Posted by ettaexpress on 3/22/2014 1:18:00 PM (view original):
Personnel-wise, hasn't that always been the (dent, because apparently you can't use the more common word for this phrase lol) in the armor for Duke? Doesn't seem like anything new. 

Still silly to criticize what's worked for so long. Must be nice for 26-9 to be "completely underwhelmed".

26-9 and a loss in the first round to Mercer....yeah, "completely underwhelmed" is exactly how I feel. Hood came in as a slasher and left as a perimeter player. I saw little to no improvement in any Duke player this besides Jeffesron and maybe Thornton. Plumlee averaging 8 minutes a game with the limited depth we have is mind boggling. I'd consider transferring. Same goes for Dawkins. I know we were deep at the guard spot but to play or not play a guy simply based on hitting the 3...not a fan, and I'm not sure how he'd ever build confidence. 

No accountability of shot selection, and no to little reward for defense. Matt Jones proved to me in the few minutes per game that he was by far our best defensive wing player. Why didn't he get any more time? Why didn't Jabari get the ball down low? Why was Rasheed allowed to dribble...dribble...dribble....why in every close game did we resort to one on one? Why did coach k wait an entire half before putting parker/hood at the top of the key against cuse' zone, and then go away from it after it was working tremendously?

What happened this year is not "what has worked for so long". It was a team full of talent that was completely incompetent on the defensive side. And as good as they were statistically on offense I still think they underperformed. 

Just a weird, weird year. I love coach k, i'm not asking for his head, but I think to ignore coach k's flaws this year would be silly. A lot of this is subjective, but I really think anyone who watched 20+  Duke games  this year (I did ) would be blind to not critique coach K a bit. 

Noted.  Thank you for the quick lesson on internet message board etiquette.  One might say the same about people who use little "faces" at the ends of their sentences, no?  Seems this could be a pot meet kettle type situation, huh?  By the way, all that was meant somewhat in jest.

Posted by emy1013 on 3/22/2014 2:37:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ettaexpress on 3/22/2014 12:42:00 PM (view original):

Posted by emy1013 on 3/22/2014 11:12:00 AM (view original):
Do you take everything you hear or read literally?  Really, everything?  And thank you for the little tidbit about Bob Knight, that proved my point far better than anything I wrote earlier.  Too stubborn to change, even when things weren't working. 

Boy talk about not getting it.

These two coaches are 1-2 in the history of the sport in wins. Whatever resistance to change they have seems to be very well-founded indeed.

But I'm sure they'll agree some guy that plays a crappy internet sim knows better.

Funny, you're spewing forth your "knowledge" while also playing that crappy internet sim.  And I can't wait to hear how you'll spin the fact that you're wrong about Coach K and Bobby Knight being 1-2 all-time in wins.  Ever heard of a guy named Jim Boeheim?  You may want to see where he ranks all-time in wins genius.  Amazing that you could be wrong on such common basketball knowledge.  Kind of puts a dent in your basketball credibility when you make mistakes on something as basic as that.

But having been through this crap in another thread, I have no interest in starting again. 

K and Knight 1-2 in all-time wins?  ELL OH ELL, moron.

Yeah, kinda forgot about that. Whatever. Point remains the same...they're better than you are.

And Knight could coach a ring around Jim Boeheim in his day. And did, in the title game when Boeheim had twice the talent but got beat.

Posted by emy1013 on 3/22/2014 3:26:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ettaexpress on 3/22/2014 1:18:00 PM (view original):
Personnel-wise, hasn't that always been the (dent, because apparently you can't use the more common word for this phrase lol) in the armor for Duke? Doesn't seem like anything new. 

Still silly to criticize what's worked for so long. Must be nice for 26-9 to be "completely underwhelmed".

So just because it's worked for so long, it never needs adjustments?

Rarely, I would say. When the 3 point shot came in, that was a major paradigm shift that demanded adjustment. Knight hated the proposal of the 3 point shot, but he took full advantage of it. 

But for the most part, a good system is a good system, especially on offense. Coach K has said he doesn't coach an offense; he coaches offense. The presumption being that because of that, if the talent is different, the shots that present themselves organically will be different. Seems to work pretty well when you look at how different his best teams have been. 

I picked Duke to lose in the second round (proper, to UT) because I didn't think they had the horses inside to deal with UT. Aside from Parker, their talent was just not that great. Happens to every program. Doesn't mean the coach did a bad coaching job. Seems to suggest he did a bad recruiting job, which is what you say he's so great at.

