Duke 72, Kentucky 77 Post Game Thread

Chicago 1995 said:
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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I get it but the team missed wide open jumpers. Let’s say three more wide open 3 pointers go in and they hit 5 more free throws. Duke runs away with that win.
 
weezie said:
Any post game comments from Scheyer about Sion's shoulder bruising?
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No post game presser to me was . I am so proud of this 17 year old Cooper. Duke will learn from this and get better. No questions of any information Duke fans might like to know. It was very short in length.
 
I'm making a prediction that KK never shoots 12.5% from 3 in a Duke uniform EVER again. I am not a big "what if" guy but...IF we had shot just 26% (i.e. still terrible) from three last night, we would have won by 1 point. Our worst game from 3pt range prior to last night was 38% so I'm not at all worried about our shooting.

I am VERY worried about the health of our players and more than a little worried about some coaching / strategy issues but overall, I still see a team with a very high ceiling.
 
There hasn’t been an undefeated team in almost 50 years. Good teams, including championship winning teams, lose games. So to me, the results are information, and we use that information to learn where the team is and what it can do to improve. Last night we learned that:
  • This Duke team is tough. An older UK team tried to play physical and push them around, and Duke pushed back. UK came out hot hitting their first 5 threes, and Duke responded by thoroughly dominating the rest of the first half. The intensity did wane in the second half, so hopefully the team learned that they need to keep their foot on the gas for a full 40 minutes as good teams will take advantage of any let up.
  • At least 2 of the freshman are ready to star at this level. Great games from Cooper and Khaman in their first real test. Yes they both have things to work on (Flagg: jump shot, late game decision making, playing through fatigue; Maluach: not jumping into players on pump fakes, hydration) but they showed they are ready to be difference makers this season. For Kon it was more mixed; the game seemed too fast to him at times resulting in rushed shots and a loose handle, but at other times he showed what he is capable of with strong drives and a crafty Luke Kennard like pull up game. I think he will only get better from here and things will slow down for him.
  • Duke’s defensive ceiling is elite – the way they locked down UK and pushed their offense out to nearly midcourt in the first half was impressive, but again they need to keep that up for the full game.
  • Duke’s offense did a lot of things well (dominated the paint, limited turnovers), some medium (12 O boards on 43 misses (28%), 12 assists on 28 makes (43%)), and some poorly (shooting 18% from three). It was also clear that Duke’s offense bogged down late in the game and didn’t have a counter when UK dialed up the pressure. However the optimistic view is to look at last year, where fans were lamenting the stagnant Flip DHOs at the top of the key early in the season, only to have that team turn into the #8 offense in KemPom’s efficiency stats by year end. This team has more offensive talent and versatility, so it’s not unrealistic to expect and even better growth trajectory from them.
Overall I didn’t see any “fatal flaw” that will doom this team from contention. Instead I saw a ton of potential and a loss that was basically due to three point shooting. Duke was 4-23 and UK was 10-25; I would argue that Duke’s shot quality was superior (Kriisa took some stoooopid shots) so if Duke shot their normal percentage (Duke 35%) this would have been a comfortable win. As long as the players and coaches learn and grow from this, there is nothing that lowered Duke's championship caliber ceiling.
 
CDu said:
Honestly, I don't even think the second half was overly physical. There were the two plays of note, but I don't think either was overly physical. One was a fluke where the defender fell down and into Maluach's leg, and then there was the screen that caught James' shoulder bent at an odd angle. I don't think either play was overly physical, just bad luck with normal contact just catching our guy on a joint.

Both teams were playing hard, but not overly physically. It wasn't a finesse game or anything, but it was nothing like the slugfests against Tennessee or Houston of recent past.

I thought the overall level of aggression was pretty similar between both teams. We just couldn't make shots, and may have suffered from tired legs down the stretch (with 3 of our guys playing all 20 minutes of the second half).
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But I think both of those were pretty bad no-calls and should have been whistled.
 
ChrisP said:
I'm making a prediction that KK never shoots 12.5% from 3 in a Duke uniform EVER again. I am not a big "what if" guy but...IF we had shot just 26% (i.e. still terrible) from three last night, we would have won by 1 point. Our worst game from 3pt range prior to last night was 38% so I'm not at all worried about our shooting.

