MBB: Duke 70, Seattle 48 Post-game Thread

gep said:
Yea... Trying combinations today. Maybe it is better to work on the 8-man rotation and get that going. But, I would have Gillis court time be split between him and Evans. The other 7 get the normal rotation.
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Chris Spatola seemed to be calling out Gillis, noting that his one role is to stretch the floor and hit threes, and if he’s not doing that, then he’s not pulling his weight because “he is not a plus defender” and he hasn’t really been rebounding much.

If Gillis hasn’t been defending well and doesn’t have the reputation of being a strong defender, then I’m starting to think that we need to start finding more opportunities for Evans, not only for our benefit this season but also to increase our probability of having Evans around next year so that he can blossom into a star in a Duke uniform and not another college team’s. Phew…long sentence. (I had been laboring under the illusion that Gillis was considered a pretty good defender who brings toughness, but maybe his defense isn’t what I had believed).
 
scottdude8 said:
Not our best, but we still held a competent team under 50 points.

Can’t wait to see what the overreactions are in this thread. Maybe it’s the holiday season but we collectively seem to be on edge.

All that matters is how we play Wednesday. History tells us this game probably won’t tell us very much about that.

Next play.
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I think a lot of folks expected this to be a better team than it is trending to be. Top recruiting class, a couple of key guys back, 3 "perfect fit" transfers. And then we lost to a UK team that was thrown together over a couple of months.
 
Duke 70, Seattle 48 (recap, box score, highlights, condensed game, full replay, presser)

A strong defensive effort by the Duke men's basketball team helped secure a 70-48 victory over Seattle on Friday, Nov. 29. The Blue Devils held the visitors without a field goal for over 10 minutes to start the second half and received a balanced scoring effort on the offensive end, led by Tyrese Proctor's 13 points and Kon Knueppel's 11.

Cooper Flagg produced across the stat sheet, scoring nine points while also adding a game-high seven assists and a team-high nine rebounds...

Khaman Maluach and Isaiah Evans added nine points each, while Sion James contributed six points, eight rebounds, three steals and two assists...

Duke outrebounded the Redhawks, 44-37, and has now grabbed more boards than six of seven opponents for a 5-1 record in those contests. The Blue Devils tallied assists on 78% of their field goals, with 18 helpers on 23 baskets.

Duke MBB posted an Every Bucket video:


GoDuke has postgame quotes, including the one below:


“I’d rather have clarity as much as possible, but the truth of the matter is when you have six freshmen and three graduate transfers in a different position, there’s a process. There just is. For our guys, you want to have as much role definition as quickly as you possibly can, and you also want to find the best lineup. I don’t think you make your mind up in November. It’s foolish. I’m watching every day in practice. I’m seeing what our guys do. I’m seeing what lineups work. We’ve had some different lineups that have just clicked in the game, and so you roll with that until you have to make a change. I think, for us, it’s going to continue to evolve. I’d like us to have it Wednesday, if we could, but the reality is that it’s going to be a process.”
 
Seattle didn’t score much game before against Furman (Ken Pom defense 90) but still happy with defense.

Watching this game got me thinking, who is our best athlete with a good handle?
 
Observations/Stats

Cooper 9 points with 5 from the FTs.
Proctor 13 points with 9 coming on 3s.
Kon 11 points with 9 coming on 3s.

Assists/turnovers
Cooper 7/3
Tyrese 4/1
Sion 2/1
Caleb 2/2
Kon/1/1

Rebounds
Cooper 9
Sion 8
Mason 5
Tyrese 4
Khaman 3
Patrick 3 in 12 minutes
Maliq 3
Spencer 2 in 2 minutes

Steals
Sion 3
Maliq 3

Team stats
points in paint 8
fast break points 2
points off turnovers 10
2nd chance points 6
FTs 14-19

Things that stick out: 1) only 8 points in the paint show the team is looking for three pointers. 2)Sion 8 rebounds and Tyrese 4 show that the guards are helping out in the rebound battle. I hope practice sessions are productive this coming week because we will need to be better against Auburn.

GoDuke!
 
Two thoughts:

How is it possible to have a 20-7 margin in three pointers over two pointers in a single half?

