It sucks writing that headline. I hope I’m wrong. I often am, but I’ve seen all 34 Duke games this season and while I’ve seen some good things this season, I have not seen a championship caliber team.
Hell, Coach K said it himself when he said that this squad was a “good team, but not a great team.” Good teams don’t win titles, great ones do.
So how did I come to this conclusion?I got seven reasons why Duke won’t win it.
1. DUKE CAN’T DEFEND A QUICK POINT GUARD
The Blue Devils just do not have the quickness and athleticism to keep a quick guard from penetrating into the lane. They just don’t. Jon Scheyer, for all his skills, doesn’t have the ability to shut down speed. The irony is, because so many of these type of guards left the ACC this past off-season to head to the NBA, Duke wasn’t exposed that much this season. Not a lot of ACC teams had the kind of personal to take advantage of this weakness.
Yet, some did. Remember back to the Wisconsin loss? Trevon Hughes, the Badger’s speedy senior guard abused the Devils. He scored 26 on 9-16 shooting. He did that without even attempting a three-point shot.
In Duke’s lose to NC State, Javier Gonzalez, who has the basketball skills of a ball boy, had his best game of the season running past Duke’s guards. He finished with 15, dishing a season high eight assists.
Against Georgetown, all three of the Hoyas’ guards were flying in and out of the lane at will. Freeman, Wright and Clark finished with 50 points on 20-25 shooting. Only 29% of their shots were threes.
Heck, just look at the semifinals match up with Miami. Freshman Durand Scott (a 27% three-point shooter) had a field day against Duke. He was inside the paint so much, Coach K should have charged him rent. He finished 10-15 (scoring 21), taking only two 3-point shots.
The fact is, it could have been worse. While Scott is lightning quick, he’s not yet a great point guard and when he goes into the lane, you can tell even from my living room whether he’s going to lay it up or dish it out. Yet he still hit 10-15 shots. He would have had more assists (three total), but his big men kept fumbling balls away.
Now don’t get me wrong, Duke has shutdown a handful of quick guards, including Wake’s Ishmael Smith, Connecticut’s Jerome Dyson and Virginia Tech’s Malcolm Delaney. Yet this is the NCAA Tournament and the Blue Devils will have to face a ton of speedy guards.
In fact, just about every team Duke will probably face has a flashy, penetrating guard that will give them trouble…Louisville (Sosa), Texas A&M (Sloan), Baylor (Dunn) and Villanova (Reynolds). Even if Duke can shut down all these guys, in the final four they’ll possibly face two of the quickest point guards in the nation, Kentucky (Wall) and Kansas (Collins).
2. DUKE CAN’T PUSH IT
Of all the talk of dribble-drive, motion, man-to-man, zone, getting it inside, nailing the three, the one thing that gets overlooked when determining the outcome of a game is the fast break, i.e. the ability to make your opponent pay for missing a shot.
Like we already said, Scheyer has done some amazing things this season as a point guard, but he’s not a point guard, or at least he’s not suppose to be. The fact is, when Duke rebounds a ball, there is a “wait” attitude, which then allows the opponent to get back on defense. Unless the Blue Devils get a steal, they never run.
What made Ty Lawson so great last year was his ability to get the ball quickly from point A to point B, often getting the ball into the basket or into a shooter’s hands on the wing before half the opponent’s defense has crossed mid-court.
While it never shows up on the stat sheet, when Duke can’t push a defensive rebound, it is a blown opportunity. It’s one less easy shot/lay up in the clear. Now Duke has 29 wins this season, so they’ve overcome this, but there are no more Virginia’s on the schedule. You don’t take advantage of missed shots against a team like Kentucky or West Virginia, you will lose.
3. DUKE CAN’T HANDLE A SOLID BIG
While Zoubek, Thomas and the Plumlee brothers have done an admirable job inside, let’s face it, when they’ve come up against a real meat and potatoes big man, the kind that will make some $$$ in the NBA one day, they get abused. Tracy Smith shoot 10-12, Greg Monroe was 7-11, Gani Lawal shoot 9-11 in Duke’s first meeting with Georgia Tech and Derrick Favors was 8-14 (including 6-7 from the free throw line).
What Duke’s big men could hold their own against any team in the South Region, what could they possibly do against a combo like Kentucky’s Cousins and Patterson? Not much.
4. COLD SHOOTING NIGHTS
The one thing you’ll find in common in all of Duke’s recent NCAA tournament loses is a cold shooting night from the superstars. I mean, we’re talking about some awful numbers. Remember last year against Nova, Henderson (1-14), Scheyer (3-18)? In 2007, Duke’s best player, DeMarcus Nelson was only 2-11 against West Virginia. J.J. Redick, Duke’s great shooter, was just 13-49 (27%) in his four NCAA Tournament loses.
For all the good things this Duke team has done, you would never call them a “great shooting” team. I’m not sure if you can call them a “good shooting” team. Duke has failed to shoot 40% in five of its last eight games and hasn’t shot 40% or higher in three straight games since January 17th.
Now they’ve obviously have found ways to win without great scoring (hell, they beat the Hokies despite shooting 29% from the floor), but in the NCAA Tournament, you won’t win a lot of games shooting around 35%.
5. FOUL TROUBLE
The Blue Devils are coming out of the ACC, the most physical conference I’ve seen this year. In fact, I would say this season was the most physical I’ve even seen in the ACC. A lot of bodies went flying around this season. Duke averaged 18.5 fouls per game and that’s with a lot of none-calls (on both teams). Of those 18.5, nearly 12 of them are committed by Duke’s big men (Zoubek, Thomas, Miles and Mason Plumlee).
Once in the tournament, the ref’s whistles will get put to use, especially from refs who aren’t accustomed to the rough and tumble ways of the ACC. For Duke to have any shot at all, the big men, especially Zoubek, need to stay out of foul trouble. Big Z can’t grab much-needed offensive boards sitting on the pine, so no more stupid little fouls!
6.
