Duke 72, Kentucky 77 Post Game Thread

bluedevilwildcats said:
Warren is a good example of GOATs with blind spots - he refused to invest in technology stocks for the longest time, said he didn't understand them. I'm guessing that failure to learn and stretch outside his comfort zone cost him tens of billions.

You've undoubtedly heard of Clayton Christensen. He was on a Podcast years ago and described Coach K's short bench as an organizational failure, for the same reasons that have been mentioned by smart folks on this site over the years: fails to develop new talent, creates an over-reliance on starters, doesn't build a flexible and innovative team culture, etc.

I think my disappointment with Jon is that he doesn't seem to be learning and fixing his own blind spots fast enough given expectations at Duke.
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The late Clayton Christensen MAY have had a valid point about Coach K's organization failure to develop and play a deeper bench but I think it is also possible that he (Clayton) was just irritated that his son did not get more playing time when he (the son) was a student-athlete on the Duke basketball team? LOL.

I think that, maybe, K also played a short bench because he knew there was a significant drop off in basketball ability once you got down to the 7th, 8th and lower players on the Duke squad and why hurt your chances of winning by playing inferior players. It's true you run the risk of your starters becoming tired as the game goes on but these are relatively young kids in the physical prime of their lives who have been playing basketball and other sports their entire lives. They SHOULD be able to play 35 to 40 minutes a game (and there's a fair amount of standing around during a game) without becoming too tired.

My guess, too, is that it is not that easy to recruit very talented high school players IF you tell them: "come to Duke to play basketball; you won't start or get significant playing minutes but you'll be valuable in practice and may get 5 to 10 minutes of game time, if you perform well". Again, my guess is that many kids, given that option, would decide to go somewhere else where they can play more. I think that is one of the reasons we saw so many transfers after last season.
 
duke79 said:
The late Clayton Christensen MAY have had a valid point about Coach K's organization failure to develop and play a deeper bench but I think it is also possible that he (Clayton) was just irritated that his son did not get more playing time when he (the son) was a student-athlete on the Duke basketball team? LOL.

I think that, maybe, K also played a short bench because he knew there was a significant drop off in basketball ability once you got down to the 7th, 8th and lower players on the Duke squad and why hurt your chances of winning by playing inferior players. It's true you run the risk of your starters becoming tired as the game goes on but these are relatively young kids in the physical prime of their lives who have been playing basketball and other sports their entire lives. They SHOULD be able to play 35 to 40 minutes a game (and there's a fair amount of standing around during a game) without becoming too tired.

My guess, too, is that it is not that easy to recruit very talented high school players IF you tell them: "come to Duke to play basketball; you won't start or get significant playing minutes but you'll be valuable in practice and may get 5 to 10 minutes of game time, if you perform well". Again, my guess is that many kids, given that option, would decide to go somewhere else where they can play more. I think that is one of the reasons we saw so many transfers after last season.
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They play multiple AAU games a day in high school. Then get to college where there is a TV timeout every 4 mins. I don’t buy the tired excuse.
 
duke79 said:
The late Clayton Christensen MAY have had a valid point about Coach K's organization failure to develop and play a deeper bench but I think it is also possible that he (Clayton) was just irritated that his son did not get more playing time when he (the son) was a student-athlete on the Duke basketball team? LOL.

I think that, maybe, K also played a short bench because he knew there was a significant drop off in basketball ability once you got down to the 7th, 8th and lower players on the Duke squad and why hurt your chances of winning by playing inferior players. It's true you run the risk of your starters becoming tired as the game goes on but these are relatively young kids in the physical prime of their lives who have been playing basketball and other sports their entire lives. They SHOULD be able to play 35 to 40 minutes a game (and there's a fair amount of standing around during a game) without becoming too tired.

My guess, too, is that it is not that easy to recruit very talented high school players IF you tell them: "come to Duke to play basketball; you won't start or get significant playing minutes but you'll be valuable in practice and may get 5 to 10 minutes of game time, if you perform well". Again, my guess is that many kids, given that option, would decide to go somewhere else where they can play more. I think that is one of the reasons we saw so many transfers after last season.
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Per K and also Johnny Dawkins, Duke's team development was so intensive, covering so many facets of play, that the ideal active set of players was seven, maybe eight as a stretch. True, Duke teams under K were especially formidable early in the season, when other teams, using different training methods, were not as far along.

