MBB: Duke 76, Pitt 47 Post-game Thread

In his presser, Capel was asked about Dunn’s game, since Dunn was coming back from injury. Capel said (paraphrasing) something like “except for the last play, I thought he did a good job”. Only reference to it in the presser. Jeff seemed very analytical and unemotional, imo, throughout.
 
Metrics

The defense was absolutely stifling in this one; our best defensive performance of the season. The offense had a slow start and a bit of a blip in the second half, but was otherwise pretty darn good. Always nice when you can beat arguably the second best team in the conference by more than 25.

OFFENSE
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OR%: 34.6% (mediocre)
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I love these posts as always and thank you for making them. Is a 34.6% OR% mediocre? I think that is Duke's season average and they are top-50 in the country. I mean, I don't think Duke should throw a parade but it seems at least okay.
 
If Foster was one of them and he was getting shots up after the game, he is really working his butt off to get out of his rut.

While I'm rooting for Foster (we all are), he has a few issues that don't feel ripe for solving midseason:

1) Speed / IQ - he dribbles too much before initiating a play, both his own and for others. He still needs the game to slowdown for him, so that he can very quickly identify and initiate plays instead of pounding the rock up top.
2) Handle - somewhat related to #1, his handle is not as tight as it needs to be for someone asked to initiate. He routinely misdribbles or slightly loses control of the ball, not always enough to cause a turnover but enough where he has to regather. This is partly why he's slow in initiating. Every mishandle is a second or two of regathering, so if he does that once or twice on a play, we lose 2-4 seconds and sometimes some flow in creating the play.
3) Shot - the shot is still not fast enough on the release and too high arcing where it doesn't feel as repeatable as it needs to be. So he can't get his three off as fast as others and when he does it has a relatively high variance (including some major misses).

I'm rather confident that Caleb has the tools to fix this stuff, but I'm not sure he can do so in the next ~2 months.

You look at Tyrese, particularly how he's ascending right now amidst the growth of our team, and you see the kind of development we wanted and he needed. He's become a real dynamic and confident player, understanding the actions, initiating and making the right plays (including some really nice passing and skip passing), his three pointer is more reliable and dare-I-say approaching knockdown level, his defense was always solid, and he's become more vocal and demonstrative (which generally feels like it correlates with confidence, desire, and results). This is largely what we want to see out of Caleb, maybe not in specifics but in the breadth and scale of improvement. I hope he sticks around another year so that he can take the Tyrese leap as a junior.

- Chillin
 
If Foster was one of them and he was getting shots up after the game, he is really working his butt off to get out of his rut.
You see this take a lot on DBR in regard to Foster. What rut is he in? A season long rut? He is averaging 6.7 ppg on the year. I’m not sure what people are expecting out of him at this point. When do we collectively just acknowledge that this is going to be who he is this year?
 
Aside from some (okay, a fair amount) of sloppiness, this was a great game. Angry Cooper is a scary basketball player. Those dunks were fantastic. I was surprised and a bit nervous when I saw Khaman switching. I don't remember Duke doing that often. I thought he did well. He got beat a few times but recovered well and, for the most part, looked comfortable on the perimeter. Great games by the starters. Aside from Mason's first half minutes, I thought the bench was underwhelming.
 
I agree. It looked to me like his shoulder popped out and then almost immediately back in. It hurts for a few minutes, then feels better. It used to happen to Chris Carrawell a lot in his playing days. My only question from this game is why didn’t Gillis see the floor in the second half after playing so well in the first half?
A lack of any meaningful contact has me coming to my conclusion.
 
You see this take a lot on DBR in regard to Foster. What rut is he in? A season long rut? He is averaging 6.7 ppg on the year. I’m not sure what people are expecting out of him at this point. When do we collectively just acknowledge that this is going to be who he is this year?
I have seen enough flashes of excellent play from Caleb this season to think there may be another level he can reach this season. I don't know how confident I am that it will happen, but I wouldn't be shocked if it did.
 
You see this take a lot on DBR in regard to Foster. What rut is he in? A season long rut? He is averaging 6.7 ppg on the year. I’m not sure what people are expecting out of him at this point. When do we collectively just acknowledge that this is going to be who he is this year?
I get your point. I'm just trying to be optimistic because there have been flashes. Also, he was 41 percent from 3 last year on ok volume and 32 this year. His ft percentage has also gone down 10 points. It just feels like he's playing with zero confidence and yes, maybe that's what he is this year. He didn't have a fully healthy off-season which I'm sure can really hinder your growth.
 
