It’s funny, if we’d just beaten UNC on Saturday to split the season series and the regular season with them, I’d have felt so much more positive about it. Even the loss yesterday wouldn’t have bothered me a ton. That game really did kill it.
Duke Basketball 2023-2024
- Thread starter Devilsforlife
- Start date
Another similarity with 2014, I think they were in almost all the games they lost but never could win a close one.
Other than NCSU, I don't think there another team that Duke beat this season that will play the rest of this weekend.
Weird observation since the acc is Duke’s conference and there are only 2 left. Most conferences have 2 or 0 left (big10 with 4) and Duke played none of them. Your post implies that there are teams still playing outside of the ACC that Duke lost to.
I don't get the tweet. Did Ryan Lommen just now figure out that all the good teams (unless we're counting Kentucky, I guess) are older than we are? You can probably get the whole top 25 in here and only UK and Baylor would be close to us.
Every Power 6 team other than Houston, Purdue, and UConn has now lost 7+ games this year. Duke has dropped 8. I know this hasn’t been the season we hoped for, but that should further help put things in perspective.
Almost every loss follows the same basic script:
- Get off to horrible start
- Spend the rest of the first half clawing back and getting it to a tie game or slightly better
-Diarrhea down the legs in last two mins of the half either giving back a lead or going into the half down a basket or two
- Generally playing even or slightly better in first 10-12 minutes of second half
-Give up backbreaking 9-2 run around the eight min mark
- Spend next seven min or so playing with urgency and getting the deficit down to a basket with under a min left
- Too little too late. Lose by either 4 or 5 points.
- Get off to horrible start
- Spend the rest of the first half clawing back and getting it to a tie game or slightly better
-Diarrhea down the legs in last two mins of the half either giving back a lead or going into the half down a basket or two
- Generally playing even or slightly better in first 10-12 minutes of second half
-Give up backbreaking 9-2 run around the eight min mark
- Spend next seven min or so playing with urgency and getting the deficit down to a basket with under a min left
- Too little too late. Lose by either 4 or 5 points.
If given a guarantee of us making the S16, and losing there, I would take it and run.
Still better than losing a bunch of games by double digits. In theory, a good team should only lose close games.
You could say we should have won maybe 3-4 more of those games. But then you're saying we were almost great except for this one flaw.
It's also not surprising that a team with a very severe experience disadvantage both on the player side and the coaching side would be bad at executing down the stretch of games.
I agree. That's been my takeaway each time I've seen a game this year. Panic sets in, execution steps out.
And our most experienced starter is either awesome in the clutch or a bumbling idiot. No in between.
I feel like our "end of game" execution has been better than our "start of 1st half" and especially "end of 1st half" execution. Some of these close losses are games where the other team got up double figures in the second and we clawed our way to within 5 by the end.