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2018 NCAA Tournament

We keep them under 10 3s and or Buike under 20 minutes and we'll feast.
 
In their 7 losses:

Washington-Buike played 23min and they hit 5 3s
Arizona St-Buike played 22min and they hit 14 3s
Tex Tech-Buike played 28min and they hit 6 3s
Okla-Buike played 22min and they hit 10 3s
Ok St-Buke played 21min and they hit 8 3s
Baylor-Buike played 19min and they hit 6 3s
Ok St-Buike played 20min and they hit 7 3s

So the key seems to be, holding them to 10 3s or less and keeping Buike under 25 minutes of playing time because Sosa and the white dude are massive drop offs.

Going to have to extend the 2-3 zone out and possibly mix in a little 3-2.
 
As long as we don’t run that 1-3-1 bullshit with Bagley at top and Duval down low. That was a weird and awful defensive possession
 
We are going to have to hit 3's tomorrow night. Against Seton Hall, Kansas double teamed Angel Delgado. We need to have good spacing so we can have multiple options out of the double team. If Kansas rotates correctly they will be leaving an open shooter (likely Duval). If we can hit 8-9 threes I think we win tomorrow. Bagley and Carter Jr need to dominate the glass on both ends- scoring on the interior may be difficult because Kansas has to double. The guards must hit shots. I also wouldn't be surprised if we see Triangle & 2 from Bill Self and he tags Allen/Trent and leaves Duval.

It cannot be stressed how important Duval is tomorrow night. We can't expect him to hit open 3's, but there might be times when he's left literally wide open. if he's hitting early, great, but if he's not, he needs to get to the paint and make the right decisions for others.

Duke needs to be prepared for triangle & 2 imo.
 
I hope they play a gimmicky, triangle and 2. Keep the guards on the perimeter and let Bags/Carter feast
 
Yeah, I'll take Duval, Carter and Bagley 3 on 3 vs whoever Kansas plays on defense against them.
 
Kansas strategy is Devonte Graham gets a bunch of steals while driving it hard to the paint and throwing it back out to Newman for a three and Udoka Azubuike cleaning up on the boards. I wish Bill Self's name was Jack.
 
The more Duke looks like 2016 and 2017 UNC in this game, the better. Praying for Kansas to have bad luck from 3 is one way to win, but prayer generally isn’t reliable. Duke needs to be prepared for Kansas to be about +24 from 3, in a realistic unfortunate scenario.

Those UNC teams won those sorts of games with shot volume. Kill Kansas on the glass, on both ends, and keep Azubuike in foul trouble by loading up inside - all of this goes hand in hand and exposes their worst weaknesses, including their lack of fouling (Bagley and Bolden can have massive usage/rebounding activity without fearing that they’ll lose the game from the line).

Iona was good preparation for the kind of defense Duke will need to play. Stretch it out, use some 3-2, whittle the whole game down to Azubuike, De Sousa and Lightfoot against Bagley, Carter and Bolden.

There are only 3 major conference teams that played zone defense on over 50% of their possessions this season: Syracuse, Duke and Washington. Kansas played Washington this season, and it was a while ago, so the experience isn’t fresh for Kansas. Kansas lost by 9 in a semi-home game in Kansas City, scoring .93 points per possession. Based on their current numbers, Kansas would be expected to score around 1.1 ppp on Washington. Any aspiring coach who wants to be taken seriously might want to watch a replay of that game and let us know what Washington’s zone did well.
 
Against the Mike Hopkins version of the Boeheim zone, Kansas scored .93PPP, going 5-20 from 3, turning it over on 19% of possessions and grabbing 23% of offensive rebounds.

Against the real thing four days earlier, Kansas scored 1.09PPP, going 11-31 from 3, turning it over on 23% of possessions and grabbing 25% of offensive rebounds. Devonte Graham had 35 points on 10-17, 8-8 shooting against Syracuse, and 3 points on 1-8, 0-2 shooting against Washington. Here's an article on the homework Washington did in the 4 days after the Syracuse game:

http://www2.kusports.com/news/2017/dec/07/phone-call-syracuse-staff-helped-washingtons-mike-/

If only K had a former Duke star he could call for advice on beating this Kansas team.
 
Damn, didn’t realize they also played Syracuse. What ridiculous foresight by Self to prepare for a potential matchup with Duke in March or April.

Problem with Arizona State is that what they did to Kansas could not be replicated in a million tries by this Duke team. By any other Duke team in K’s tenure, probably. Just not this one.
 
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Not much to take away from the offensive performances by OK State against against Kansas this season, other than the fact that making a lot of 3s at a high percentage is helpful. OK State won 2 out of 3 with great offensive efficiency and they weren’t too bad on offense in the loss, either. Their only meaningful strength on offense is rebounding, and they destroyed Kansas with 44% and 47% offensive rebounding in 2 of the 3 games. They lost one of those due to Kansas shooting lights out and OK State going 5-22 from 3.

Duke should approach 50% offensive rebounding against Kansas. If they don’t put in the effort to get this done, they will probably have very little control over the outcome, whether it comes down to how many fouls the refs want to call or how the 3s bounce.
 
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The most comparable Duke opponent to Kansas I found stylistically/statistically was Virginia Tech, but VT is a poor man’s version. I also did not look very hard. VT is one of two teams that have beaten Duke since the switch to zone. Carter had a miserable game and Allen went 4-15 from 3 with 6 turnovers.
 
The ACC just doesn’t have a lot of teams that are good offensively without being good at offensive rebounding. So Virginia Tech it is.
 
FWIW, in the Elite Eight Coach K is 12-2.

In the Elite Eight, Bill Self is 2-5 and 1-3 against top 25 opponents in the E8.
 
I wrote this a few days ago, but Kansas did relatively well against Syracuse's 2-3 zone (76 points/70 poss on the #5 defense, 11-31 3pt) and poorly against Washington's 2-3 zone (65 points/70 poss on the #73 defense, 5-20 3pt).

They used Lagerald VIck in the middle of the zone in each game, I think.
 
Slap the Floor said:
We are going to have to hit 3's tomorrow night. Against Seton Hall, Kansas double teamed Angel Delgado. We need to have good spacing so we can have multiple options out of the double team. If Kansas rotates correctly they will be leaving an open shooter (likely Duval). If we can hit 8-9 threes I think we win tomorrow. Bagley and Carter Jr need to dominate the glass on both ends- scoring on the interior may be difficult because Kansas has to double. The guards must hit shots. I also wouldn't be surprised if we see Triangle & 2 from Bill Self and he tags Allen/Trent and leaves Duval.

It cannot be stressed how important Duval is tomorrow night. We can't expect him to hit open 3's, but there might be times when he's left literally wide open. if he's hitting early, great, but if he's not, he needs to get to the paint and make the right decisions for others.

Duke needs to be prepared for triangle & 2 imo.
Click to expand...
I think Carter and Buike cancel each other out but I expect Bagley to have a massive game. But I agree, we'll need 8+ 3s to win.
 
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