Duke Basketball 2017-2018

[DurhamSon]

I don't get why guys like Titus or other fans are so mad at Duke's branding (wtf do you expect them to do, not take creative liberties when marketing themselves?), which is by far the best in college basketball, by like several orders of magnitude. Nothing is stopping about 20-30 traditionally successful programs from ramping up their marketing efforts. He shouldn't be mad that OSU gives two shits about basketball compared to football and thus would never brand themselves like Dude athletics does. No shit a casual fan of the increasingly unwatchable sport who watches 2-3 weeks a year isn't going to care about Villanova and UVA basketball, GMAFB.

 

[Topher]

Y'all see where former OSU loser Mark Titus blatantly stated that he thinks Duke and K are paying players?

Oh my stars, surely not Duke!

 

[DrKlahn]

How about some good news? Duke has only 2 more early daytime starts left on the schedule, next weekend at NYC (scary) and at Clemson (seems okay, there's only like 4 bars there). And now that they have cleverly avoided the ACC #1 seed, they'll play only night games in Brooklyn too.

 

[CMon85]

Not to toot my own horn but at halftime I said we needed 5 3s to win. We had 4 and lost by 2. We hit 5 and we win.

 

[DrKlahn]

So here is how Duke's looked in the first half of its early afternoon starts:

Down 49-45 to Portland State, 129 DRtg (1:30 tip)
Down 43-31 to Texas, 123 DRtg (2:40 scheduled tip)
Down 48-41 to Boston College, 137 DRtg (12:00 tip)
Down 49-45 to Florida State, 123 DRtg (2:00 tip)
Up 46-33 to Wake, 87 DRtg (12:00 tip)
Down 32-22 to Virginia, 100 DRtg (2:00 tip)

Things get a little better in late afternoon though playing South Dakota and Pitt may have something to do with that. Root for night games in March.

 

[CMon85]

I'm actually pretty optimistic. I feel as if we lost that game as opposed to them winning it. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say we finish 9-1 and that would put us 27-4(14-4). That probably puts us 2nd in the ACC regular season. I think we make the ACC finals and enter the record with 4-5 losses. That would surely put us in line for a 1 seed. Maybe Purdue or MSU poop the bed and we can steal their location and they have to move out west.

 

[physicsfactor]

I, too, don’t feel bad about this one. This is exactly how I felt after losing at Notre Dame in 2015. Once Duke settled down, they were the better team. We just have to hope FTs don’t fuck ‘em the tournament.

 

[sjsj2448]

I'm feeling much better than I was.

That's the number 2 team in the country and we beat them if we had just decent foul shooting.

Also we are up to 60 on Kenpom defense.

We are still growing. Talk to me in MARCH.

 

[childress22]

I get all the optimistic posts. However, I also feel like our guard play is worrisome. It's tough to evaluate the potential of a team that at the same time may have our best frontcourt and worst backcourt of the past 18 years.

 

[bdotling]

Either Bagley has to be better on d or the guards have to be more consistent on o.

That’s basically all we need.

 

[DrKlahn]

I get all the optimistic posts. However, I also feel like our guard play is worrisome. It's tough to evaluate the potential of a team that at the same time may have our best frontcourt and worst backcourt of the past 18 years.

Well, this time 3 years ago, Quin Cook was an inconsistent senior who didn't offer much on defense, and Tyus Jones was known to take halves or even entire games off. Of course, those guys always could shoot. And we had Matt Jones.

 

[Devilsforlife]

I get all the optimistic posts. However, I also feel like our guard play is worrisome. It's tough to evaluate the potential of a team that at the same time may have our best frontcourt and worst backcourt of the past 18 years.

Exactly. Guardplay is a massive concern. For example Tyus/Cook had shown a helluva lot more at this point in 2015 than Duval has so far this year.

 

[CMon85]

I get all the optimistic posts. However, I also feel like our guard play is worrisome. It's tough to evaluate the potential of a team that at the same time may have our best frontcourt and worst backcourt of the past 18 years.

I hear that but at the same time, our guard all played atrocious against the #2 team and we lost by 2. I don't see all 3 of them playing that bad again.

 

[physicsfactor]

Either Bagley has to be better on d or the guards have to be more consistent on o.

That’s basically all we need.

I have much more hope in Allen or Trent hitting shots - maybe I shouldn’t with Allen - in a big game than I do Bagley playing good defense or Duval playing well at all.

 

[TS9]

Among the many backcourt issues is that Trent and Allen need to get to the line more. Bagley and Carter are going to get fouled so we just have to live with their FT mediocrity, but our two highest-percentage FT shooters seem to get there so rarely.

 

[deepdarkblue]

Yeah, our back court existed in name only in terms of scoring yesterday. Trent, Allen, and Duval are all so frustrating in different ways.

 

[rhfarmer]

It's hard for me to get too mad at freshmen. Allen's play is far more concerning.

 

[TS9]

In our three losses, Grayson is 10-37 from the field, 2-15 from three (my god) and has made 5 of just 7 FT attempts. His A/TO numbers are OK in those games, though, if we need a positive.

Grayson has played poorly in games other than our losses, of course, but obviously we're not going anywhere if our only real veteran - whose only job is to score and lead - is no-showing when the team is in tight spots. Now that the defense is functioning, fixing Grayson should probably be priority No. 1.

 

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

Duval is most concerning to me, as I assume Allen will continue to get worse, not better. Duke doesn’t need the things Duval does best (getting into the paint, getting into transition), and desperately needs things he is very bad at (FT and 3pt) or has shown no willingness to do (smart defense, limit turnovers and at least rebound on defense a little bit).

An extremely bad fit for this roster, though he could probably be amazing surrounded by shooters and rim runners like Barrett, Reddish, Williamson and the sophomore version of O’Connell. Another case of player timing being unfortunate - would’ve been better off with Duval on last year’s team as someone who can dribble a basketball against pressure and be a good complement to Kennard, and would’ve been better off with Tre Jones on this year’s team as someone who can defend, make good decisions and hit FTs.

We basically need Tyler Thornton at PG this year, and Duval is the opposite. I think we would be heavy favorites at this point with senior TT in Duval’s place. I don’t think Goldwire is the answer, either - not good enough generally yet, but I assume he will be very good in a few years. Allen is dead in my mind, so it will be a pleasant surprise if he rises again, rather than continuing to hope he is still in there and being disappointed.

 

[rome8180]

You fix him by gearing at least some part of the offense to him. Run some plays designed to help him.