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Game Thread [2021-22] Gonzaga vs. Duke (Las Vegas)

What’s your prediction, if this game is played?

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SeanMayTriedToEatMe

SeanMayTriedToEatMe

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Friday, November 26, 10:30pm ET, ESPN
T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas (home of the Golden Knights of the NHL)

America will be resting up for an epic slate of college football games as Duke tries to take down Goliath.
 
Interesting that Gonzaga played last night (against a garbage team) and then plays UCLA tonight, then Duke Fri. Would probably prefer they win tonight and maybe we catch them hung over a bit.
 
They have a guy named Julian Strawther who is putting up Justin Anderson/Derrick Williams/Sam Dekker NCAAT-like, presumably unsustainable shooting splits. Strawther was bad last season as a freshman (#58 overall recruit, RSCI). The problem will be if his improvement is mostly or entirely legit, in which case Duke and all other Gonzaga opponents will need to focus more on him and not so much on the big whites.

Strawther shot 70% 2pt / 32% 3pt / 70% ft last season. Now he’s shooting 57% / 52% / 82%. Overall numbers this season are 28 PER, 10.4 BPM, 148 ORtg, 21% Usg. His fairly high recruiting ranking, plus Gonzaga’s typical player development, plus the concurrent rise in 3pt and ft, plus the wide open looks he gets in Gonzaga’s offense, suggest to me that he has made a Wendell Moore-like leap and this is somewhat sustainable. Obviously, the 52% 3pt will fall a bit, but maybe only to 40-45% this season.

Strawther has been much more of a shooter than a driver or creator this season (52% 3pt rate, 27% ft rate, 5% ast), so Duke doesn’t need to put a great on-ball defender on him. Any reasonably long, smart defender should work. Strawther is 6-7. I expect a mix of Moore and Keels to be on him the whole game.
 
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There will be a little bit of home court advantage for Gonzaga in this game, not because of the crowd, but because of travel and comfort in the surroundings. Gonzaga will have been in Vegas since the prior weekend, playing two games in the same arena this week. Duke is probably making the coast to coast flight with only a couple days to spare, and will be jet lagged with little experience shooting in this arena.
 
Mark on Timme will be interesting. It's the obvious defensive matchup for K, and putting Mark on anyone else in M2M would be coaching malpractice. If Timme wants to gain any NBA interest this season, this would be a showcase matchup for him. Dominate Mark inside, dunk on him over and over, and he will validate himself.

Timme is taking about twice as many 3s per shot this season as last season, but the volume is still very low and he's not making them (17% 3pt this season, 27% 3pt career). If this game had a million possessions, the easy decision is to give Timme all the open jumpers he wants, especially considering Gonzaga's expected ppp will be 1.06 against Duke's defense (27% on 3s would get them 0.81 ppp, and Timme would presumably be even less efficient on long midrange jumpers). Since this game is not a million possessions and it could be swung by 1-2 unexpected 3s going in, Duke would be rolling the dice a bit by allowing wide open 3s from Timme to start and they'd have to adjust quickly if he's suddenly on fire from 3.

However, I think the philosophy has to be, if Timme is making 3s and Mark has to be drawn away from the basket against a team shooting 67% from 2 (#1 in the country), then Duke is going to lose no matter what they do. With a 16% block percentage and a sub-80 defensive rating (best on Duke by a large margin), Mark constantly being able to stand near the basket on defense is perhaps the greatest hope any team has against Gonzaga's offense.
 
I expect Duke to have a double team for Timme in the gameplan. Mark forces him baseline, where the help defender screams in to trap and we try to rotate from there. Seems to be K's go-to in these big moments (I remember us going to this against Carolina a couple times through the years and against MSU at least once against that big lefty they had a couple years back).
 
SeanMayTriedToEatMe said:
Mark on Timme will be interesting. It's the obvious defensive matchup for K, and putting Mark on anyone else in M2M would be coaching malpractice. If Timme wants to gain any NBA interest this season, this would be a showcase matchup for him. Dominate Mark inside, dunk on him over and over, and he will validate himself.

Timme is taking about twice as many 3s per shot this season as last season, but the volume is still very low and he's not making them (17% 3pt this season, 27% 3pt career). If this game had a million possessions, the easy decision is to give Timme all the open jumpers he wants, especially considering Gonzaga's expected ppp will be 1.06 against Duke's defense (27% on 3s would get them 0.81 ppp, and Timme would presumably be even less efficient on long midrange jumpers). Since this game is not a million possessions and it could be swung by 1-2 unexpected 3s going in, Duke would be rolling the dice a bit by allowing wide open 3s from Timme to start and they'd have to adjust quickly if he's suddenly on fire from 3.

