Exhibition Games Thread

[rome8180]

Best lineup was Trevon, Allen, Trent, DeLaurier, Carter. Sure, Bagley has outstanding physical gifts and is good overall on the offensive end, but his understanding of help defense has a long way to go.

 

[DurhamSon]

Hope this team can survive with a 6.5 man rotation

 

[DurhamSon]

like 2-3 of Bolden's rebounds were in garbage time against their 2nd string. Robinson actually looked better...

 

[deepdarkblue]

Best lineup was Trevon, Allen, Trent, DeLaurier, Carter. Sure, Bagley has outstanding physical gifts and is good overall on the offensive end, but his understanding of help defense has a long way to go.

And Bagley froze twice with the ball in his hands and the clock running out. They need to figure out how to get him his minutes while still having Javin in the game when it matters.

 

[rome8180]

I think you are being too harsh on Bolden. He gives fantastic effort on defense and reads and reacts very well. Granted, he's still pretty oafish on offense, and even the good things he did probably won't work against real defenders with size.

 

[childress22]

Bolden just simply never boxes out. He turns around and watches the ball, occasionally scooting closer to the basket while it's in flight.

 

[CMon85]

Unrelated but Kevin Knox looks really good. He'll def be 1 and done and prolly a top 15 pick.

 

[aiw]

Bolden just simply never boxes out. He turns around and watches the ball, occasionally scooting closer to the basket while it's in flight.

This

 

[aiw]

Outside of the 3 point defense, I was fine with tonight.

We do have the shitheadiest of the shitheads this year, though.

 

[aiw]

Oh, and Duval needs a lot of work on both ends.

 

[rome8180]

I agree with that. Our two worst defenders, to my eyes, look to be Duval and Bagley. Athletes!

 

[torontoduke]

Javin apparently played with verve. Just like I told you he would.

 

[physicsfactor]

We do have the shitheadiest of the shitheads this year, though.

Oof, those last 5-6 minutes were rough.

Bolden actually moved quickly and secured an out-of-area defensive rebound once, and I shat myself.

I agree with DSon that this team will end up with a very limited rotation. All of the bench guards/wings looked bad.

That D2 team really was a treat to watch. They were incredibly well-coached on offense and knew how to manipulate Duke's man-to-man. You could tell their PG is something special at their level.

 

[bdotling]

I

Outside of the 3 point defense, I was fine with tonight.

We do have the shitheadiest of the shitheads this year, though.

I was fine too even with the 3 point defense. All their guys could shoot 3s. Hard to defend when you play so many bigs.

I wouldn’t mind seeing us in a 1-3-1 or something against good shooting teams, whenever Bolden isn’t in (not to say I thought Bolden was bad, I thought he generally looked serviceable) I just like how Javin and Carter and Bagley attack for rebounds and would still be effective doing so in zone.

 

[aiw]

I thought Goldwire looked fine in the first half. I really liked how verbal he was. Did a good job of directing people.

Not good last 8 minutes though.

 

[aiw]

More takeaways:

1. My "Discouraged" clock has been reset for T minus 1 week.
2. Grayson looked great
3. I love Wendell Carter

 

[childress22]

3. I love Wendell Carter

This guy looked like he could be the best all-around big in basketball. He also got zero votes for ACC preseason freshman of the year.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

I think Bagley’s key performance indicators will be great. Offensive rating, rebounding percentages, maybe block percentages once he gets more sample size. He’s not a dumb ball stopper on offense, which was my main concern. Maybe has potential as a passer/playmaker.

Blake Griffin and Aaron Gordon seem like the best examples for him to follow. Bagley could be a supersized version of them. Assuming Gordon’s early season shooting isn’t a total absurd fluke, these guys both apparently worked their asses off to become decent enough 3pt and FT shooters at an NBA all-star level. Bagley has that kind of ceiling (top 10 player in the NBA) but he’s not going to resemble them at Duke. The version who makes 30% 3pt and 65% FT should be good enough for Duke, given the reasonable assumptions that he dominates the boards and shoots 65-70% from 2.

HS scouts are apparently blind. I don't know why they thought Bagley would be anything more than a putbacks and roll man center on a good college team, let alone a LeBron type. What we are getting, though, is a great role player at the center position on offense. Offensive rebounds and dunks. Not sure if that's good enough to be a #1 pick. Doesn't matter much to Duke.

Defense is what it is. We've seen freshman frontcourt players fail at defense for several seasons now under Duke coaching. I think it's unreasonable to expect anything better than very bad defensive awareness out of Bagley, throwing in some highlight blocks that go out of bounds. If our bigs defend at the usual Duke level, at least Bagley has the length and athleticism to sometimes recover from terrible positioning and reaction times.

 

[torontoduke]

For those who did not get to watch the game live, here are some highlights:

 

[physicsfactor]

Agree on Carter. He looked like a veteran out there. I look forward to seeing him vs real size. He and Bagley were both pretty bad at defending ball screens. Duval wasn't good at it either. Bolden and Delaurier were predictably good at this.