How is it possible Duke has had two long and thin, really good players of unusual appearance who look and play so similarly -- Isaiah and Brandon Ingram?
 
gillmic said:
Chris Spatola seemed to be calling out Gillis, noting that his one role is to stretch the floor and hit threes, and if he’s not doing that, then he’s not pulling his weight because “he is not a plus defender” and he hasn’t really been rebounding much.

If Gillis hasn’t been defending well and doesn’t have the reputation of being a strong defender, then I’m starting to think that we need to start finding more opportunities for Evans, not only for our benefit this season but also to increase our probability of having Evans around next year so that he can blossom into a star in a Duke uniform and not another college team’s. Phew…long sentence. (I had been laboring under the illusion that Gillis was considered a pretty good defender who brings toughness, but maybe his defense isn’t what I had believed).
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Gillis's DBPM (defensive box plus-minus) has been pretty consistent over his five years of college ball. According to that, he's a plus defender, but not by a lot. He's not good at putting the ball on the floor, and only an okay rebounder, so he really needs to hit his threes to be a strong contributor.

www.barttorvik.com

T-Rank Player Stats - Customizable College Basketball Tempo Free Stats - T-Rank

T-Rank College Basketball Ratings and Rankings. And fun.
www.barttorvik.com
 
bluedevilwildcats said:
I think a lot of folks expected this to be a better team than it is trending to be. Top recruiting class, a couple of key guys back, 3 "perfect fit" transfers. And then we lost to a UK team that was thrown together over a couple of months.
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Seems like youre assuming a team’s development, growth, and improvement, as individual players and as a cohesive team, stop and can be accurately assessed in November. I’d say this is likely to be a very different team in March than it is today, and it is then we can make judgments about how good a team it actually is.
 
lots of cranky folks on the boards these days. Our top of the rotation held a division one basketball team scoreless for almost ten minutes. That's not something you see every day. We won by twenty-two and it would have been a lot more if Coach Scheyer hadn't spent the last 10 minutes or so letting the bench get some playing time. I think some people would only be satisfied if we won every game by 50 points or so. I also think those are often the same people who post over and over again about how they want to see tough marquee match-ups in November and December and then moan and whine and call for the coaches' heads when Duke doesn't win all said match-ups.
I'm intrigued by this Evans fellow. Looks like he has some potential. I wonder if anyone else on these boards has noticed?
 
I hope our offense clicks better against Auburn Wed. than it did tonight. I don’t worry about our defense so much, the defense will be there. Maybe time for Coach S to decide who that 8th man is going to be. Right now, I’d say Evans over Gillis! I guess we’ll see.
 
MChambers said:
Gillis's DBPM (defensive box plus-minus) has been pretty consistent over his five years of college ball. According to that, he's a plus defender, but not by a lot. He's not good at putting the ball on the floor, and only an okay rebounder, so he really needs to hit his threes to be a strong contributor.

www.barttorvik.com

T-Rank Player Stats - Customizable College Basketball Tempo Free Stats - T-Rank

T-Rank College Basketball Ratings and Rankings. And fun.
www.barttorvik.com
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Tiny sample size but his play is way down from past seasons. Due to his consistently good offense in the past I’m guessing he is just having a temporary dry spell. Also his confidence may be down a bit due to limited playing time.
 
gillmic said:
Chris Spatola seemed to be calling out Gillis, noting that his one role is to stretch the floor and hit threes, and if he’s not doing that, then he’s not pulling his weight because “he is not a plus defender” and he hasn’t really been rebounding much.

If Gillis hasn’t been defending well and doesn’t have the reputation of being a strong defender, then I’m starting to think that we need to start finding more opportunities for Evans, not only for our benefit this season but also to increase our probability of having Evans around next year so that he can blossom into a star in a Duke uniform and not another college team’s. Phew…long sentence. (I had been laboring under the illusion that Gillis was considered a pretty good defender who brings toughness, but maybe his defense isn’t what I had believed).
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He has lost explosiveness over the last two seasons- not sure why.
 
rocketeli said:
I'm intrigued by this Evans fellow. Looks like he has some potential. I wonder if anyone else on these boards has noticed?
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There's been a lot of this in this and other threads, but I gotta say, I'm just not seeing it. Yeah, he scored 9 points last night, tied for third on the team, and Mason Gillis scored bupkus. But Evans literally didn't do anything else. He played for 17 minutes, and he had no rebounds, no assists, no blocks, no steals, and no defense (his DBPM was -4.5 for the game, and he's -0.9 for his short college career). I'm not seeing greatness there quite yet.

