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Duke Coaching

In years past, in most cases there was always some optimism after every NCAAT loss, because you could point to the returning players to continue to build on the foundation laid by the previous team.

You don't really have this in a transfer portal-OAD era. Losses feel emptier than they used to. So you have to win now.

This creates a terrible situation for fans, who get excited for every big recruiting get or portal get but then they leave.

So when we got the news four starters were returning, we were filled with hope because we'd gotten used to it not happening around here. Now we face the real possibility of needing to hit reset once again after a year we get swept by Carolina and a NCAAT 4 seed

Yeah...
 
Devilsforlife said:
bdotling said:
SeanMayTriedToEatMe said:
I feel like these are the things that are actually telling about a coach, mainly revolving around the whole concept of adjustments. If Scheyer doesn’t hold the right cards and have the answers from the start, can he figure it out? That’s really hard to do in a single game - you hear more about coaches like Ty Lue doing this and Doc Rivers not doing this over a 7-game series in the NBA. But at some point, a good coach can prevent the inevitable within a game with a drastic flip of the switch on offense and/or defense.
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I think this also gets reflected in how once we lose the plot it gets lost really badly. Letting State score 50 in the second half (or 40 if you take out all the late game crap) is one example
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Getting shelled in the second half of tournament games goes all the way back to 2008 WV, I think? It’s happened so much over the last 16 years.
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I’m not even talking tournament just in general. Jon has shown to be slow to adjust even across games let alone in games.

Completely guessing but my hypothesis is he believes in sticking with his guys no matter what to be a players’ coach. Wasn’t that the case when he first started and let Keels take his sweet time? Or not hitting the portal in a way that recruited over players? I think he’s loyal to a fault. Pure speculation on my part, but as a new leader in any field it’s really difficult to make those hard calls. It takes a few years to learn to pull the trigger on what objectively is the best thing is to do even if it hurts a players’/employees’ feelings.

K has had his fair share of getting beat bad in the second half but also had a ton of super memorable comebacks. It always felt like at least one a year of moments where you just yell out let’s fucking go because you could feel the momentum swing our way.
 
I'm not going to fact-check this, but it feels like K gave up 50+ point halves (regular season or tournament) far more frequently than Jon has. I understand all of K's virtues, but I can't stress enough how much I hated his "defense" even in the years when it worked. There was always the feeling of waiting for a team to exploit its worse tendencies and get a layup line going.
 
Still not sure what to expect from him. Gut says he'll improve next year, but then again I'm not too plugged into how good his Xs and Os are compared to his peers. He's obviously one of the best recruiters out there (due largely in fact to the Duke brand but also his willingness to relate to recruits). His in-game adjustments and gameplanning are still a TBD for me. What do you guys expect out of Jon in his 3rd year? Can we get a Final 4 out of him with the projected roster? It will likely come down to whether or not McCain returns, we land a stud older transfer to mask one of our deficiencies, and if he can improve on his coaching abilities when Duke gets knocked in the mouth and is frantic to respond.
 
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Report card through 2 seasons. This is on a C-curve so I don’t have to think hard enough to use pluses and minuses, not the bullshit A-/B+ curve that everyone uses today.

Figurehead - A
No crimes, no scandals, speaks well, dresses well, grooms well.

HS Recruiting - A
Best.

Portal Recruiting and Retention - C (?)
Will be greatly influenced by this offseason, and unknown how much his hands are tied with the portal. Can’t completely ignore how little Duke uses the portal when the expectation is to maybe fill just one roster spot of glaring need. Getting guys who were suspected OADs to return for at least a sophomore season is massively important, though NIL makes that easier for all coaches. If he gets McCain and/or both Roach and Proctor back, this is a B.

Offense - C
40th last season, 8th this season. Underlying metrics not great. In a vacuum, pretty bad by top tier program standards. In context of Whitehead coming off injury/being overrated, Proctor being wildly overrated, Mitchell not developing at all offensively, no uber-talented offensive star… not terrible. But those are all things that a coach is partly held responsible for.

Defense - B
16th last season, 15th this season. Lively or no Lively, the defense was similarly great, bordering on elite.

