Duke 72, Kentucky 77 Post Game Thread

jv001 said:
Do you think Jon Scheyer is not smart enough to learn those things? Plus, the bench is already full of assistant coaches. Some have played professionally. If Jon doesn't learn those things, I'd say it would be stubbornness. Going to our best player at the end of games is not a bad idea. Bad execution is what dooms those plays. Anyway, Duke should have been comfortably in the lead if they had shot FTs and just a decent percent of their 3s.

GoDuke!
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It's not going to our best player -- it's how we went to our best player.

Watching the offense get so much slower and the motion go out of it during the second half was disappointing, given that we've seen it before. That's the frustration I think a lot of us feel. We've seen that before and whether unwilling or unable to recognize it's making us easier to beat, Jon keeps doing the same thing.

He's young. They were beat up and exhausted. There are lots of reasons to not just give up. But there were some, maybe small, warning signs last night from the bench.
 
I’m a bit surprised as to the tone of this thread, although perhaps I shouldn’t be. Here’s the question I’d pose to everyone who is wringing their hands about last night: If this was a closely contested, 5 point loss to a clearly underrated Top 20 team early in the non-conference slate that wasn’t named Kentucky how would you be feeling? I get that this stings more than normal because of that element, and also because it’s a game we would’ve/should've/could’ve won. But sweeping our crazy difficult non-con slate was never truly in the cards. We lost a close game where we played poorly and our opponent played extremely well. That’s the best case scenario for any loss. There’s a lot this team will learn from last night too, more than in a “burn the tape” blowout scenario to be sure.
 
scottdude8 said:
I’m a bit surprised as to the tone of this thread, although perhaps I shouldn’t be. Here’s the question I’d pose to everyone who is wringing their hands about last night: If this was a closely contested, 5 point loss to a clearly underrated Top 20 team early in the non-conference slate that wasn’t named Kentucky how would you be feeling? I get that this stings more than normal because of that element, and also because it’s a game we would’ve/should've/could’ve won. But sweeping our crazy difficult non-con slate was never truly in the cards. We lost a close game where we played poorly and our opponent played extremely well. That’s the best case scenario for any loss. There’s a lot this team will learn from last night too, more than in a “burn the tape” blowout scenario to be sure.
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I don’t think “it was Kentucky” has anything to do with the frustrations being presented in this thread.
 
Hell I'm a Kentucky fan when they aren't playing Duke. My dad went there and I grew up cheering for them. I love playing them the way I would love to play Kansas, or UCONN or any other blue blood/major team because it's exciting but I do not harbor an extra hate for them (we won that game!) nor does a loss carry any extra sting like a UNC loss.
 
Chicago 1995 said:
They didn't look so overmatched they couldn't have given Kon four minutes of rest so maybe he was more fresh down the stretch. Harris might have *gasp* made a shot even.
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For the game Kon played, he played way too much but that doesn't make Harris or Evans less overmatched. Maybe they would have made some shots that Kon missed but Kon is the worst defender in Duke's rotation and Harris and Evans are even worse. Duke's offense was dreadful in the second half but its defense was pretty awful as well. Duke had a Drtg of 116 in the second half. I don't think adding worse defenders is the solution. Losing Sion hurt.
 
scottdude8 said:
I’m a bit surprised as to the tone of this thread, although perhaps I shouldn’t be. Here’s the question I’d pose to everyone who is wringing their hands about last night: If this was a closely contested, 5 point loss to a clearly underrated Top 20 team early in the non-conference slate that wasn’t named Kentucky how would you be feeling? I get that this stings more than normal because of that element, and also because it’s a game we would’ve/should've/could’ve won. But sweeping our crazy difficult non-con slate was never truly in the cards. We lost a close game where we played poorly and our opponent played extremely well. That’s the best case scenario for any loss. There’s a lot this team will learn from last night too, more than in a “burn the tape” blowout scenario to be sure.
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It's not the opponent. It's not really the result.

