia will test the Duke team's will to compete. Duke did not compete and this was game 24 of the season. Duke needs to to play hard on the road. They should not need motivation.