Duke Basketball 2016-2017

[aiw]

Yes. Derryck Thornton hit the clincher with 33 seconds left.

 

[TS9]

Didn't Grayson get his head slammed into the court at Louisville last year?

 

[aiw]

The guy elbowed his head into the ground on purpose. Admitted it after the game to the media. Nothing happened outside of a T.

 

[aiw]

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/02/grayson ... nson-elbow

 

[TS9]

Ah yes, good times

 

[aiw]

Technical foul, meaning we shot FT. Up 12 (probably), 12 minutes left. Loss.

 

[krsmith16]

And I agree with others that Duke was lucky that UL missed some open 3s while in the zone. But the take away here is that K is of sound enough mind to recognize when something isn't working. But why not when Wake was scoring 200 pts on us? Or in the 2nd half of pretty much every game in the last month? Has he actually been hoping that the players would improve...or that they were even capable of improving?

As much as I've bitched about not playing zone, I actually hope he stays away from it tomorrow. We've beat UNC and almost beat UNC without it. My fear is that UNC's bigs will destroy us on the offensive glass and Berry will hit 5 of 7 3s and cause K to swear it off for good. Then the inevitable will happen and we will meet a team in the tourney where some zone would make a lot of sense.

 

[StopThePumpFakesShav]

We have probably secured no worse than a 3 seed now, at least avoiding the dreaded ETSU giant killers.

I've been trying to figure out if this is the case. One good thing that happened just now is Butler's loss to Xavier. We should now have passed them in the pecking order and they were on the 3/4 border. Other teams to root against are Purdue, WVU, (the Kansas loss today probably was bad for this purpose) and Florida. One of the 3 teams we're competing with in the ACC at this point (UVA, FSU, ND) unfortunately will get to the finals but the good news is that the other two won't.

It's BS if Florida, for example, gets to the finals of their shitty tournament and loses to Kentucky, having beaten nobody of note along the way while we lose in our semis after having won a game against a top 10 team. We should get a lot of credit for today no matter what happens tomorrow but fear is that the narrative will be, "Duke got to the semis, but so did FSU and Florida got the finals" and so we shouldn't pass either of them. Which is garbage.

 

[DrKlahn]

Root for:

Kansas State (leading)
Colorado (close)
Southern Cal (later tonight)
Vandy (tomorrow)

 

[DurhamSon]

I don't know how the committee values RPI anymore but I did a comparison between Duke/UNC on TDD and the unbalanced schedule shit just pissed me off even more:

For wins only looking at top 50 RPI teams

DUKE

WINS(RPI)
vs. Louisville (3)
vs. UNC(4)
vs. Florida(5)
vs. FSU(11)
@ UVA(15)
@ ND (25)
vs. Miami (37)
@ Wake, vs. Wake (40)

LOSSES:
vs. KU (2)
@ Louisville (3)
@ UNC(4)
@ FSU(11)
@ Miami(37)
@ Vtech(42)
@ Syracuse(84)
vs. NCSU (136) - ugh


UNC

WINS:
vs OklaState (35)
vs. Wiscy(39)
@ Wake (40)
vs. FSU (11)
vs. VTech (42)
vs. ND (25)
vs. UVA (15)
vs. Louisville (3)
vs. Duke(14)

LOSSES:
@Indiana (79)
vs. Kentucky (7)
@ Gtech (104)
@ Miami (37)
@ Duke (14)
@ UVA (15)

The loss to state at home is just brutal. We'd be playing for a one seed still, IMO, without it. We ended up playing top 15 RPI teams 10 times (4 home, 5 road, 1 neutral). UNC played them 8 times (5 home, 2 road, 1 neutral). There's no way the committee doesn't notice this, right?? Especially if we win tomorrow (lol).

 

[TS9]

It's also fun to try to determine exactly why UK is a consensus 2 seed, while Duke seems right now to have a ceiling of a 3.

 

[Pantone287]

Honestly, the best thing about a zone for this team is that it forces your defense to be compact and doesn't make your bigs sprint to halfcourt and back every time someone sets a screen.

I saw Chris just tweeted that we have the most efficient zone in the country with 200+ possessions, even with its flaws. I don't understand why K doesn't just try a man defense with those characteristics - you don't need to jump straight to the opposite extreme of overplay man (a zone).

 

[Topher]

Louisville was 17/31 from the field with 14 of those shots taken at the rim against Man to Man defense. When Duke switched to zone, the Cardinals made just 5 of their 15 shots with only 5 total shots at the rim.

 

[TS9]

Our guards will never consistently prevent penetration no matter what defense we play, but we've got to keep someone down low to provide even token rim protection.

 

[StopThePumpFakesShav]

Well we got the Purdue loss that we wanted. Other things to root for I think are an FSU loss tonight and Florida and WVU not winning their tournaments, ideally losing ASAP.

Or we could just win tonight lol

 

[rome8180]

Torn on rooting for an FSU loss. I think they are more likely to beat UNC than Notre Dame is, assuming UNC beats us tonight. It's tough for me to be okay with UNC winning the ACC tournament on the off-chance that it makes our NCAA tournament path slightly easier.

I would have the same problem rooting for UK over Florida, though less so.

 

[rome8180]

Of course, this is all based on a possibly false assumption that FSU will be tougher for UNC than ND.

 

[deepdarkblue]

I'm thinking of all the switching we're about to see and getting mad already. Kennard on Meeks, Giles on Berry. This is about to happen. Even dumb Roy has figured this out.

 

[bdotling]

Well we got the Purdue loss that we wanted. Other things to root for I think are an FSU loss tonight and Florida and WVU not winning their tournaments, ideally losing ASAP.

Or we could just win tonight lol

 

[deepdarkblue]

Vrank will transfer to Villanova and be an All-American stretch 4