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Game Thread [2023-24] Arizona

Who wins?

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SeanMayTriedToEatMe

SeanMayTriedToEatMe

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Friday, November 10, 7pm ET, ESPN2
Cameron Indoor Stadium

Kenpom: #6 overall, #3 offense, #23 defense

This is Arizona’s final season before joining the Big 12 and losing to Kansas every year. They’re seeking a much better end result than last season, when they lost to 15-seed Princeton.

Oumar Ballo is a typical senior 7-footer who rebounds, dunks and blocks some shots but can’t shoot. The other frontcourt guy is named Keshad Johnson and spent his last four seasons in San Diego State’s system, which tells you all you need to know about his strengths and weaknesses. These aren’t floor-spacing bigs. The defensive challenge for Duke’s bigs will be mainly about whether that dawg is in them. A version of Mark Mitchell who plays basketball again would be helpful.

Pelle Larsson is a senior 6-5 wing who shoots well from everywhere but prefers driving and drawing fouls (61% FTRate last season). Probably the toughest on-ball defensive test for Duke’s guards.

Kylan Boswell is a sophomore 6-2 combo guard who is out there to take catch-and-shoot 3s. 60% of Boswell’s shots were 3s last season, and he made 39%. Should be Arizona’s most disruptive threat, forcing switches on most screens.

The point guard is Caleb Love, who is remembered by most sports fans for ending the Duke/UNC rivalry forever.
 
Magic started 4-2 and have dropped back-to-back games, including a loss to the Hawks by one point last night. The Pelicans started 4-1 and then lost their entire team. They haven't won a game since. The Celtics have lost two close games in a row.

Point being, Duke loses today in a humiliating affair that makes us all question Scheyer and the team. This is rock bottom. And then the cycle gets good again for a week or two.
 
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This is a really strong opinion on Duke by Vegas/the market, to believe that from day one, Duke should already be 3 points better on a neutral court than an old team that’s expected to be Elite Eight quality.

National title odds generally align with head to head spreads, but I would think first week of college basketball with a team of all freshmen/sophomores versus a team of olds would present some detachment.
 
Yeah, but although they are pretty old, there's not a lot of continuity. Their projected top six includes two sophomores (one of which is a transfer) and two other transfers. And they're x-country in their first road game together the first week of the season. It's actually a really tough spot for them.

Nervous for Duke though. Something didn't look right on Monday, but hopefully that was just not having Mitchell. And Arizona won by like 60 against a D-1 team
 
StopThePumpFakesShav said:
Yeah, but although they are pretty old, there's not a lot of continuity. Their projected top six includes two sophomores (one of which is a transfer) and two other transfers. And they're x-country in their first road game together the first week of the season. It's actually a really tough spot for them.

Nervous for Duke though. Something didn't look right on Monday, but hopefully that was just not having Mitchell. And Arizona won by like 60 against a D-1 team
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I do think Mitchell is absolutely critical for the three-guard lineup to work. You can't have three guards out there and play Flip and Young together. The guards can only offer so much resistance, so if you have a non-mobile center behind them that's a problem.

This is aggravated when you play a 5-out team like Dartmouth. Ryan Young talked about it on The Brotherhood podcast. He was coming out to the level of the screen every time. This is not something he did at all last year. He's not going to be able to recover if he comes out that far. He's also not able to close out to a pick-and-pop big on time. Obviously, he didn't say all that on the podcast but he admitted that it was outside his comfort zone.

The other thing is that when you play two bigs, you negate the spacing benefits that small ball gives you. So you're small in the backcourt but you still have a clogged frontcourt. Mitchell may not be a high-volume 3pt shooter, but he does offer some spacing with his driving ability and decent accuracy on spot-up threes.

I personally thought Scheyer should have gone with Stewart far earlier. Give Young the seniority start, but it was obvious to me that Stewart was the far better option to replace Mitchell. You still lose some spacing, but you stay defensively mobile.
 
Vague superstitions aside, I think this is a tough matchup for Duke. Arizona is 3rd in DI in offensive rebounding. That's skewed by small sample size, but they do have a big frontcourt. Duke has not been good at defensive rebounding so far, and I don't really expect that to change given our preferred lineup.

Even if you wanted to go bigger to help with the rebounding, I'm not sure it's a good idea. Arizona also plays very fast. You don't want to put Ryan out there and ask him to guard them in transition.
 
Last year they played the 2 big frontcourt but this year they are starting a 6'8 PF who doesn't have great historical OReb #s. They weren't an elite OReb team last year so I'm hoping/assuming that the one game sample is just a lot of noise.

And last year Morgan State, who they just played, was actually 363rd in the country (out of 363, yes) in defensive rebounding.
 
StopThePumpFakesShav said:
Last year they played the 2 big frontcourt but this year they are starting a 6'8 PF who doesn't have great historical OReb #s. They weren't an elite OReb team last year so I'm hoping/assuming that the one game sample is just a lot of noise.

And last year Morgan State, who they just played, was actually 363rd in the country (out of 363, yes) in defensive rebounding.
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Yeah, looking at their stats after one game, Arizona is either the greatest offensive team ever or they played their A+ game while Morgan State laid down and died. Duke has had games like that to start the season too.
 
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