Posted by thinair on 3/22/2014 3:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by ettaexpress on 3/22/2014 1:18:00 PM (view original):
Personnel-wise, hasn't that always been the (dent, because apparently you can't use the more common word for this phrase lol) in the armor for Duke? Doesn't seem like anything new. 

Still silly to criticize what's worked for so long. Must be nice for 26-9 to be "completely underwhelmed".

26-9 and a loss in the first round to Mercer....yeah, "completely underwhelmed" is exactly how I feel. Hood came in as a slasher and left as a perimeter player. I saw little to no improvement in any Duke player this besides Jeffesron and maybe Thornton. Plumlee averaging 8 minutes a game with the limited depth we have is mind boggling. I'd consider transferring. Same goes for Dawkins. I know we were deep at the guard spot but to play or not play a guy simply based on hitting the 3...not a fan, and I'm not sure how he'd ever build confidence. 

No accountability of shot selection, and no to little reward for defense. Matt Jones proved to me in the few minutes per game that he was by far our best defensive wing player. Why didn't he get any more time? Why didn't Jabari get the ball down low? Why was Rasheed allowed to dribble...dribble...dribble....why in every close game did we resort to one on one? Why did coach k wait an entire half before putting parker/hood at the top of the key against cuse' zone, and then go away from it after it was working tremendously?

What happened this year is not "what has worked for so long". It was a team full of talent that was completely incompetent on the defensive side. And as good as they were statistically on offense I still think they underperformed. 

Just a weird, weird year. I love coach k, i'm not asking for his head, but I think to ignore coach k's flaws this year would be silly. A lot of this is subjective, but I really think anyone who watched 20+  Duke games  this year (I did ) would be blind to not critique coach K a bit. 

I don't think Coach K has ever been that great at player development, especially of his better players. Seemed like the longer players, especially bigs, stayed there the more their development was stunted and their NBA profile harmed (there are exceptions). So that doesn't surprise me and it's a valid criticism, but it's nothing new.

You're definitely right that this was an uncharacteristic team defensively. I thought they would defend the 3 well enough to get by Mercer (which shot a lot of them in the season) and then get beaten by the first team they played with any kind of post game (which was not an ACC strong suit this year). Turned out they couldn't guard even Mercer.

You can criticize any coach any year. None of them are perfect. But it's not really fair to criticize him for his coaching job if he didn't have very good talent. 

You don't think Duke had talent? You're an idiot. 

Plumlee was flat out terrible at the beginning of the year. To think he didn't improve fairly substantially is simply wrong- his development was quite evident. However, that said, I agree with thinair's assessment of it.

Coach K remains one of the greatest of all time. This season doesn't even come close to changing that. To be fair, he had a lot on his plate off the court as well that he had to deal with, and that may have affected his focus (You can't blame him).

Posted by thinair on 3/23/2014 3:36:00 PM (view original):
You don't think Duke had talent? You're an idiot. 

Two legitimate players. Beyond that, a lot of smoke, mirrors, and a weak ACC.

They shot the 3 well, and they didn't do a lot else that well. So they did a lot of that and defended the 3 well as K's teams almost always do. And they get kid gloves treatment in the ACC, as mentioned.

I didn't have them in the Sweet 16 despite picking an upset in the 6/11 game. So apparently I'm just enough of an idiot to have been right about them. But they were even worse than I thought. It's not like Mercer got lucky. They were legitimately the better team.

In other news, really enjoying watching Wichita play. They are better basketball players than athletes, and they're not bad athletes. Very well drilled and their effort level and precision doesn't seem to change no matter what the score. For all of Greg's talk about playing angry, they are rarely out of control and make few unforced errors.

And of course, the NCAA gets the refs to knock them out. Have to have the 40-0 kids in the Sweet 16. 

Awful. You can't beat a team if all they have to do is get the ball within 10 feet of the basket to get shots. 

Wichita was the best team in the tournament, but Kentucky had the biggest name, the biggest TV draw, and the officials. 

I don't even care who wins from here. This was just a travesty. 

Wow...its been a long time since we could say Kentucky and Cinderella in the same breath

Only if the NCAA is their Prince Charming. Kentucky can't really be an underdog (in a non-betting sense) because of that relationship.

So annoyed right now. It's bad enough that college basketball is junk compared to 10 years ago. I feel bad for Wichita's fans and team; they deserved better, and had a fantastic basketball team that outplayed Kentucky until the officials intervened, even though Kentucky played over their heads.