Duke 77, Tech 81 Post Game Thread

[uh_no]

Well of course every team has SOMETHING different from all other teams. An infinite number of things, actually. The great majority of those things have little or nothing to do with winning a championship.

that was literally the other guy's point.

[Steven43]

Also, to your point about dumping it to a big, there was one play exactly like that last night. Moore drove the lane and put up a shot with Wright selling out for the block. Wright swatted it, but Mark Williams was wide open for an easy dunk if Moore had just thrown a little bounce pass.

I continue to be dismayed that K has yet to recruit any of we DBR basketball studs for his team. So perplexing. 😉

[throatybeard]

Yes, that is literally the point of the post that you called nonsense. Take a look at it again, paying particular attention to the sentence immediately following the portion you bolded.

Probably the one preceding it, too...

[FerryFor50]

Although he was only credited with one turn, he got stuffed (+ the steal) so bad in the lane at least twice that those plays were indistinguishable from turnovers. One of those was i think on the 1st possession of the game for Duke, or at least very early.

Eh, the shots where he got stuffed and put up bad shots were after Hurt was fouled out and he felt like he needed to force the issue. I didn't have a huge problem there; offense had to come from *somewhere.*

It was driving me insane how much contact Duke players were taking while shooting without fouls being called.

Likewise. When an opposing team "brings it physically" in the game but there are very few fouls called overall, I'm not a fan. There's supposed to be risk/reward to playing physical - you're supposed to have more fouls called. Instead, there was no risk to grabbing/holding Hurt to deny him the ball, hitting players on drives, etc. And when they did get foul calls, they had the fortune of mostly getting Mark Williams at the FT line.

[tommy]

How many Duke recruits stay around that long?

Per my quick calculations, a little less than half. The classes of 2020 and 2021 are not complete yet of course, so can't count Hurt or Moore in a "stay 3" or "didn't stay 3" category but obviously can count Vernon and Cassius from 2020, and Jalen from 2021.

I did not include Pagliuca, Besser, or Buckmire as I did not think any of them were recruited players, but I did include J-Rob.

My calculation show that of the 47 recruited players listed as freshmen on our rosters beginning in 2010 , 19 played at least three years at Duke. There have been six guys who transferred out prior to their junior year who indeed finished at least their junior year elsewhere (Gbinije, Murphy, Semi, Derryck Thornton, Jeter, and Tucker). If you count them, that means 25 of the 47 played at least three years of college basketball, so a little more than half.

[rsvman]

Chris Farley?

Yes! Thank you.

So sorry to have posted John Candy when I meant to say Chris Farley. Dangit! What does it say about my intrinsic biases that apparently I equate all very overweight, hysterically funny comedians?

I have to say, though, I loved both John Candy and Chris Farley. And I hope my post brought at least a smile to somebody in the midst of all the anguish, even though I did butcher it by posting the wrong comedian's name.

[Ultrarunner]

Although he was only credited with one turn, he got stuffed (+ the steal) so bad in the lane at least twice that those plays were indistinguishable from turnovers. One of those was i think on the 1st possession of the game for Duke, or at least very early.

Be aggressive, draw contact, but don't get stuffed . . .

It was driving me insane how much contact Duke players were taking while shooting without fouls being called.

Or, maybe Moore drew the contact but the refs weren't calling the fouls . . . Last game, he was shooting free throws on those same types of plays.

Maybe we should pick one narrative?

I very clearly remember that play and the cursing that followed from him not making the pass to Williams for the dunk. Very frustrating missed opportunity.

Okay, on this we agree. He'll learn. (I hope!)

[gep]

I was thinking... (OK, bad for me to do)... but if physicality is an issue, can that be "taught" in practice? That is, get hammered in practice driving to the basket, get whupped on a screen, etc. I thought I've heard of other teams practices that resulted in fights... of course, I don't think that is right or necessary. But maybe more physical contact in practice will help? I think I've heard Coach K mention "knocked us back" more this year than other years. In any case, he seems to say that after a lot of games this year. Hope this is not out of bounds.

[roywhite]

I was thinking... (OK, bad for me to do)... but if physicality is an issue, can that be "taught" in practice? That is, get hammered in practice driving to the basket, get whupped on a screen, etc. I thought I've heard of other teams practices that resulted in fights... of course, I don't think that is right or necessary. But maybe more physical contact in practice will help? I think I've heard Coach K mention "knocked us back" more this year than other years. In any case, he seems to say that after a lot of games this year. Hope this is not out of bounds.

Probably some in practice, but the more important remedies IMO are strength training and physical maturity. Among the Covid impacts for this team was a later enrollment which deprived them of some benefits of summer weight training and practice time.