Winning, Endgame, the stuff that everyone will actually judge him on - C
R32 last season, E8 this season. 2-2 vs UNC. ACC champs last season. Destroyed by DJ Burns. Teams have looked better toward March, rather than playing their best game in the first game of the season. Weird tendency to come out of the gates looking like they have forgotten how to play basketball this season.

Overall probably a B-. In the shadow of K, 2 years in, that seems on track. Not amazing or way above expectations. Likely trending to be Duke’s coach until his mind starts to go, if he wants it. Hopefully the next two seasons are a B+. And then he’s all grown up by 2030, winning a title every 7-10 years from that point forward.
 
I think I'll be a little bit kinder than you and say B to B+. B last year, and B to B+ this year depending on how much credit you give him for the Houston win how much you attribute to Shead's injury.
 
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Around 2:30 into this video, Redick and LeBron start shitting on and laughing about college coaching:



Baffling that the gap between NBA and college strategies is still so wide. My guess as to the reason is that the current crop of college coaches never played basketball after the game changed in the 2010s and don’t have time to watch a lot of NBA games. They’re stuck in the 90s and 00s. You’d think with people as visible as LeBron/Redick mocking them that they might try to figure out what’s being talking about and seek an advantage in winning more games.

I think Redick would be in a different class from anyone in college as an in-game coach, including Hurley. Could be recruit and motivate and navigate the portal? Who knows, but for X’s and O’s and how to maximize efficiency, he’d be the best. He seems destined to make tens of millions a year as the top media personality in the NBA, so not realistic unless it’s specifically Duke asking and K making the pitch, and even then, not realistic.
 
I said this a few weeks ago but I think it bears repeating. Jon’s first two teams simply have not been as talented as 2015, 2017-19, or 2022 under K, to me. Both have featured plenty of nice pieces, but I wouldn’t consider either to have been stacked/loaded the way we were those years, and there were noticeable flaws.

I don’t think the results we’ve seen have been major underachievements relative to the quality of the roster, while recognizing that there are areas where the in-game coaching can be scrutinized. The fucking COVID year and transfer portal haven’t helped, either, as has been noted multiple times. DJ Burns started college in 2018, and DJ Horne began in 2019!
 
The defense has definitely been the most encouraging thing so far - especially so this year, with a young team with Flip as its C.

I do think that Scheyer might be a big ball guy at his core, and not just because that's how he won. His 2-big lineups have generally looked better than you'd expect, and vice versa with 1-ins. His relative strengths/weaknesses make it at least somewhat logical to try and push the defense from "very solid" to "dominating" and raise the floor on O with rebounding, given that you're not sacrificing much beautiful offense to begin with.

One more important category is player development, which has been a mixed bag so far. As bdot and others have noted, the sophomores' progression has been pretty concerning. On the other, we've seen several guys very dramatically improve in-season (Lively, McCain), and the improvement in team shooting is quietly an encouraging trend to me.
 



Oats needles the analytics naysayers in this clip, specifically citing Alabama’s 2 “non-rim 2s” all game and asking if “36 3s is too much.” An NBA coach saying this stuff would be bizarre - the response would be “what are you talking about, every single team does this.” In the college landscape, what Alabama does is unique and shocking.

I don’t think you can even get hired for any staff position in the NBA without Oats’s philosophy at a bare minimum. Which means there are maybe 10 college head coaches at most who would be considered by the NBA for an assistant or video guy gig.
 
Pantone287 said:
The defense has definitely been the most encouraging thing so far - especially so this year, with a young team with Flip as its C.

I do think that Scheyer might be a big ball guy at his core, and not just because that's how he won. His 2-big lineups have generally looked better than you'd expect, and vice versa with 1-ins. His relative strengths/weaknesses make it at least somewhat logical to try and push the defense from "very solid" to "dominating" and raise the floor on O with rebounding, given that you're not sacrificing much beautiful offense to begin with.

One more important category is player development, which has been a mixed bag so far. As bdot and others have noted, the sophomores' progression has been pretty concerning. On the other, we've seen several guys very dramatically improve in-season (Lively, McCain), and the improvement in team shooting is quietly an encouraging trend to me.
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I would say all the sophomores were better. They just didn't make the leap to transcendent. How much do we pin on Scheyer and how much on the players themselves? Some players make huge leaps in year two, but some simply take until year three to make that big jump. Look at Nolan Smith or Gerald Henderson. A guy like Roach made even more incremental progress than the sophomores this year and didn't make the big jump until year 4.

