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Pomeroy

I wonder what our offense would be ranked if we only included games since we switched to zone full time.
 
Topher did that a couple games back. We were around 117 since the first UNC loss which would put us right at 20
 
Ya offense has been utter shit lately. Just mind boggling how we have so much difficulty on that end. Guess it has a little something to do with a freshman PG. It starts there IMO and snowballs to other areas. Up to K to fix this to make a run.

Also wouldn't mind if Gary and Grayson started hitting more open outside shots.
 
The offensive problems are a combination of spacing and turnovers. I think we could mitigate the spacing issues some by pushing the pace. Of course, in the tournament the pace slows down. Turnovers will either improve due to our backcourt being smarter or there's no fix.

I wouldn't blame the "freshman PG" since Allen has been just as bad with turnovers in the last month or so.
 
Pretty clear at this point that turnovers and defense rebounding are the biggest predictors of success or failure for Duke. They lost 4 of their 5 worst turnover games and the other one was South Dakota. If turnovers are over 20% after the first round, that's probably the last game. Duke lost 4 of the 6 worst defensive rebounding games and the others were Pitt and Wake. Again, if that goes under 60%, that's the last game. One reason why this team was supposed to be good was that they would kill in shot volume. Well last night was 71-54 going the other way.
 
We've completely stopped winning the shot volume battle. It's infuriating. UNC is as usual the best team in the country at this, and it's a very good predictor of postseason success because it very much raises a team's floor. If UNC defends like they did last night going forward, I'd argue they're the second most likely team to win the title behind Villanova.
 
It's funny, turnovers were never much of a predictor of Duke's success or failure until each of the last 3 seasons. There's a lot of Duke trends that seem to go that way.

And I don't think it's going to be worth anyone's time to care about whether the bracket is filled with good pressing teams. Yeah it probably would help to avoid that, but Duke's turnover problem is self-inflicted mostly.
 
Yeah I might argue that they’re better off against pressure because it allows them to just be athletes and make plays more instinctually.

The problem in a plodding halfcourt is that the guards have to make several less instinctual decisions based on reading each other and the defense, sometimes under time pressure as the shot clock is winding down. That’s an issue when your guards have shit-for-brains.
 
Seems like a mouth-breathing thing to type, but when Duke plays well, it is talented enough to be impervious to the opponent. Our ultimate demise will be due to our own failure, nothing else.

So in that regard, I'm not all that concerned about the draw. We lost last night purely because we are still crapping out long stretches in which we perform well below reasonable expectations on offense. We do this consistently, against all sorts of teams with all sorts of defenses. If we stop doing that, we will be fine in the NCAAT, no matter what the path looks like. If we don't, we're fucked.
 
I think the fact it will be self inflicted makes it worse. If we play with half or even 25% less fuck ups we probably win out going forward
 
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That is interesting, and it's in line with how MSU's Kenpom ranking has fallen since getting destroyed by Ohio State. They had risen gradually to #1 on Kenpom going into that Ohio State game on Jan 7, and from then on, they slowly fell and hovered around 5-6.

It's an objective fact that Izzo's team peaked in early January this season, which no mainstream media will ever say.
 
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