Duke 72, Kentucky 77 Post Game Thread

DBKilby said:
Evans is way behind Kon. But this is the Duke way. I'd you win the job, you play 35+ in big games. There really isn't a developing process for guys that don't crack the top 8. Us fans just hope they come back for year 2.
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What I refuse to believe is that a guy highly ranked/rated like Evans could be a DNP in a game which our other starting freshman went 5-20 and committed numerous defensive lapses. You can't be THAT far behind not to even step on the court.

Thats an issue with the rotation.
 
For the first time since he was hired, I was frustrated with Scheyer tonight. I'm unsure if it is warranted, but the poor offensive execution and static offense were difficult to watch. Coming out of key timeouts late in the game, everyone in the stadium knew what was coming. Isolation for Cooper up top. Not hard to defend (he was double-teamed twice). You can't hit 3s, but no offensive adjustments, and we keep hoisting them up. And you don't bring Darrent Harris off the bench for even a few minutes, even though he has been a dead-eye shooter, just to mix things up.

Not all on him. Bad night shooting, some shakey freshman defense by Maluach, and some players not stepping up. But he couldn't right the ship and showed no creativity in game planning late in the game.

At any rate, we'll learn from this and get better...players and, hopefully, coaches
 
DBKilby said:
Evans is way behind Kon. But this is the Duke way. I'd you win the job, you play 35+ in big games. There really isn't a developing process for guys that don't crack the top 8. Us fans just hope they come back for year 2.
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This may be an unpopular opinion but I haven't been very impressed with Evans in the exhibition/early games and have no problem with him not playing tonight. Same with Harris. Kon had a rough shooting night but you can't just take a shooter out of the game after he misses his first couple shots.
 
rifraf said:
At what point does the program consider how big of a liability that is, particularly with our constant and eternal reliance on 17-19 year olds?
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I have been over it for awhile. The worst part is if Sion is out for awhile I don't think Jon will develop anyone else. I think Gillis minutes will go up and starters that is a guard/wing will just play more and make up the 18-20 min that Sion was playing. This will actually be a good test run to see what Jon does if the injury is serious.
 
My thoughts:
- guards missed a ton of threes, most of which were very good looks. Foster had at least three wide open ones that didn’t go down.
- our defense and rebounding really suffered when man man went out.
- Flagg was on the line with a chance to push our lead into double digits and missed both. A minute or so later it was a 4 point game.
- in the first half K2 drove to the bucket repeatedly for layups. He was getting his shot whenever he wanted it. I assume due to UK’s adjustments he was a non factor in the second.
- Flagg was our only reliable offensive weapon down the stretch. But he made three costly turnovers and failed to box out in the last 30s and the game turned on those 4 plays. Way too much dribbling in traffic.
- for all the talk of our scoring depth, Duke got only six points from its bench - two James cuts to the basket and a garbage bucket from Gillis.
- UK’s outside shooting was amazing. Nice adjustment by Scheyer to push them off the 3pt line in 1h, but we needed to answer and couldn’t hit anything.
- Duke couldn’t play inside out as UK stayed home on our shooters. In the first half we abused them in the paint. But we couldn’t continue it.

This was a fun game to watch that hopefully we learn from and get better. Cooper’s late collapse reminded me of Laettner missing a 1 and 1 late in the game vs. Arizona? his freshman year. I don’t think he ever missed another game winner in a Duke Uni.
 
The offense getting so stagnant and one dimensional the last 15 minutes or so was troubling. We’ve seen that before and it doesn’t work, regardless of the talent.

Thought Jon had a rough last three minutes or so. Lot of questionable decisions. Hope he learns from it.
 
Dukehk said:
Whats with the Kon favortism by the way!? Evans didn't even play a single minute?

It he really that far behind during practice? Looks great everytime he comes on in the limited minutes he gets during games. I swear he could have done a better defensive job than Kon. Also has better length and is just as good a scorer imo.

I think Coach Scheyer really needs to take a long hard look at that rotation. Theres no way Kon should be playing 37 minutes, especially the way he performed in the second half.
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Agreed. In fairness to Jon, Sion's injury messed up the plan. He probably didn't want to throw Evans in so late in the game. That said, 37 min for Kon and 0 for Evans doesn't seem like a good plan.
 
ChillinDuke said:
One other thing I'll point out (and then off to bed) for those expecting us to learn and get better as a group, we will. But so will everyone else. Basically every team is a brand new group learning and growing together. We may well have more runway than others given our freshmen but it's not like the old days when we had largely freshmen and everyone else had largely returning squads.

I don't mean to be a debbie downer. I truly believe this game can and probably will benefit us (and maybe Cooper most of all who probably has faced minimal adversity to this point in his basketball career). But the same old talking points we're used to don't carry as much truth as they used to.

Next play. Good night, all.