With so much talent available to Duke, I don't think this is the right approach today, especially when the most talented are here for only a year. Also, we need to prepare for injuries, as we do have talented backups. Jon does appear to be doing things differently from K. And, I do expect ten players to play 300+ minutes this year. I look forward to seeing Isaiah Evans and Darren Harris on the court in upcoming games.

There's more, but I mostly post using my phone, which saves folks from reading excesd verbiage.
 
duke79 said:
I think that, maybe, K also played a short bench because he knew there was a significant drop off in basketball ability once you got down to the 7th, 8th and lower players on the Duke squad and why hurt your chances of winning by playing inferior players. It's true you run the risk of your starters becoming tired as the game goes on but these are relatively young kids in the physical prime of their lives who have been playing basketball and other sports their entire lives. They SHOULD be able to play 35 to 40 minutes a game (and there's a fair amount of standing around during a game) without becoming too tired.
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The first short bench, high octane college team that could really get up and down for 40 minutes, that I was ever aware of, was the 1997-98 tarheels.

I was at Duke at the time, and all of my friends and I could not believe how they could run the typical carolina offense, and not get tired. They relied completely on their "six starters" plus a few spot minutes from Brendan Haywood. The only time they ever looked tired was the final two minutes of the 1998 game in (pre-air-conditioned) Cameron.

I always thought this team had an influence on Coach K, and helped feed his insistence on playing his best players as many minutes as possible.
 
CJ Moore of the Athletic has a breakdown of the Champions Classic and what we learned about each team. (Paywalled)

This comment about Duke stood out:

What eventually cost Duke was its predictability. In the second half, Duke had only four possessions that included at least three completed passes. On most trips, only one or two players touched the ball and everyone else stood around.
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Four possessions with 3 or more completed passes across 20 minutes of play. That doesn't strike me as winning offensive basketball.
 
I didn't realize until today how down KY basketball was after the departure of Cal. Reading social media you would think this win was a Top 5 program win for them, which is weird given their history.
 
bluedevilwildcats said:
Well pretty much by definition, we aren't going to call out blind spots in ourselves, so someone else has gotta do it. Personally don't subscribe to the ignorance is bliss approach. :)

I certainly don't know as much about basketball as Jon, but I probably do know more about building effective teams, having run marketing organizations from 15 to over 1,000 folks the past 20 years.
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Well, your critiques about building effective teams were primarily directed at Coach K. Not sure you want to make this statement in that regard.

To be clear, none of us would say K or Jon are above critique. I think the coaching Tuesday was subpar in the second half, for example.

But it’s wild to claim to have insight into blind spots for a man who went to Final Fours across 5 decades. Saying he had blind spots at all, suggests an unwillingness to self-reflect and an inflexibility… about a coach who is best known for his adaptability across eras.

And it’s equally wild to make suggestions that a coach who is 69 games into a *nice* career is similarly set in his ways and incapable of learning.

Doesn’t diminish the frustration that any of us feel about the issues that popped up on Tuesday. But it’s not my favorite way for that frustration to be expressed. Maybe it’s just me, though.
 
mph said:
CJ Moore of the Athletic has a breakdown of the Champions Classic and what we learned about each team. (Paywalled)

This comment about Duke stood out:



Four possessions with 3 or more completed passes across 20 minutes of play. That doesn't strike me as winning offensive basketball.
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Exactly. And this has been an issue in each of the past two seasons as well. There is so much to love about Scheyer - I am very happy he is the Duke coach - but there is clearly work to be done w/ the offensive scheme.

Not sure that means he needs an "offensive coordinator" but you can argue that's what Hurley has up in Storrs with Bill Murray's son.

The bigger frustration for me has been the inability for Duke to get good shots in late game situations. It happened multiple times last season and then again on Tuesday. Yes, some blame falls on the players but the coaching staff has to do a better job here. 2 possessions within the last 26 seconds and Duke didn't get a single shot off. No big man guarding the in-bound pass either when UK had that OOB under their own hoop. These are not small mistakes.
 
kshepinthehouse said:
They play multiple AAU games a day in high school. Then get to college where there is a TV timeout every 4 mins. I don’t buy the tired excuse.
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Have you ever watched even high-level AAU basketball in person? I have. Many, many times. The intensity is absolutely nothing like a high-level D-1 college game between two top teams. The guys were tired the other night, and it was quite obvious. Whether that's because Jon didn't play enough guys, or the injuries to Sion and Khaman, or both, is debatable. But there's no doubt they were exhausted.
 