I am VERY worried about the health of our players and more than a little worried about some coaching / strategy issues but overall, I still see a team with a very high ceiling.
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Yeah, on this point it's worth noting that Duke took 29 three-pointers against Maine (and made 11), 38 against Army (and made 17), and 23 against Kentucky (and made 4). The number of attempts was down a bit against Kentucky, likely due to the lack of garbage time for our bench guys, but it still shows that this team is purposefully hunting 3s. For reference, last year we averaged 22 three pointers per game on the season, so even our lowest output through three games this year is above last year's average.

We've seen that this team can make 3s in the exhibitions and in the first two games. The fact that this is clearly an emphasized part of the offense this year means the coach is seeing the team make 3s in practice and is comfortable with an offense designed around shooting from deep. All that evidence points to the 17% we shot yesterday being a major outlier, and to me the eye test confirmed that... I don't think the quality of 3s we took was significantly off from the type of shots we had been taking previously. Even if we make 3s at what would be considered a "bad" rate of 30%, at least one or two of those open 3s that could've taken a 7 point lead to a 10 point lead and changed momentum goes down, and the entire progression of the game changes.

I don't disagree with everyone frustrated with the end of game coaching and execution... FWIW, the semi-neutral fans I interact with on a daily basis (UConn profs who are basketball fans and watched the game, haha) all came up to me with the same, "What was going on in the last minute?!?!" reaction this morning. (Fun!) Jon clearly needs to improve that aspect of his coaching. But, perhaps justifiably, the fact that we missed a handful of ripe chances to put the game out of reach throughout the game has gotten lost in the conversation. That is giving me solace—were it not for an outlier shooting performance, we likely wouldn't have even run into those late-game issues. Perhaps it's a blessing in disguise that those were diagnosed now in November rather than in January.
 
mkirsh said:
But I think both of those were pretty bad no-calls and should have been whistled.
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I think the first one should have been a foul. Carr lost his balance and came down on Maluach's leg. That should have been called. Not overly physical, but a foul. I think the second was just a typical screen. On the border of stationary and moving? Sure, but nothing that screamed foul. There are probably 15-20 similar screens made throughout a game. The issue was that James tried to contort his way under/around the screen, and caught his shoulder on the screener. A fluke injury.
 
CDu said:
I think the first one should have been a foul. Carr lost his balance and came down on Maluach's leg. That should have been called. Not overly physical, but a foul. I think the second was just a typical screen. On the border of stationary and moving? Sure, but nothing that screamed foul. There are probably 15-20 similar screens made throughout a game. The issue was that James tried to contort his way under/around the screen, and caught his shoulder on the screener. A fluke injury.
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On the screen, while it's fair that similar screens often don't get called, they still are illegal per the rules I think more of them should be called (both college and the NBA - what Armando Bacot got away with last year and Bam Adebeyo gets away with regularly is hugely unfair to the defense). I did think that the screen on James was a little more egregious than most because the screener was still moving and he leaned in with the shoulder not the hip, but admittedly this is a pet peeve of mine.
 
We're playing 3 current top ten teams over the next few weeks. I'm hoping that Ngongba can get some minutes against Wofford. We then almost have a full week between that game at @Arizona. Then four days after Arizona we have another massive game in a big-time neutral site atmosphere (I'm assuming the team is just going to stay out west during that time). The team has plenty of opportunities to show what they can be. If we beat Arizona and Kansas, and maybe look good doing it, we're all sitting here saying this was just a poor shooting performance for a young teams first big-time game, an anomaly. Beat Auburn too and we're right back to discussing this as a special team and ranked in the top 5. Of course, there is the other side of that in which we rack up multiple losses before Christmas.
 
mkirsh said:
On the screen, while it's fair that similar screens often don't get called, they still are illegal per the rules I think more of them should be called (both college and the NBA - what Armando Bacot got away with last year and Bam Adebeyo gets away with regularly is hugely unfair to the defense). I did think that the screen on James was a little more egregious than most because the screener was still moving and he leaned in with the shoulder not the hip, but admittedly this is a pet peeve of mine.
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I didn't see it that way at all, but that's neither here nor there at this point.
 
simplyluvin said:
There is often a good amount of backlash against the "sky is falling" prognosticators, and perhaps for good reason. It's a long season. It's only game 3. But a lot of us use this thread and the largely helpful dialogue as therapy, and I think that's okay. At least it should be okay.

