Kara adds a new assistant coach, Karen Middleton.
https://goduke.com/news/2023/5/19/wo...ant-coach.aspx
Jadyn is the consensus best athlete in the 2023 class. I obviously don't see enough high school girls hoops to know, but I have to think Toby will be in the conversation for best athlete in the 2024 class.
I think Kara knows exactly what she is looking for. She may not always get it, and may have to add bodies when she doesn't, but I think DWBB fans are going to have some exciting basketball to watch in the future.
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote. - George Jean Nathan
Kara adds a new assistant coach, Karen Middleton.
https://goduke.com/news/2023/5/19/wo...ant-coach.aspx
"This is the best of all possible worlds."
Dr. Pangloss - Candide
Sticking it to Dawn for poaching Gandy, she picks a USC alum.
GoDuke says she's a 40-year coaching veteran...must have started when she was about 13 years old.
Quite the shooter in her college career (44.5% on 3s), and still holds records for USC career and season 3s made.
Welcome, Karen!
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote. - George Jean Nathan
Can't knock the experience, although her years as a HC are a rough mix.
At Western Carolina, she never had a winning season, going 63-121 in her six years. At Div III UW-La Crosse, she did much better going 111-58 in seven years.
Welcome to Cameron!
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."
Coach Lawson is still at work on her coaching staff. She's now added Pierre Miller as director of player development, and moved Kenny Wolfe up to director of recruiting.
Kenny Wolfe had been the video coordinator last season.Miller joins the Blue Devil family after serving as an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech during the 2022-23 season, where he assisted with all aspects of the program, primarily with perimeter players and guards. In his lone year with the Lady Techsters, Miller helped guide the team to 19 wins, 12 in Conference USA, and an at-large selection to the WNIT. The 12 conference wins marked the most for the program since 2016.
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Prior to his time at La Tech, Miller served a six-year stint on staff with Campbell women's basketball, working as an assistant coach for five seasons before being promoted to associate head coach ahead of the 2021-22 campaign. During his time with the Camels, Miller helped the team compile a 119-61 record (.661), a pair of Big South regular season titles (2019-20, 2021-22) and postseason appearances in the WBI (2018-19) and WNIT (2021-22).
https://goduke.com/news/2023/5/22/wo...-elevated.aspx
Q "Why do you like Duke, you didn't even go there." A "Because my art school didn't have a basketball team."
Blanca Thomas, a 6-5 center out of Charlotte, commits tomorrow at noon. She's a consensus top-10 player and 1 of the top 2 posts in the class, and Duke is in her final 10 (along with our neighbors NCState and uNC).
I think we have a good shot, especially if she wants to stay in North Carolina. I think uNC is out, they got #4 recruit Ciera Toomey in this year's class. Don't know about State, but our programs are on different trajectories (yes it's only one year, but Kara is kicking butt).
We'll be losing both our centers and she can step right in. Hopefully Toby committing had something to do with her announcing now. Certainly the opportunity to play with the very athletic Jadyn and Toby is enticing. I've only seen a few minutes of Blanca (and highlight reels aren't the best to make judgements from), but she appears to move and run the court well. I think Kara wants good athletes as well as good basketball players, and is going to run.
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote. - George Jean Nathan
You are part of the Take-My-Word-For-It contingent of DBR, which is basically everyone on DBR but me. Three paragraphs on Blanca Thomas, with no supporting link and no indication of her graduating class. After that, who needs a citation?
Well, I do. Blanca Thomas announced for UNC today in her tweet here and in her retweet from SportsCenter Next.
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote. - George Jean Nathan
Spoiler alert: you are going to WIN this battle.
I'm on a mission, quixotic as it may be, to supply the readers of DBR with information and supportive links whenever possible. I feel like I owe them that. I am, generally, alone in this mission.
Over in the Duke Baseball 2023 thread, someone posted the 16 regional hosts for the NCAA Tournament yesterday, and others today posted the group Duke will play in and the group UNC will play in. Very sparse information. No links, no bracket. I know that stuff will be somewhere on the NCAA.com website, so I guess I'll fill that in that blank later.
The thing is, with some sports, I know where to look in order to report information. But when it comes to high school girls' basketball recruiting, there isn't a lot of information collection out there. So your post is the first I'd heard of Blanca Thomas, and while I probably am too stupid to tell the difference between fact and opinion, your post included both. In addition to your opinion, the basic information you provided serves as fact in the absence of anything else. This places you in a role of authority. What you do with that authority is up to you, but it would be nice if the DBR forums were better than every other bulletin board on the Internet.
I know this is a losing battle because I'm not wired like most of you here, who would rather get rid of me and live their lives their own way than receive any suggestion about how to do things differently.
And I thought CB&B was being self-deprecating and non-argumentative when accepting your "2024 was obvious" sentiment. It showed class. I wondered the same thing myself, because while everyone else should instinctively know that any top basketball recruit in the 2023 class would be committed, I see Ron Holland (decommitted from the Texas men's program, still undecided on a destination as the RSCI #2 ranked player in the 2023 class) and foolishly leave open the possibility of a different interpretation.
Brevity, you're not the only one who provides links to their story lines, although you may be the most thorough.
Similarly, some of us do provide the team names and game information at the beginniing of a new thread.
Funny how there's only criticism when these common sense rules are not followed and rarely any praise for when they are.
Here's one https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sp...75885916.html#
Lots more showing up on Google with the passage of time.
Last edited by jtelander; 05-30-2023 at 06:40 PM.