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2015 NCAA Tournament

It could be a fear of Duke's transition offense, but I thought Wisconsin wore down in the 2nd half and that shifted the rebounding advantage.

StopThePumpFakesShav said:
rome8180 said:
Also, did anyone notice how Wisconsin went from crashing their offensive glass in the first half to surrendering the rebound without a fight in the second? This was especially odd to me considering what a small lineup we had in. Was Wisconsin worried about getting beat back?
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I don't have statistical evidence for this, but my gut tells me that in general, when Duke played a good rebounding team this year, we got our shit kicked in on the boards in the first half and it was always a huge issue, but it typically was an issue that subsided as the game wore on. I thought it happened a number of times even in the tourney (Utah and Gonzaga come to mind, in addition to the title game). I believe one of the UNC games and @L'Ville played out that way too.
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rome8180 said:
Also, did anyone notice how Wisconsin went from crashing their offensive glass in the first half to surrendering the rebound without a fight in the second? This was especially odd to me considering what a small lineup we had in. Was Wisconsin worried about getting beat back?
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I think that shows just how tired they were. I can't remember the exact play, and will have to look through to find the moment, but there was a stoppage in play and you could clearly see how gassed Dekker and Koenig were. If memory serves correctly, Dekker was even bent over hands on knees.
 
rome8180 said:
Dkst,

I really enjoyed that you pointed out Kaminsky's weird reluctance to shoot from the outside. In general, I thought the team was too intent on executing a game plan rather than taking good shots. They kept passing up wide open looks, which seemed odd.
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It would've been mind-boggling in general that he went almost 25 minutes between 3-point attempts, let alone with all the outside looks he had.

rome8180 said:
It's also strange that after we confused them by constant switching in the last game, they still weren't prepared for it. In neither game did they exploit the mismatches. I think the problem with running a slow methodical offense sometimes is that it's not gut-level reactive in the same way a more versatile offense like Duke's is.
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Exactly. Of all the points I made in the article, I think "Monday night more than ever was the time for the Badgers to demonstrate more flexibility on offense" was perhaps the most important one.
 
Agreed, even at the end when whey were down 2 possessions with 20+ seconds left, it took they forever to get a shot up, it's like they literally did not know how to run a hurry up offense. By the time they finally got a shot up it was with 3 seconds left and the game was over even if they hit it because time had run out.

Their disciplined offense was so disciplined that they wouldn't take a bad shot even though at that point a bad shot is better than letting more time run off the clock.
 
Bo Ryan teaches them not to foul and then teaches them not to get a shot up when they had to have one.
 
Virginia really proved its worthiness on the basketball court. If they hadn't been unfairly been paired up with MSU in the second round, they might have had their chance to lose by 20 to Duke in the Final Four.
 
I'm trying to find the Duke-Virginia game, or at least the good parts. Best way to do that?
 
I don't see Duke at Virginia on YouTube or DailyMotion but the full Vermont game is on YouTube. I watched the final 4:00. This was incredible. Sheed's falling down on defense and rolling under the 3pt shooter to foul him on the and one when Duke was up 4 with under a minute left... absolute Sheed.
 
The ESPN3 link worked for me (thanks).

It really was the same game as the national championship, only even more dramatic. Virginia had an 11 point lead with 10 minutes left, made 7 of its next 11 shots (and 2 of 2 free throws), and was tied at the end of that stretch. How is that even possible?
 



As well all expected going into the tournament, Duke easily posted the most efficient defensive run of any team in it by a decent clip. A margin that if we had kept up all year, would have resulted in a pretty easily undefeated season and winning almost all of our games by 10+ points.


Here's to hoping more of it was Matt Jones and Amile instead of Winslow :(
 
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A big part of it was Cook I think. Maybe the second biggest after Winslow. Could argue the biggest given the importance of the role of guarding the ball handler.
 
Matt and Amile were defensive studs in the tournament. But given minutes distribution, I'd argue that it had to be mostly Cook and Winslow.
 
Grayson was really good defensively in the Tournament as well, based on eye test (and probably based on the numbers, too, since Duke was historically great as a team). Grayson was terrible defensively based on the numbers pre-Tournament. The whole team just seemed to buy in all at once, as if winning a national championship was more important to them than beating Miami or Virginia Tech in the regular season.
 
I thought even Okafor went from awful to decent (though he obviously struggled against Kaminsky).

Winslow obviously had all the amazing chase-down blocks, but his help defense in the lane was magnificent. He sort of floated from assignment to assignment as needed.
 
Winslow was fucking incredible. You don't see many defenders that versatile and aware at such a young age.
 
As solid as JW was as a one-on-one defender, he was really great at 'playing centerfield' and helping in the lane as Rome describes. Such a smart, tough player.
 
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