[DukieInBrasil]

Eh, the shots where he got stuffed and put up bad shots were after Hurt was fouled out and he felt like he needed to force the issue. I didn't have a huge problem there; offense had to come from *somewhere.*
Likewise. When an opposing team "brings it physically" in the game but there are very few fouls called overall, I'm not a fan. There's supposed to be risk/reward to playing physical - you're supposed to have more fouls called. Instead, there was no risk to grabbing/holding Hurt to deny him the ball, hitting players on drives, etc. And when they did get foul calls, they had the fortune of mostly getting Mark Williams at the FT line.

When GT was up 6-5 was the 1st block + steal that Wendell drove into, with a lurking Mark Williams an easy shovel pass away. Wendell going to the rim was otherwise a pretty decent result for Duke vs GT, but as a playmaker he didn't see Mark for the easy dunk a few times.
But yeah, the physicality issue you described is exactly right.

I was thinking... (OK, bad for me to do)... but if physicality is an issue, can that be "taught" in practice? That is, get hammered in practice driving to the basket, get whupped on a screen, etc. I thought I've heard of other teams practices that resulted in fights... of course, I don't think that is right or necessary. But maybe more physical contact in practice will help? I think I've heard Coach K mention "knocked us back" more this year than other years. In any case, he seems to say that after a lot of games this year. Hope this is not out of bounds.

I suppose a coach can train the guys up for physicality in a game to play tougher, but if the refs don't blow the whistle on contact while shooting it robs players of a lot of the incentive to seek out contact. As FerryFor50 very accurately described, there's s'posed to be a consequence for contact, GT was rewarded very handsomely while Duke was penalized heavily.

[jv001]

When GT was up 6-5 was the 1st block + steal that Wendell drove into, with a lurking Mark Williams an easy shovel pass away. Wendell going to the rim was otherwise a pretty decent result for Duke vs GT, but as a playmaker he didn't see Mark for the easy dunk a few times.
But yeah, the physicality issue you described is exactly right.


I suppose a coach can train the guys up for physicality in a game to play tougher, but if the refs don't blow the whistle on contact while shooting it robs players of a lot of the incentive to seek out contact. As FerryFor50 very accurately described, there's s'posed to be a consequence for contact, GT was rewarded very handsomely while Duke was penalized heavily.

I would love to know how many of Moore's 3 assists and how many of Goldwire's 8 went to Williams. I'm too lazy to re-watch the game but I do remember 3 of the Goldwire assists going to Mark. Wendell has really improved from the first of the season, but like Roach and DJ, he misses open team mates when he has the ball. They need to clean that up for Duke to be successful.

GoDuke!

[sagegrouse]

I was thinking... (OK, bad for me to do)... but if physicality is an issue, can that be "taught" in practice? That is, get hammered in practice driving to the basket, get whupped on a screen, etc. I thought I've heard of other teams practices that resulted in fights... of course, I don't think that is right or necessary. But maybe more physical contact in practice will help? I think I've heard Coach K mention "knocked us back" more this year than other years. In any case, he seems to say that after a lot of games this year. Hope this is not out of bounds.

Well, Nate James is on the bench.

[Phredd3]

I was thinking... (OK, bad for me to do)... but if physicality is an issue, can that be "taught" in practice? That is, get hammered in practice driving to the basket, get whupped on a screen, etc.

There are limits to how much physical banging you want in practices. Not saying they don't play hard, but you don't want to play so hard you invite injury. Also, you want to remain a team. Practices will never be quite the same as game conditions.

Really, most of the problem is that most of our guards are quite small and think. Even Mark Williams, while not small, is thin an often gets the ball stripped. People develop at different rates, and some guys will stay very thin, of course, but the "Freshman 15" isn't about over-eating, is just a natural progression for men of that age. It just take time for guys of that age to "fill out". Encouraged by the strength-training assignments they will no doubt be given, I'm fairly certain that most of these players will be better next year at "playing through contact" instead of being "knocked back".

[CrazyNotCrazie]

I was thinking... (OK, bad for me to do)... but if physicality is an issue, can that be "taught" in practice? That is, get hammered in practice driving to the basket, get whupped on a screen, etc. I thought I've heard of other teams practices that resulted in fights... of course, I don't think that is right or necessary. But maybe more physical contact in practice will help? I think I've heard Coach K mention "knocked us back" more this year than other years. In any case, he seems to say that after a lot of games this year. Hope this is not out of bounds.

I referenced this further up (or in another thread) and I totally agree - particularly in the off-season, they need to be doing loose ball drills and more high contact activities to prepare them for game situations. In season, you don't want them beating each other up so much that they are too worn down to play the games. Weight training will also help. For the younger guys, physically maturing and proper weight training should help a lot. But there are both mental and physical aspects to resolving this. To be very clear, I absolutely do not want a team full of thugs. But more strength, toughness, and winning loose balls would help a lot.

[Kedsy]

I would love to know how many of Moore's 3 assists and how many of Goldwire's 8 went to Williams. I'm too lazy to re-watch the game but I do remember 3 of the Goldwire assists going to Mark.