- Chillin
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Poor shooting against tough, physical defense does indeed seem to be the old adage, so I don't think you're being a debbie downer. Perhaps our achilles heel strikes again. Our returnees and upperclassmen need to play way better.
 
pamtelp said:
For the first time since he was hired, I was frustrated with Scheyer tonight. I'm unsure if it is warranted, but the poor offensive execution and static offense were difficult to watch. Coming out of key timeouts late in the game, everyone in the stadium knew what was coming. Isolation for Cooper up top. Not hard to defend (he was double-teamed twice). You can't hit 3s, but no offensive adjustments, and we keep hoisting them up. And you don't bring Darrent Harris off the bench for even a few minutes, even though he has been a dead-eye shooter, just to mix things up.

Not all on him. Bad night shooting, some shakey freshman defense by Maluach, and some players not stepping up. But he couldn't right the ship and showed no creativity in game planning late in the game.

At any rate, we'll learn from this and get better...players and, hopefully, coaches
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It was frustrating, for sure, but if you think Darren Harris was the answer it sounds like you don’t have any ideas either.
 
5 thoughts...

1. Really poor outside shooting, Maluach being in and out (and in and out and in and out) disrupting rhythm, and returning upperclassmen not stepping up in the clutch are my reasons for the loss. I don't blame Flagg. He was clearly the best player on the court. If he had hit the shots at the end, he would have been the hero, and Duke fans would be extolling his virtues. But he didn't. He's still the man. Duke goes as far as Flagg can take them.

2. This is really just an early season loss. They had a chance to win, but it didn't work. Duke wasn't going to go undefeated. And losing early stamps out overconfidence pretty quickly. That being said, it really sucks losing to UK.

3. James going down was not a significant reason why Duke lost. But if it's a major injury, it could be a reason why they don't go as far as they could. Crossing my fingers.

4. One play that bugged me was when Kon had the ball while on the floor, he was looking for an outlet but no one called timeout. We had 2. I think it worked out (was there a foul?), but still... Again, not the reason Duke lost, but somebody had to have some awareness.

5. I'll dig up my regular November meme later, if necessary. But not yet.

9F
 
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UrinalCake said:
This may be an unpopular opinion but I haven't been very impressed with Evans in the exhibition/early games and have no problem with him not playing tonight. Same with Harris. Kon had a rough shooting night but you can't just take a shooter out of the game after he misses his first couple shots.
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Or even after 15 or so apparently.

Evans and Harris have looked a bit overmatched against Maine and Army, so I had zero expectations that they would see time in a close game.
 
ChillinDuke said:
One other thing I'll point out (and then off to bed) for those expecting us to learn and get better as a group, we will. But so will everyone else. Basically every team is a brand new group learning and growing together. We may well have more runway than others given our freshmen but it's not like the old days when we had largely freshmen and everyone else had largely returning squads.

I don't mean to be a debbie downer. I truly believe this game can and probably will benefit us (and maybe Cooper most of all who probably has faced minimal adversity to this point in his basketball career). But the same old talking points we're used to don't carry as much truth as they used to.

Next play. Good night, all.

- Chillin
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Agree. One of those tired talking points is that we were “knocked back.” No we weren’t. We played a veteran team very tough. Our most physical guy got knocked out with an injury which hurt us for sure. But nobody was physically intimidated including all 3 frosh. We just missed a lot of open shots and Cooper didn’t look to share the ball the last 2 possessions.
 
FosterCoachK82 said:
It was frustrating, for sure, but if you think Darren Harris was the answer it sounds like you don’t have any ideas either.
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Nah,not saying he was the answer at all. The answer was to run a Hurley-esque offense that freed us up for easy shots. But if you are going to run a drive and pitch offense and no one is hittiing, at least try to mix it up. We did nothing different and our adjustments late in the game made things worse. Of course if we were hitting shots all this would be moot. But I fear our offensive limitations tonight were rooted in things more fundamental than shooting percentage.
 
I think it was Cook and Jones in 2015 after the championship where Cook was jumping around with Jones saying, "Guards win championships!" It's still very early in the season obviously so not going to judge but hoping Proctor and Foster have and will take big steps forward. Duke won't win the national championship nor will they make the final 4 without great guard play.

Someone to settle things down and call a great play when the momentum has shifted. Running a pick and roll getting someone or yourself a good shot. Proctor especially as a junior should be able to do these things.
 
This is Jon’s third year. He and the coaching staff are allowed to grow as well. I think this team will grow significantly from tonight’s performance. I would be very surprised if we see a shooting performance like this again this season.
 
tommy said:
Agree. One of those tired talking points is that we were “knocked back.” No we weren’t. We played a veteran team very tough. Our most physical guy got knocked out with an injury which hurt us for sure. But nobody was physically intimidated including all 3 frosh. We just missed a lot of open shots and Cooper didn’t look to share the ball the last 2 possessions.
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Who's he supposed to share the ball with? The last Duke player other than Flagg to score was Proctor with 6:30 left in the game. Flagg with the ball at the free throw line was a good play. Just can't turn it over. The last play, not sure what he's doing there though. Trapped himself into a turnover.
 
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