It's how the game played out, how our guards struggled and our offense stagnated and quit generating good shots and how familiar that looked that has me at least a little more bothered by last night than I might otherwise be.
 
azzefkram said:
For the game Kon played, he played way too much but that doesn't make Harris or Evans less overmatched. Maybe they would have made some shots that Kon missed but Kon is the worst defender in Duke's rotation and Harris and Evans are even worse. Duke's offense was dreadful in the second half but its defense was pretty awful as well. Duke had a Drtg of 116 in the second half. I don't think adding worse defenders is the solution. Losing Sion hurt.
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Losing Sion lost us the game.

It's early, and I guess I'd rather see what those guys can do and get them the experience now than run Kon to dust like we did. This could happen in March. I'd rather they get some higher leverage minutes now, when it doesn't matter.
 
I may totally be misremembering, but I feel like we've had a few years where we get into that final game of March where we're losing and Scheyer/K hit desperation and finally chuck in those late bench Powers type players and pray and find myself wondering if that should happen more in Novemeber and December.
 
We were slinging the ball around some in the first half. UK's on-ball defense improved greatly in the second half and we stopped being patient and looking for open guys, instead going right at defenders. The whole offense broke down because we became very predictable. The defense wasn't great- kept overcommitting on block attempts and not defending screens well at all. Jon has his work cut out, but we will blow out lesser teams with talent alone. We'll need better screen defense, communication and passing to beat the 'Zonas and Kansas's of the world. Let's go!
 
jv001 said:
Do you think Jon Scheyer is not smart enough to learn those things? Plus, the bench is already full of assistant coaches. Some have played professionally. If Jon doesn't learn those things, I'd say it would be stubbornness. Going to our best player at the end of games is not a bad idea. Bad execution is what dooms those plays. Anyway, Duke should have been comfortably in the lead if they had shot FTs and just a decent percent of their 3s.

GoDuke!
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My expectation when Jon became our coach was that he was very smart and highly analytical. I believed that would translate to strong Xs and Os. It hasn't. And unfortunately we are having the same issues now as we did when Jon was a brand new coach. I don't think a team this talented should lose to this Kentucky team but Jon didn't show an ability to adapt, which has been a recurring theme. As has poor guard play in crunch time, which appears to be the case again this year, which really bums me out.

I have to confess I don't understand the "If X and Y didn't happen we win comfortably." Literally any team can use that excuse to explain away any result it doesn't like.
 
A Duke fan living in Kentucky is always a challenge but after last nights performance it has reached unbearable. I felt so confident this season would be about fact pace, mutiple scorers and toughness that we have not seen in years. Everything Jay Will said at halftime absolutely disappeared in the second half. This team has to find an identity and that cannot be Cooper Flagg and the rest of the team. Flagg is great and will continue to be great until this team wears him down. The more we pull that stunt last night with give him the ball and get out of the way the more everyone else stands and watches. We need a POINT GUARD. I don't care if he never scores a point but he needs to lead this team with some fire and sacrifice everything for his team. Slap the floor, stomp on a chest, throw a chair it doesn't matter just show your emotions and go get the W. The more time we waste with Foster on the floor the more games like last night we are going to have. Great kid but has zero fire and prevents this team from playing with any pace.
 
bluedevilwildcats said:
My expectation when Jon became our coach was that he was very smart and highly analytical. I believed that would translate to strong Xs and Os. It hasn't. And unfortunately we are having the same issues now as we did when Jon was a brand new coach. I don't think a team this talented should lose to this Kentucky team but Jon didn't show an ability to adapt, which has been a recurring theme. As has poor guard play in crunch time, which appears to be the case again this year, which really bums me out.

I have to confess I don't understand the "If X and Y didn't happen we win comfortably." Literally any team can use that excuse to explain away any result it doesn't like.
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We're 3 games in, not 30 games in.