Now last night, Gillis didn't score and didn't do too much else, either, but he did grab 5 important rebounds and was third on the team with that. While Gillis provided positive defense, he was a negative on offense on a night where offense was our problem. But Gillis has a long track record of providing both solid defense and competent, if one-dimensional, offense. Offensively, Gillis is shooting nearly 150 points off his career average from 3pt range on a small sample size this season (23 attempts), but his career 3pt percentage is still almost .400. If he had just 3 more makes, he'd be within 10 points of his career average. If think his poor shooting so far this season has been mostly a question of sample size. His usage rate is spot-on with what it was in his Purdue career.

Also, worth noting that that this still probably isn't a head-to-head, either-or situation. Although I haven't gone to explicitly check, it seemed to me that Gillis and Evans spent about half their game time on the floor togeether.

Evans will get better. But based on how he's done last night and so far this season against mostly lower-level competition, I just don't see how he has yet earned much floor time in close games or against big-time teams. Perhaps soon, but he's just not there yet, IMO.
 
Metrics

Surprisingly, this was our third-best showing of the year (according to Torvik's game metric). But that was entirely driven by defense. It was, unsurprisingly, our worst offensive performance of the year (by adjusted offensive efficiency). Seattle is a decent mid-major, sitting in the 130-150 range nationally. They are sort of on par with a bad power conference team. The defense was so good that it made up for a truly blah offensive performance.

OFFENSE
Possessions: 67.9 (a medium-to-slow pace)
oRtg: 103.1 (102.7 adjusted; would be #215 in the country right now)
eFG%: 48.3% (poor)
3pt%: 27.8% (bad)
2pt%: 59.1% (excellent)
%threes: 62.1% (way too high)
FT rate: 32.8% (not great, but our 2nd best of the season)
OR%: 30.8% (okay)
TO%: mediocre% (19.2)
a/to: 1.38 (okay)
%assisted: 78.3% (very high)
fast break pts: 15 (decent)

DEFENSE
dRtg: 70.7 (74.5 adjusted; would be comfortably #1 in the country right now)
eFG%: 25.5% (outstanding)
3pt%: 21.1% (excellent)
2pt%: 21.4% (amazing)
%threes: 40.4% (normal)
FT rate: 66.0% (yikes! The only chink in the armor from last night defensively)
DR%: 76.2% (decent)
TO%: 23.6% (solid)
a/to: 0.38 (outstanding)
%assisted: 60.0% (quite high, but only because they didn't make many shots)
stl%: 17.7% (excellent)
blk%: 14.3% (2pt shots) (excellent)
fast break pts: 2 (excellent)

Important to note that Torvik "ended" the game at 57-29 with over 9 minutes to go in the game. At that point, the defense was off the charts good and the offense was decent. But we got outscored 19-13 over the last 9:26 of garbage time.

In terms of the "four factors", we totally dominated the shooting (eFG%), we won the rebounding, we won the turnovers... and we got killed in the FTR game. The eFG difference was more than enough to offset the FTR difference, hence the comfortable win.

Now, on to probably the best opponent we'll face all season.
 
Our defense continues to be really excellent, however our offensive is more of a workin Progressive. One area that has been missing on offense is points in the paint. We shouldn't be surprised with two freshment big men. Muluach is huge and athletic but is inexperienced at getting into position to score and being able to finish. He seems to have balance issues and often winds up falling. His rebouding is weak for such a physical specimen. He still is a feared rim protector. Young big men often take time to develop quickly and I don't see us getting much penetration where he can get the ball in a favorable position.

Ngongba is also a capable big man but lost a lot of practice time and is just now returning to practice shape. I like what I see from him and hope he gets some PT on a regular basis. It is difficult since it is hard tok play Maliq any findingwd eithedr of our two bigs at the same time since we need better offense and these pairinngs seem to result in closer guarding for our shooters.

I hope to see more maturation from our bigs as they gain experience. I also hope that Jon finds more ways to pose more threat in the front court by finding ways to penetrate.
 
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