I am taking this loss particularly hard. I think I'm more disappointed with this one than even the Tennessee game two years ago and our Elite Eight game last season. Here's why:
  1. There was some hope based on really early returns that this team could be one of those juggernauts. Think 2015 or maybe 2019 or 2011 (without the injuries in the latter two). A lot of talent on the roster with a seemingly good mix of veteran players, solid returning backcourt players, and perhaps two superstar freshmen, one of whom many say is generational. Maybe we still can be, and I didn't expect the 2019 drubbing we gave UK in 2019, but it's awfully early in the year to take a loss in a very winnable game. Perhaps we'll still cut down nets in March and April, but expectations, for now, have been significantly tempered.
  2. Really poor game from arguably the two most important players not named Cooper - Proctor and Foster. We really need our veteran guards to make a jump this year and be bucket-getters when the going gets tough. I had hopes that both would develop a solid dribble-pen game, but I don't think we've seen that yet. I am of the camp of concerned that Foster at the point may be somewhat stifling, but I guess we don't have a better option here.
  3. We seem to have lost tonight because of two things that have plagued us in the last few years. Firstly, we got out-physical'd in the second half. That seems to be the book on us. I like the positivity on the thread that maybe this will be our worst shooting night of the season, and if so, let's get it out of the way now. But I really think the bad shooting has a lot to do with veteran, older teams playing us physically. There was hope that we could handle that better, but signs so far suggest we may have a ways to go. Secondly, we didn't come out to play in the second half. We couldn't maintain the rhythm and fluidity and tenacity from the first half (see Elite Eight game a few months ago). Our "youngness" showed up again in a frustrating way, and we got a little out-tough'd late in the game.
  4. Coach John Scheyer is definitely the coach for Duke basketball, and I'd bet most of us wouldn't trade him for any other coach in America. But it's also OK to question why he couldn't make the adjustments late in the game or help calm the team down in the second half. Yes, it's hard to make adjustments in-game, and yes, we may have been gassed. But CJS is clearly still learning himself how to get our teams to play through physicality, find really hard baskets, and play situational basketball. Tonight I am particularly bewildered as to why we didn't run offense and rather opted for Cooper-led hero ball, especially with all the other talent on the roster.
  5. There's also the prospect of our losing to the next three ranked opponents and starting the season 4-4. That would be a devastating beginning of the season with all the expectation of being a contender for banner #6. Would it be the end of the world? No. Last year we started 5-3 and got within shouting distance of a Final Four. But it would kinda suck and not bode well for banners and net-cutting later in the season. I am hoping to win 2 out of 3 against but KU, UA, and Auburn, but I am now quietly expecting only 1 win out of the 3.
Is the sky falling? No, way too early for that. But I don't see many positives out of this one, and I definitely see the same things plaguing us that have kept us from hitting our theoretical ceiling in the past. Let's see how these next three weeks go. I'm bracing myself for a tough road, but I'd obviously love to be wrong.
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It’s already been said - but even with all of the negatives (poor 3 point shooting, important players hurt, so-so free throw shooting, poor endgame decisions, etc.) we were still leading the vast majority of the game & in position to win with a couple of bounces going differently (maybe only one thing going our way - the refs calling the moving pick). I believe that speaks well about this teams defense, fight & character.
 
weezie said:
They did something in locker room when it happened, maybe a numbing shot? He had a dressing on it. Hoping only a deep bruise, bad as that is. And hoping ky disintegrates and falls flat on their aged rear ends the rest of the season.
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Honestly, my biggest worry about last night is that I'm not sure how good Kentucky really is. It felt like Duke lost the game with a scoring drought more so than UK taking the game from Duke. And given how tough the SEC is this year I could see UK fading. Hope I'm wrong and they are a legit top 10 team but I was not super impressed.
 
Phredd3 said:
We lost because we shot poorly. OK. The reason the game was frustrating, though, is because we still had a great chance to win the game - in fact, we WERE winning it - despite our horrible shooting, and we couldn't close it out. With 10 minutes to go in the game, we were still up 8 and Kentucky's win chance was something like 10%. And then we got away from playing team ball and became static. Honestly, we looked really tired to me. While they were crisply passing the ball all over the floor causing us to chase, on our offensive end, we were standing around watching Cooper and Kon and giving most of their guys a nice break.

And I'm not sure why people are lumping Proctor and Foster and blaming them. We have four guards (yes, Kon's role on this team is as a guard), and none of them played particularly well. But I thought the one that played the best was Proctor. Kon was more active and had much higher usage, but he couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, and his defense was a liability. Maybe look to pass on occasion? Proctor and Foster had 7 assists on the night. But the problem is, that led the team. The entire team only had 12 assists on 28 buckets. That's not getting it done. We need to learn how to better play as a team in order to unlock talented opposition.