Too early to draw firm conclusions.
 
CDu said:
I don’t think “it was Kentucky” has anything to do with the frustrations being presented in this thread.
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Chicago 1995 said:
It's not the opponent. It's not really the result.

It's how the game played out, how our guards struggled and our offense stagnated and quit generating good shots and how familiar that looked that has me at least a little more bothered by last night than I might otherwise be.
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Fair enough.
 
rifraf said:
I may totally be misremembering, but I feel like we've had a few years where we get into that final game of March where we're losing and Scheyer/K hit desperation and finally chuck in those late bench Powers type players and pray and find myself wondering if that should happen more in November and December.
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Oh absolutely.

He's a more unique case, but Justin Robinson had a game early in ACC play as a sophomore where he got real minutes at Pitt coming off a loss at State, hit a few threes, and finished with 10 points and a few blocks.

Then he proceeded to never get real or consistent minutes the rest of his career, when he again showed he could play at that level.
 
I thought the play out of the timeout with Cooper started out interesting, with a series of 3 guys running like they were going to set a screen for him. It seemed the 1st 2 were decoys to set up the preferred play of Kon setting the screen, but then Kon didn't actually set a screen. That was odd. Then, it seems the moment may have gotten big for Cooper as he went away from his instinct of making the right play and tried to force a shot, when the defense had collapsed on him and teammates were wide open.

I was surprised we didn't have Maluach defending the inbounds in the corner with 5 seconds left. It would be hard to throw around or over a 9'5" standing reach in the coffin corner.

We certainly aren't as bad of a shooting team as we showed, and shooting just so-so from 3 would have resulted in a win. At the same time, I'm not convinced we're the great 3-point shooting team that was advertised. That's the weakest part of Cooper's game. Tyrese is off to a good start but has not shot well from 3 the prior 2 years. Foster shot a pretty good percentage last year but hasn't so far in a different role this year. That hasn't been the strength of Sion's game, and our centers aren't real threats from the perimeter. Gillis can definitely shoot but won't be a volume shooter. Kon was billed as our sniper. It seems he's better than expected at other aspects of the game, but I don't know that he's a light's out shooter at this point. I see he shot 39% from 3 as a HS senior.
 
For me, part of the reason why last night's loss was frustrating was because of the unreasonable expectations I had after the ASU game. Clearly ASU did not play anywhere near their best game and last night helped reset my expectations. But there's no way that I think we're headed for a season with less than 20 wins or a 5+ seed in the tournament based on losing to a top-20 team in the third game of the year officiated by Ron Groover in an arena where their fans were the overwhelmingly majority and for some inexplicable reason Duke broke out the black jerseys which should have been burned years ago. I did think that Flagg, Kon, and Foster all looked gassed at the end of the game, which may have contributed to some of the mistakes and poor shooting. It's clear that Evans and Harris haven't earned Scheyer's trust, and Gillis did not seem to add much when he was in the game, so losing James really hurt. I think it's a positive sign that Duke had the lead for so long when the 3 point shooting was so atrocious. The first half defense was very good and Duke found ways to score when shots weren't falling. Better for Jon to find out now that he needs to do something more than Flagg iso ball in late game situations than to find that out in March. I would've preferred to have the ball in Proctor's hands and run Flagg off some screens to get a favorable match-up instead of allowing Kentucky to dictate who the defender was. But, I'm optimistic Jon and the players will all learn from this and still think we have a very fun season ahead.
 
roywhite said:
We're 3 games in, not 30 games in.

Too early to draw firm conclusions.
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For the players, it's three games.

It's more than that for Jon, which, again, is where my concern lies. Jon's adapted in other areas and grown as a coach. I'm not giving up on him by any means. But at this point, I've seen what I saw out of the offense in the second half last night enough to know it's a recurring problem that Jon hasn't addressed yet. And I think for this team to reach its potential, he needs to.
 
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