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Duke Basketball 2014-2015 Discussion thread

I don't think they are going to be able to replicate his system, but it would be great if Thibs could help educate K on the state of the art of defense at the highest level of play.
 
You don't have to play "packline" but you can take some of its principles.
 
I will say this about next years offense, Duke lost Mason, Kelly and Seth before this year, and everyone knew our offense was going to suffer in 2013-14...except that it was one of the best in the country.

I'm done worrying about scoring points. And honestly, if the last few years have taught us anything, K is not going to alter his defensive philosophy to suit his personnel. Next year could be a long (and by that I mean short) year as well.
 
Yeah, our offense probably can't improve. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was top 3 again. I mean, Jones gets out on the break with ease and he can get in the lane and either draw fouls or get easy opportunities for bigs. And in the halfcourt, his understanding of spacing is perfect. I expect us to score very very easily next year.
 
Well the argument is, is the personnel different enough. And will the fucking meltdowns stop.

Even just... cutting out the meltdowns, we could get back to a point where we have something like the ~50th defense in the country. I think that's where we were when looking at the non-meltdown skewed first 30 minutes. Good enough for a FF, not good enough for a title, probably. Then you hope that the addition of Winslow and Okafor over who they are replacing on the defensive end, even if just by virtue of rebounding and size, as well as the evolution of Sheed/Cook/Amile's game, is enough to get it close to top 20. Probably not, but I could see in theory how it could play out that way, even with the same system.


Will Okafor be a better defender than when Amile was at center? probably not from a rotational point of view. Will he be able to rebound as well as Amile though, on the defensive end?

Will Okafor be a better defender than when Jabari was at center? It can't be any worse. Rebounding... I dunno.

Will Amile be a better defender than when Jabari was at PF? I would think so. Average to better rebounding.

Will Justise be a better defender and rebounder than Hood. I think we can assume yes, given how awful a rebounder Hood was.

Sheed vs himself a year older. Hopefully he doesn't regress like Quinn.

Cook/Tyus - who the hell knows. I'll say this - Cook and Rasheed were once soph and freshmen starters on a defense that was top 5. Obviously that was because of Ryan, but the point is in theory, there mere presence alone doesn't preclude a defense from being elite.



I would hope... just by virtue of size and thus defensive rebounding that the defense is better, assuming the fucking awful mental meltdowns stop.


The truth is probably in between the knee-jerk "nothing is going to change" reaction and the "everything will work out ideally" reaction.
 
rome8180 said:
Yeah, our offense probably can't improve. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was top 3 again. I mean, Jones gets out on the break with ease and he can get in the lane and either draw fouls or get easy opportunities for bigs. And in the halfcourt, his understanding of spacing is perfect. I expect us to score very very easily next year.

I haven't crunched the numbers, but where did this team rank vis-a-vis other Duke teams on getting to the line?

It seems, from a few outlier games I can easily recall, that we weren't so great. I would hope that with Okafor, _ustise, an improved (I hope) Sheed, and a better penetrator in Tyus, we could get to the stripe more, which would help the offense stay high even if we don't shoot ridiculously well from 3 like we did for the first half of this year.
 
Yeah, from what I've seen he's pretty relentless in his attack. I would say he's more like Maggette than Hood.
 
Childress, according to kenpom, Duke has had 3 or 4 seasons with as low of a FT rate as this Duke team, but I think that's misleading because all FT rates are up this year due to the new rules. This team definitely had the lowest FT rate ranking compared to all of D1 than any Duke team of the last 12 seasons.
 
Which is odd considering we had two lottery talent guys good at driving the basketball.
 
Our most efficient offensive player (besides Thornton) who was also our best player at drawing fouls never got the ball. Our coaches decided he was less valuable on offense than Sulaimon midrange jumpers and drives into 5 guys.
 
I know I couldn't have viewed the games impartially, but I really don't think Jabari got fair whistles on his drives and post-ups. I thought he should have gone to the line a lot more.
 
The more I think about it, the more indefensible things I remember from this season. Was Amile really so useless on offense that he shouldn't have gotten the ball more? The numbers say the opposite. I really wonder if the coaches look at stats at all.
 
Amile got the ball a lot. He just refused to ever make a move unless he was open for a layup or there was no one open for him to immediately pass it. I really think his low usage was more a function of confidence and comfort level.
 
^yes Physics. Oftentimes he looked to make the pass as opposed to creating his own shot
 

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