Speaking of learning, Scheyer has some learning to do, too. Playing as a team is his job. If we play as a team and fail at it, that's one thing. But when we don't even try to play as a team, that's on the coach. For the last 10 minutes of this game, we had zero assists. Not one. Our last assist in the entire game came when Proctor passed to Cooper for a three with 10:21 left on the clock. That is unacceptable. Sure, some of that was shooting. You can't assist on a shot someone doesn't hit. But just manually looking at the box score play-by-play, in those last ten minutes, there were ten official field goal attempts from either Cooper (6) or Kon (4), and only four shots from everyone else. Cooper's supposed great skill is making everyone around him better. But he's doesn't do that by being ball dominant. We stopped relying on what makes us good, which is that we have a whole team full of excellent players that our best players help to elevate. We need ALL of our guys involved, all the time. They weren't. That's on Jon.

The sky is not falling, but we can play much better basketball than we did last night. I hope we learn those lessons and improve moving forward.

Go Duke!
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I agree that we looked tired the last 10 minutes. Our D was super-aggressive the first 30 minutes and our O was crisp. That all changed in the last 10 minutes - maybe because Khaman and Sion were out - but to my eye we looked gassed.
I went to bed pleased that we shot so terribly but still came close to winning, yet concerned about our conditioning. I really thought our D was going to pull the game out despite the bad shooting but we just could not keep up the high level of pressure.
 
I thought our offensive execution was pretty good until the last 10 minutes. Unfortunately, the last ~4 minutes were really bad:

- Flagg missed jumper
- Kon turnover
- Flagg and-1
- Flagg turnover
- Foster missed 1-and-1, offensive rebound, Flagg interior bucket
- Flagg turnover
- Flagg turnover

So, two really good plays from Flagg, one missed jumper, and 4 turnovers in our last 7 possessions. This after we had committed just 3 turnovers in our first 67 possessions. The last non-Flagg basket was made by Mason Gillis at the 10:51 mark of the second half. So yeah, perhaps Jon could have drawn up something better for those last plays, but Cooper was the only one doing anything offensively in the last few minutes.
 
Second half was just excruciating to watch. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see the 1st half, so I happily joined in with Duke up by 9.

The half I did see was not good. Thoughts:

- UK played much more team ball than Duke did from start to finish of the half. It never felt like UK wasn't going to complete the comeback.
- Surprised to see such a relatively short bench. Duke played 8, UK, with older players who should have more stamina, played 10. Seemed to me a couple of Duke's young freshmen were gassed in the final four minutes. Duke has five grad students, three of which I think were intended to play this season. Seems a waste not to use them for a couple of minutes to relieve starters. Is Sheffield a "miss?" I sort of see them as 'misses' if they can't see the floor. Never going to understand using a relatively short bench AND bringing in players from the portal to ride the pine.
- Offense was abysmal. There appeared to be no offensive adjustments to UK overplaying the passing lanes, and no one on the team seemed confident, or quick. enough to drive into the lane and get a good shot, except for Flagg, whose ball handling deteriorated a bit as he tired. In any case, having a guy his height dribbling more than twice in the paint, is generally not a good idea in college ball. Duke is going to have to figure out how to move the ball. Offense broke down eerily as it did last year at times when the weave at the three-point line gets disrupted. I was a bit frustrated that Filipowski was turning the ball over inside last year rather than a guard taking it. Repeat last night. Appears that might be a strategy problem rather than a player problem. Need some quicks and some precise passing to break down that kind of D. It generally isn't done by having a PF dribble into the lane.
- Shooting is much harder when the other team is focused and near as tall as you are. Understand Duke had some open shots in the first half from three that they missed, but I thought UK contested hard in the second half. If this is what shooting looks like against a decent defense, there are more Ls coming.
- Proctor disappeared. Not sure he is comfortable in whatever role he is playing. Was he involved more in the first half?
- Duke didn't respond on defense when UK ratcheted up theirs. Just didn't think the same energy ((or focus?) was there. Not saying they weren't playing hard, just thought UK was more aggressive on D.
- Know UK has more experienced players, but they've spent no more time together than Duke players have. They have a really high ceiling if they continue to grow as NC State did toward the end of last year. Time will tell.
- Thought Coach S looked a bit flummoxed on the sideline late in the half. Didn't seem to have any answers on either end of the floor. Whether that can be attributed to player execution or not IDK.
 
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