However, I think the philosophy has to be, if Timme is making 3s and Mark has to be drawn away from the basket against a team shooting 67% from 2 (#1 in the country), then Duke is going to lose no matter what they do. With a 16% block percentage and a sub-80 defensive rating (best on Duke by a large margin), Mark constantly being able to stand near the basket on defense is perhaps the greatest hope any team has against Gonzaga's offense.
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The more I think about it, the more Gonzaga seems like a fairly ideal matchup for Duke, as far as runaway best teams in the country go. Not that I expect us to win, but if they were a comparably talented team of slashing 6'5 guards who spread the floor and attack the rim with ball screens all game with a 32 AdjEM, I'd have basically no hope.

As it stands, I'd say it's pretty lucky that Zags' best two players are true bigs, which means they don't get a relative talent advantage by going small and thus instantly playing Mark off the floor. And as Sean says, it's also convenient that one of those bigs is basically a non shooter who loiters around the paint most of the game. Throw in the fact that their guards seem to rely more on team offense than winning one-on-one, and we seem pretty well set up to play to our strengths.

I'd optimistically expect this to be one of those games where both teams look really good because neither really takes away the other's strengths (with the announcers repeatedly fawn over the "high-level basketball" we get to witness), with Gonzaga's experience and shooting pulling it out in crunch time.
 
dukebluedevils05 said:
I expect Duke to have a double team for Timme in the gameplan. Mark forces him baseline, where the help defender screams in to trap and we try to rotate from there. Seems to be K's go-to in these big moments (I remember us going to this against Carolina a couple times through the years and against MSU at least once against that big lefty they had a couple years back).
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Yes. He used it against Michigan State in the Sweet Sixteen in 2013, and he used it in the opening game against Kansas on the Tre Jones-Big Hoss team.
 
SeanMayTriedToEatMe said:
There will be a little bit of home court advantage for Gonzaga in this game, not because of the crowd, but because of travel and comfort in the surroundings. Gonzaga will have been in Vegas since the prior weekend, playing two games in the same arena this week. Duke is probably making the coast to coast flight with only a couple days to spare, and will be jet lagged with little experience shooting in this arena.
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Does anyone know when we're flying out? I happened to see AJ leaving Wilson dorm with his bag today. Wasn't sure if he was going to spend some time with his family first or if they were leaving today.
 
I think the keys are
1) Don't let them get out of the gate too fast. They ended the UCLA/Texas games before half time, and never had to play with any meaningful game pressure. We don't tend to start fast, so this will be a challenge.

2) Be really strong and aggressive with the ball. They seem to reach a lot and are perhaps a bit foul prone as a team. I think this is where we have a shot to win. We've done a great job limiting TOs and haven't been overly tentative with the ball.
 
This may well be the last game of this magnitude we ever see a K team play, and probably the last time we'll ever see him as a significant underdog. Hopefully I'll be able to enjoy it at least a little bit.

I will say, while I agree there seems to not be a whole lot to be done tactically to narrow the overall gap, I am hopeful that we'll be the noticeably more physical team, and a little more athletic. And the good news is, K has generally been at his best when success relies more on vervaceous motivation and effort than tactical genius, and when he's got a gritty team that is any sort of underdog. I'm holding out some hope that we'll get a vintage-style surprise.

I think we'll know if we've got a chance within the first five minutes, though. If we're not able to initially knock them back a little with physicality, they're too efficient of a machine to overcome.
 
While motivation is K's greatest strength as a coach, I think he's pretty damn good at in-game adjustments, tbh. Where I think he often falls short is overall scheme and roster construction. Few might be the reverse of that. He builds great rosters and sets up great schemes to maximize them. But I've never seen him make an adjustment within a game that I thought was particularly clever.
 
But yeah, there's nothing K can do to make our players shoot as well as theirs. Watching Duke get down big to UNC every year is infuriating because you literally only have to do two things to beat them: 1) keep them off the offensive glass; 2) keep them out of transition. And inevitably, they have 5 offensive rebounds and 10 fast break points by the first media timeout. Gonzaga isn't like that. There's no one particular scheme that's going to make them play badly. We just have to play a near perfect game, imo.
 
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