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Duke Basketball 2017-2018

SeanMayTriedToEatMe said:

If this ends up being our best lineup, I would be sad. Seems too small to work, as Trent is probably not Winslow, Ingram or Tatum on the boards or in rim protection. It would essentially mean there will never be a big lineup at Duke that is better than a smaller lineup.
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If this happens, it will be one of the dumbest things in history and I will probably stop watching for the season.

1) It negates our biggest strengths: offensive glass dominance
2) It takes our best defender off the floor
3) It requires literally all of our playable guards to be on the floor at once
4) It gives us a bench made up entirely of big men, making the glut at that position even more glaring than it already is
5) Our offense is ALREADY #1, so there can't be any useful gain there. And there's no way it makes our defense better. Even if our guards are able to effectively pressure the perimeter better without a second big, the decrease in shotblocking and rebounding will outweigh those improvements.
 
Most of you are obviously big Kenpom guys, as am I. I also realize you guys aren't dumb enough to think our defense is championship level right now.

I was bored at work and went thru the last 10 seasons.

O and D ranking of eventual champion

Average offense: 8.6
Average defense: 8.4

Takeout the two years where Uconn got hot and you have:

Average offense: 3.5
Average defense: 7.3

So generally speaking, you need a top 5 offense and a top 10 defense. 7 of the last 10 champs had a top 11 ranking in offense AND defense. The three that didn't are Uconn's two title teams and then UNC in 09 where they had a defense ranked 18th but an elite offense.

Our offense is so good that I think we could probably win it with a top 15, maybe top 20 defense.
 
They have some really good on ball defenders, but I have to follow the herd on this board - cannot be optimistic about a return to strong man-to-man given the defensive record the past 6 years.

Boeheim it up.
 

Good article by Gasaway on Bagley's ability to play lots of minutes being a big deal, Duke's shot volume being elite, and Duke's defense being ignorable until later.
 
rome8180 said:
We've also seen that movie in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017 with a less happy ending.
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Pardon the wackadoodle psychobabble, but ... if there's reason for encouragement going forward, it's that this year's team seems much more in line spiritually, psychologically and mentally with 2015 than with the teams in any of those other seasons. That's not even taking into account the current team's physical gifts. Many of our flame-out teams this decade were disasters in a team chemistry sense, or they just had weak constitutions, or both. A lot of those teams would've lost a game like last night's, and some of them would've been blown to bits. But this year's team won, and it went about things pretty calmly and steadily overall.

I have no idea whether we'll actually get better at defense. But if we don't, there's no reason – at least at this point – to think that the failure to do so will be due to a lack of effort or desire, or because we have a bunch of pansies. So far, this team appears to be the exact opposite of those things. The defensive numbers are bad and the defensive results have been bad and there's no denying any of that. But despite that, this just doesn't feel in any way like one of our early-exit teams of recent memory. So I dunno what to make of anything right now – there's a ton of data and evidence flying around and a lot of it just isn't squaring yet.

EDIT: To be clear, I think 2016 was a pretty strong team mentally, and I don't recall thinking at the time that there were serious chemistry issues, although the Amile injury and whatever was going on with Thornton probably messed with that somewhat.
 
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Everything in this comment and reply chain is why I despise the entirety of college basketball media coverage. Duke gets "9 true road games" a season, and one from the ACC/B1G challenge half the time, so 9.5 on average. What is the damn marginal difference 10.5 would make at that point? It's such lazy narrative bullshit by lazy journalists.

And of course Mark Titus shows up to give two cents, who runs a CBB podcast along with someone who acts like a real life IC poster. Gee, I wonder if they might hate Duke?
 
DurhamSon said:


Everything in this comment and reply chain is why I despise the entirety of college basketball media coverage. Duke gets "9 true road games" a season, and one from the ACC/B1G challenge half the time, so 9.5 on average. What is the damn marginal difference 10.5 would make at that point? It's such lazy narrative bullshit by lazy journalists.

And of course Mark Titus shows up to give two cents, who runs a CBB podcast along with someone who acts like a real life IC poster. Gee, I wonder if they might hate Duke?
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We played at South Carolina in last year's NCAA tournament. Thats probably our last non-conference true road game.
 
If you listen to UNC fans, it is basically the entire reason K has over 800 wins.

The most paradoxical thing is that opposing fans simultaneously bitch about our not playing away games and then point to it as the reason we lose in the NCAAs earlier than the norm. Fucking idiots complain about us doing something that they are convinced does us harm, which they then revel in. OK.
 
TS9 said:
rome8180 said:
We've also seen that movie in 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017 with a less happy ending.
Click to expand...

Pardon the wackadoodle psychobabble, but ... if there's reason for encouragement going forward, it's that this year's team seems much more in line spiritually, psychologically and mentally with 2015 than with the teams in any of those other seasons. That's not even taking into account the current team's physical gifts. Many of our flame-out teams this decade were disasters in a team chemistry sense, or they just had weak constitutions, or both. A lot of those teams would've lost a game like last night's, and some of them would've been blown to bits. But this year's team won, and it went about things pretty calmly and steadily overall.

I have no idea whether we'll actually get better at defense. But if we don't, there's no reason – at least at this point – to think that the failure to do so will be due to a lack of effort or desire, or because we have a bunch of pansies. So far, this team appears to be the exact opposite of those things. The defensive numbers are bad and the defensive results have been bad and there's no denying any of that. But despite that, this just doesn't feel in any way like one of our early-exit teams of recent memory. So I dunno what to make of anything right now – there's a ton of data and evidence flying around and a lot of it just isn't squaring yet.

EDIT: To be clear, I think 2016 was a pretty strong team mentally, and I don't recall thinking at the time that there were serious chemistry issues, although the Amile injury and whatever was going on with Thornton probably messed with that somewhat.
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2016 we basically ran out of bodies. There was a point in the UNC game where we had 5 players.
 
DurhamSon said:


Everything in this comment and reply chain is why I despise the entirety of college basketball media coverage. Duke gets "9 true road games" a season, and one from the ACC/B1G challenge half the time, so 9.5 on average. What is the damn marginal difference 10.5 would make at that point? It's such lazy narrative bullshit by lazy journalists.

And of course Mark Titus shows up to give two cents, who runs a CBB podcast along with someone who acts like a real life IC poster. Gee, I wonder if they might hate Duke?
Click to expand...

And the thing is that Norlander is actually a pretty big Duke defender. I've never felt that he said he anything unfair about us in his podcast with Parrish. So that's as good as it gets.

Mark Titus can DIAF.
 
@TS9 , I agree with your assessment. And I am glad you pointed out that 2016 was tough. But without Amile, I think that team achieved exactly what it should have. We were not a deep team at all. And we really lacked rebounding. A Sweet Sixteen and a loss to a 1-seed was fine.
 
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2016 maximized their potential and over achieved. That was a solid season given the roster make-up and lack of depth. Ultimately that was a fun season as a fan, once I was able to get past the Amile injury. They had a great 3 game stretch in conference play with wins over Louisville, Virginia and UNC. They beat NC State 3 times, they split with UNC which they had no business doing, got to the second weekend. Grayson Allen and Ingram were incredible offensively and Marshall Plumlee was a great senior story.

The second Louisville game still grinds my gears. We got really screwed in that game.
 
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