Mark Williams scored 9 baskets in this game. According to the official box score, they were assisted by:

3: Goldwire (out of 8 JG had in the game)
2: Hurt (out of 2 MH had in the game)
1: Moore (out of 3)
1: Roach (out of 2)
1: Baker (out of 1)
1: offensive rebound putback

Mark Williams himself had one assist. The rest of the team had 10 assists that were not on passes to Williams (as opposed to 8 assists on Mark's baskets).

[sagegrouse]

Mark Williams himself had one assist. The rest of the team had 10 assists that were not on passes to Williams (as opposed to 8 assists on Mark's baskets).

A team's assist stats are typically poor if no one is making shots.

[brevity]

Well, Nate James is on the bench.

Sadly, he’s used up his eligibility.

[Kedsy]

A team's assist stats are typically poor if no one is making shots.

Well, we shot pretty well (55%) on two-point shots, and the vast majority of our assists vs. GaTech were on twos (only 4 of 19 (21%) of our assists in this game were on threes). This is unusual for us, as for the season, 46% of our assists are on three-pointers. Part of that might be because we shot so poorly from three, but I think part of it is our assist stats weren't actually poor: we assisted on 63% of our made baskets. It's just that an unusually large percentage of those assists were to one guy.

[jv001]

Mark Williams scored 9 baskets in this game. According to the official box score, they were assisted by:

3: Goldwire (out of 8 JG had in the game)
2: Hurt (out of 2 MH had in the game)
1: Moore (out of 3)I
1: Roach (out of 2)
1: Baker (out of 1)
1: offensive rebound putback

Mark Williams himself had one assist. The rest of the team had 10 assists that were not on passes to Williams (as opposed to 8 assists on Mark's baskets).

Thank you. I kind of knew you would come through. It looks like Goldwire has become our best distributer among the 3 guards plus Wendell.

All games: Goldwire= 86 assists..32 turnovers, Roach= 57 assists...46 turnovers, DJ= 50 assists.. 44 turnovers and Wendell= 55 assists...36 turnovers.

ACC games: Goldwire= 71 & 23, Roach= 42 & 38, DJ= 38 & 33, Wendell= 50 & 28.

It seems our two best contributors are Jordan Goldwire and Wendell Moore. Roach and DJ are doing a pretty bad job, especially in conference play. For what it's worth, Johnson's numbers: 29 assist and 33 turnovers. Before the season began who would have thought that between Johnson & Wendell, Wendell would have the better assist to turnover ratio. Wendell has come a long way since the first of the season.
These numbers sort of tells me why I won't to close my eyes when DJ and Roach drive into the lane. And in case anyone is wondering about Brakefield and Baker, Jaemyn has 8 assists and 7 turnovers. Baker has 4 assists and 9 turnovers.

GoDuke!

[CDu]

Thank you. I kind of knew you would come through. It looks like Goldwire has become our best distributer among the 3 guards plus Wendell.

All games: Goldwire= 86 assists..32 turnovers, Roach= 57 assists...46 turnovers, DJ= 50 assists.. 44 turnovers and Wendell= 55 assists...36 turnovers.

ACC games: Goldwire= 71 & 23, Roach= 42 & 38, DJ= 38 & 33, Wendell= 50 & 28.

It seems our two best contributors are Jordan Goldwire and Wendell Moore. Roach and DJ are doing a pretty bad job, especially in conference play. For what it's worth, Johnson's numbers: 29 assist and 33 turnovers. Before the season began who would have thought that between Johnson & Wendell, Wendell would have the better assist to turnover ratio. Wendell has come a long way since the first of the season.
These numbers sort of tells me why I won't to close my eyes when DJ and Roach drive into the lane. And in case anyone is wondering about Brakefield and Baker, Jaemyn has 8 assists and 7 turnovers. Baker has 4 assists and 9 turnovers.

GoDuke!

Prior to last game, I'd say that Goldwire has been more of a caretaker than a real assist guy. Yes, the numbers have been okay, but that's I think been more a function of being the guy who passes around the perimeter most. But last night was the first time I saw him utilize Williams in the pick-and-roll game. That hasn't been a big part of our offense, but he did a pretty good job of getting the lob to Williams off the dribble.

That is one area in which Goldwire might become useful down the stretch. He isn't a break-you-down type of ballhandler and certainly isn't a major scoring threat, but in a pick-and-roll game with Williams he just might have something. He's quick, is reasonably secure with the dribble (at least moreso than the other guards), and seems willing to look for his teammates rather than tunnel vision for a shot. It also sets him up better as a drive and kick threat, which could help get Hurt and Steward and Baker some more looks.

We ran the pick and roll a decent amount down the stretch, and mostly the end result was a lob to Williams. But I could see the offense trying to expand that moving forward.