CDu said:
The defense allowed points differently in the two halves, but basically distributed the points equally.

And fast break points allowed are generally a function of your offense, not your defense. They typically result from turnovers, of which we had way more in the second half than in the first.
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Kentucky went 3-12 in the paint in the first half, and 8-19 in the second. Paint shots are easy offense. Duke failed to protect the paint in the second half.

Only 2 of the 9 UK's FB points in the second half (for the game as well) were off of TOs.

Yes, if Duke had made more shots they would have won, but you could also say if Duke doesn't host a layup drill in the second half they would have one as well.
 
azzefkram said:
Kentucky went 3-12 in the paint in the first half, and 8-19 in the second. Paint shots are easy offense. Duke failed to protect the paint in the second half.

Only 2 of the 9 UK's FB points in the second half (for the game as well) were off of TOs.

Yes, if Duke had made more shots they would have won, but you could also say if Duke doesn't host a layup drill in the second half they would have one as well.
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8-19 isn't a "layup drill." That is a poor shooting percentage in the paint. It's also not discernibly different from 3-12 statistically (a difference of 2 or 3 makes in either direction). Conversely, UK shot worse from 3, with better contests by Duke's defense, and got fewer trips to the free throw line (13 to 7) before the final 5 seconds. The result was thus pretty comparable between the two periods.

The team gave up 37 points in 34 possessions in the second half before the foul game over the last 5 seconds added 3 points. That's just fine against a good offensive team. It was the offense that lost the game. This should be clear in that our adjusted offense was mediocre while our adjusted defense was quite good.

Put another way: the defense and offense were both excellent in the first half; the defense was still very solid in the second half, but the offense was completely awful (just 26 points in 35 possessions).
 
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CDu said:
8-19 isn't a "layup drill." That is a poor shooting percentage in the paint. It's also not discernibly different from 3-12 statistically (a difference of 2 or 3 makes in either direction). Conversely, UK shot worse from 3, with better contests by Duke's defense, and got fewer trips to the free throw line (13 to 7) before the final 5 seconds. The result was thus pretty comparable between the two periods.

The team gave up 37 points in 34 possessions in the second half before the foul game over the last 5 seconds added 3 points. That's just fine against a good offensive team. It was the offense that lost the game. This should be clear in that our adjusted offense was mediocre while our adjusted defense was quite good.

Put another way: the defense and offense were both excellent in the first half; the defense was still very solid in the second half, but the offense was completely awful (just 26 points in 35 possessions).
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3-12 to 8-19 = not discernibly different
7-16 to 3-9 = much better contests from Duke

You can't have it both ways CDu.

UK had at least 2 and-1s in the second half which would depress FT trips.

The offense was horrid in the second half, but the defense was not as good, especially in the final 10 or so minutes.
 
azzefkram said:
3-12 to 8-19 = not discernibly different
7-16 to 3-9 = much better contests from Duke

You can't have it both ways CDu.

UK had at least 2 and-1s in the second half which would depress FT trips.

The offense was horrid in the second half, but the defense was not as good, especially in the final 10 or so minutes.
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I'll split the baby on this one. Our defense was still good for the first half of the second half. But the final 8 minutes or so it soured. Losing both Sion and ManMan for a majority of that time really killed us. Not only because they weren't on the floor, but because the guys that were on the floor were exhausted.
 
azzefkram said:
3-12 to 8-19 = not discernibly different
7-16 to 3-9 = much better contests from Duke

You can't have it both ways CDu.

UK had at least 2 and-1s in the second half which would depress FT trips.

The offense was horrid in the second half, but the defense was not as good, especially in the final 10 or so minutes.
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I will simplify the explanation.

The defensive efficiency was elite (#1) in the first half. It was still solid) less than 1 point per possession adjusted) in the second half before the last-second fouling. The offensive efficiency was elite (#1) in the first half. It was abysmal (worst in the country adjusted) in the second half.

The defense was 2 baskets different than it was in the first half. The offense was 8 baskets different than it was in the first half.

The offense lost this game, and it isn’t close.
 
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rtnorthrup said:
I didn't realize until today how down KY basketball was after the departure of Cal. Reading social media you would think this win was a Top 5 program win for them, which is weird given their history.
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I think they upgraded their coach. And he's lining up a nice recruiting class for next year. I'd be excited if I were a UK fan.
 
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