The issue is that we don't get 3-4 years now, at least not typically.
 
Proctor's offensive rating went up from 109 to 117. His BPM went up from 3.3 to 5.4. His FG% and 3pt% made significant improvement while his scoring, assists, and turnovers all improved a small amount.

Mitchell's offensive rating went up from 113 to 122. His BPM went up from 4.9 to 6.7. His FG%, scoring, and rebounding went up.

Kyle Filipowski's offensive rating went up from 108 to 117. His BPM went up from 7.5 to 11.1 (!). That number puts him in rarified air among Duke players. I want to say only Zion, Kyrie, Wendell Carter, and Vernon Carey have been higher. His FG% and 3pt% both increased significantly.

So yeah, I don't get the player development knock. I don't think it's fair to expect a Luke Kennard-level jump out of your sophomores, especially not with the sport being so much older than it was in Luke's time at Duke.
 
Yesterday once again reminded me of how thankful I am for the 2022 run, even with the bitter UNC loss. I can’t even imagine how devastated I’d be had we fallen to an 11 seed to extend our FF drought to a full decade. We’d just be Kentucky without the pair of humiliating first round exits.
 
rome8180 said:
Proctor's offensive rating went up from 109 to 117. His BPM went up from 3.3 to 5.4. His FG% and 3pt% made significant improvement while his scoring, assists, and turnovers all improved a small amount.

Mitchell's offensive rating went up from 113 to 122. His BPM went up from 4.9 to 6.7. His FG%, scoring, and rebounding went up.

Kyle Filipowski's offensive rating went up from 108 to 117. His BPM went up from 7.5 to 11.1 (!). That number puts him in rarified air among Duke players. I want to say only Zion, Kyrie, Wendell Carter, and Vernon Carey have been higher. His FG% and 3pt% both increased significantly.

So yeah, I don't get the player development knock. I don't think it's fair to expect a Luke Kennard-level jump out of your sophomores, especially not with the sport being so much older than it was in Luke's time at Duke.
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Fair points and part of why it's probably too early to declare any trend either way. The other side of that coin, of course, is that they probably collectively improved less than the objective draft market (and we) expected, based on what we'd seen of them as of a year ago. Who knows whether those were simply unfair expectations or a lack of optimization.
 
I think a lot of the expectations were created from the way Duke ended the season -- 10-game win streak, fairly dominant ACCT run, 2nd round loss easy to chalk up to an older opponent and the last second absence of Mark Mitchell. But when you look at the returning players' freshman stats, they weren't particularly good. They weren't in line with some of the players who made big sophomore jumps: Grayson Allen (122 offensive rating, 5.0 BPM); Luke Kennard (123 offensive rating, 5.8 BPM); Quinn Cook (121 offensive rating, 5.6 BPM). All three of these guys were already very good. They just needed their role to increase.

Proctor and Flip's efficiency numbers weren't as bad freshman Jeremy Roach's, but they were closer to that than they were to Allen, Kennard, or Cook's.
 
Now if you want to say that these players weren't offensively optimized LAST season, I can see the argument. But based on what they had shown, I think they all improved about as much as you'd expect.
 
To add onto that, just because they (Flip, Proctor, Mitchell) were returning players and not freshmen, they were expected to play like upperclassmen. They were very much not that. Because we're so used to guys leaving after one year, I think actually having a bunch of players back warped the expectations a bit. As upperclassmen, I believe all three would continue to improve... I would take any of them back in a heartbeat. We can't both acknowledge that we need an older team and then want our primary guys, who will be upperclassmen next year, to leave.
 
I'm not gonna be the guy to want players to leave, but I struggle to see a role for Mark Mitchell on a Duke team with legitimate contending aspirations unless it's a reduced role. The rest I can kind of see. 99% of college coaches would want a roster of 5th year Roach, Junior Proctor, and Sophomores Stewart and Foster alongside Flagg and Co.

I really will be concerned about the state of things if that's not one of the best teams in the country (Top 5-ish, in the 1 seed discussion).
 
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