In terms of the starters at the end, I’d have to check the time stamps but Jon did something similar against VTech. After liberal subbing and line-up switches in the first half, he did much less in the second half and played a core line-up, with maybe Brown for Man Man, for a long stretch. He didn’t extend it to the end of the game, but, as others have pointed out, we were only up 12 when Jon called a TO with 6:30 left to focus us.
On the debate re Scheyer’s keeping the starters in ‘til the end, the reference here to time stamps is useful. Best I can tell, none of us who are critical have said Scheyer should have substituted as early as 6:30. Nor even as early as 4:06, when Flagg dunked on a drive down the lane to make it 66-47. Proctor’s 3-pointer at 3:06, making it a 22-point lead, 69-47 might be the time-stamp turning point.

But if to many a 22-point lead with under 3 minutes to go was still too early, after Pitt’s Dunn missed a 3 at 2:42, Flagg controlled the rebound. Scheyer might have called a TO when Duke brought the ball into the frontcourt, around 2:35. Scheyer chose not to do so. Play continued, with Duke missing twice and Pitt once, before Proctor scored at 1:18, making it a 24-point lead, 71-47.

Watching the game, I thought surely Scheyer would immediately call a TO, and sub in 5 guys. Or surely at 1:00, when Proctor rebounded a missed 3 by Dunn.

In sum, those of us disappointed are talking only about the final 1-3 minutes, when Duke’s lead was 22, then 24.

It seems implausible to me that Scheyer thought Pitt could overcome much of a 22-point lead in the final 3 minutes, and much less plausible still, a 24-point lead in the final 1:18, against a subbed-in Duke 5 of Foster, Evans, Ngongba, Harris, and Brown/Hubbard.

If — if — revenge is the key explanatory factor, I’d have thought an 18-22 point win would have sufficed. But I can’t deny that a no-substitutes, no quarter given 29-point beatdown sends the clearer message.
 
My brother! I’m in Playa Chiquita in Costa Rica! We finished eating in time but the Internet connection wasn’t sufficient to watch the game, but I did follow the score on espn.com and from what I could see, wink, it was a really strong performance!
Go Duke! 9F!
Rethinking my whole ex-pat plan now...
 
I was going to make this exact point - just phenomenal defense. I also noticed that Pitt was the first team to repeatedly get Maluach switched onto a guard defensively, yet they couldn't take advantage. Held them to about 30% both from two and from three, and as a team Pitt was averaging 84ppg yet we held them to 47.

It didn't even feel like we played our best game, as we had way too many turnovers (14), many of which were careless, we werent hitting free throws, and our offense took a while to get going as has often been the case this season. But our defense just carries us through any offensive lulls, and once we get rolling it's game over.
One turnover on Proctor was a missed call by the ref. How many of those were there/
 
You look at Tyrese, particularly how he's ascending right now amidst the growth of our team, and you see the kind of development we wanted and he needed. He's become a real dynamic and confident player, understanding the actions, initiating and making the right plays (including some really nice passing and skip passing), his three pointer is more reliable and dare-I-say approaching knockdown level, his defense was always solid, and he's become more vocal and demonstrative (which generally feels like it correlates with confidence, desire, and results)
I have been thinking for the last month that given Tyrese’s efficiency and consistency that it might make sense to generate more opportunities for him to shoot.
 
I’ll admit I’m not an expert on the Net & Quad system, and how won/loss margins affect those and other criteria that the committee looks at in March. And full disclosure - I was fine with Jon’s substitutions last night, and he sort of addressed that in his presser (said the game just kind of got away from them at the end).

However, last year I posted on here that some teams seemed to be running up the score in wins. Specifically. I remember Wake had a few wins at home that Forbes didn’t take his foot off the gas, despite being ahead by 20+ at the end.

Others here said at the time that Forbes was trying to improve those metrics, because it could be crucial to the committee come March.

So maybe, since we have so few Q1 opportunities, especially at home, a bigger win in a Q1 game could help our seeding come March. Remember there are an awful lot of teams, especially in the SEC, that are going to be stiff competition for us for a 1 seed. And I’m sure a BIG win in a Q1 game, especially considering our few opportunities, will not hurt.
 
OR%: 34.6% (mediocre)

I'm a stats geek in my professional life so always appreciate your writeups. Understand that your categorizations are directional and intended to be informative, but interested to see 34.6% OR% to be labelled as "mediocre". What you would want to see to categorize as "normal" or "good"?
 
I love these posts as always and thank you for making them. Is a 34.6% OR% mediocre? I think that is Duke's season average and they are top-50 in the country. I mean, I don't think Duke should throw a parade but it seems at least okay.

in my professional life so always appreciate your writeups. Understand that your categorizations are directional and intended to be informative, but interested to see 34.6% OR% to be labelled as "mediocre". What you would want to see to categorize as "normal" or "good"?

Fair questions. A 34.6% OReb% would rate 27th or 28th among P5 programs (79 teams). So "mediocre" is indeed probably too harsh. "Decent" or "solid" is probably a better term to use.

I would consider "normal" and "mediocre" to be somewhat similar terms. As a shorthand, I guess "good" would be like 36% or more, "really good" would be 38% or more, "outstanding" would be 40% or more.
 
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