Duke Thoughts
We beat Georgetown 76-67 on Saturday and today scratched past NC State 73-56 despite looking like dog shit for 90% of the game. Those two games are sort of a microcosm of Duke. Against the Hoyas Duke proved that if they are making their shots they can beat absolutely anyone. Against the Wolfpack Duke proved that unlike years past, they can win games even when they aren’t making their shots.
In the Georgetown game Duke looked fantastic on offense and defense so there’s really no reason to go into that. The State game, however, provided good insight into Duke’s chances to go deep in the tourney. First of all, Duke is driving me nuts with their steadfast refusal to stop the ball on fast breaks. If I have to watch one more fast break where Duke guards everyone without the ball and lets the ball handler drive unimpeded all the way to the paint I’m going to lose my shit. Second, Gerald Henderson is channeling Grant Hill. That game looked like Duke circa 1993 when Duke had some good players who were prone to droughts so Hill had to basically take the game over for 5-10 minutes until the rest of the team got their shit together. Henderson has always had the potential for a Kobe-type game where he can get to the basket, hit open shots from any range, and utilize a fade away when necessary. Without him, Duke surely would have lost tonight. Third, after years of so-so defense or good individual defense, Duke is finally starting to master team defense like they once did. They switch well, the weak side defense is solid, and they cover weaker defenders’ mistakes. The only problem is that they tend to fall asleep from time to time and get out of sink defensively.
Non-Duke, and Therefore Lesser, Thoughts
–> This is the only time Duke and NC State play this year despite the fact that no two ACC teams have played each other more than Duke and NC State. So thanks Mr Swofford for expanding the ACC and marginalize a great and historic rivalry.
–> Frank Haith is an idiot. Miami was destroying unc and just before the end of the first half the momentum starts to swing toward unc. Does Haith call a time out to try and calm down his young team, does he call one to try and cool down the unc shooters, does he call one to explain that his team just gave up back to back threes on the same fucking play and both times the guy was wide fucking open? NO!!! He doesn’t call time out when the lead gets cut to 3, but instead waits until after half time and when his Miami team is down 19. Well play Mr Haith, wouldn’t want to go down 20 because that would be REALLY bad.
–> Georgia Tech needs to fire Paul Hewitt. Jim loves to defend him, but he is just plain bad. He loves point guards that play that NBA style, but the problem is that they all leave for the NBA after one year of starting for Tech. So without any continuity, their team has no offense. He is a great recruit and got the best recruit in the country, but again, those recruits head for the NBA after one or two years. And as a game manager, he leaves a lot to be desired.
I think you meant 1994 Dook, right? 1993 they still had Hurley and were damn good. Just couldn’t beat Jason Kidd in the tourney.
Dook is aggravating to watch because if that game yesterday had been at Reynolds or wherever the fuck State plays now, I’m pretty sure State wins. I don’t get it. Dook can suck for most of a home game and pull it out because of the crowd at home. Somehow they get their shit together enough on the road for it not to matter.
Gerald ‘elbow’ Henderson is a fantastic player. But he does seem to be pretty streaky. Last night in the second half he couldn’t be touched. I mean, not at all. But earlier in the game he wasn’t doing shit.
Well the 1994 team made it to the Championship despite not having my favorite Duke player of all time Bobby Hurley. Meanwhile, the more talented 1993 team had a tendency to get really cold so Hill had to take over for 5 to 10 minutes while Thomas Hill and Hurley and Parks tried to get thier shit together.
In ‘94 Hill didn’t pretty much everything with Parks and the often overlooked Antonio Lang chipping in.
To me, G isn’t as good as the ‘94 Hill, but he is as good as the ‘93 Hill and the team around him more closely resembles the talent level of the ‘93 team.
So I’ll stick with the comparison to ‘93, but thanks for bringing up the good ole days …………..
Anyway, Henderson being streaky depends on your definiton of streaky. He consistently goes into a game and has one shitty half and one great half. So inside the game he’s streaky, but overall he’s consistant. Or at least that’s what I tell myself.
But here’s the biggest thing. How is having an awesome home crowd a reason to hate a team? Again, I never understand the Duke haters. Why should we apologize for having a great home crowd that lifts our team? Would it be better if we had a wine and cheese ‘we’re too good to cheer’ and we copied Duke by finally moving the studnets down to the floor but even now they are basically crammed into a corner crowd like unc?
Man, I knew I couldn’t make it through without dissing unc.
Haha, I have no problem with the Duke crowd. I’ve been there a number of times and it’s an amazing atmosphere. I just think it’s weird how Dook won’t play as well at home a lot of times, times where if they played exactly the same on the road, they’d lose. But they come back and win at home (with their patented runs) while road games they just win straight up. It’s a weird phenomenon.
My sister used to be good friends with Cherokee Parks’ little sister in like 6th grade. As a result, she has a signed #44 jersey from whatever year they had those weird shoulder things. I think it was ‘96?
Oh God, those shoulder things were ill advised to say the least.
I honestly think the home crowd affects Duke too. Like if you watched the Georgetown and NC State games, they came out of the gate jacked up and ready to go. And if with all that energy they don’t jump out to an early lead it’s like they look around and wonder what’s going on because they’re playing with great energy so they shouldl be winning. And that confusion leads to a drought and then the crowd amps them up again and they come back to win.
It’s a wierd scenario, but there might actually be come credence to it.
But even if the home crowd can affect Duke positively and negatively, it’s still better than the wine and cheese crowd at unc. Seriously, it’s 2009 and they still have their students stuck under teh basket and in a corner. Also, I was recently informed that unc does a lottery for b-ball tix. So you enter the lottery and then they email you to say if you got tickets. How gay is that?!?!
Trey, we can’t all be Duke. We can’t all have an amazing coach who kidnaps the referees children and holds them random November through March (early March, of late, if I remember correctly).
What can I say about Paul Hewitt? What can I say about the fact that I am going to continue to support him? As I’ve said before, I think he would be better served doing what coach K does: namely, recruiting solid (usually white) kids who will have little to no chance at a successful NBA career, but who can be great college players, the prototype being Christian Laettener (don’t know how to spell his name, not going to look it up). Doing so, he gets kids who will stick around all four years, and they learn to play with one another, and, like this year, they start putting together really solid teams.
Paul Hewitt gets the best kids he can, and too often he’s been burned for it. What is he supposed to do? Copy Duke? Often times I think he should, but plenty of people then would complain about how we don’t get the best players available. I think that Georgia Tech is a microcosm of how fucked up the NCAA’s policy towards basketball is.
This is the first year he’s had the same starting point guard (the kid he recruited to play point guard) return to the lineup since the 04-05 season. So it’s been four years of shuffle the point guard until this year, and two weeks into the season, our starting point guard Moe Millar had his nose shattered (had to have surgery) and gets a ridiculous concussion, and is just now starting to play decent again. Don’t tell me you can come close to surviving in the ACC, especially against the better teams, without consistently good point guard play! Who has done this? What team has managed to win the ACC without a great to fantastic point guard?
I can’t decide whether to be more pissed off about our coach or our team in general. What we need is a PLAYER to stand up and start taking control of games, in my opinion. I hate to say this, but a Henderson-like player who can shoulder the load for a while, to get in teammates’ faces and tell them to play better or he’s going to kick their ass. We haven’t had that type of player since the championship run. If there isn’t one in this next class, Hewitt will be gone sooner than later.
Am I happy about this season? Nope. Does Coach Hewitt deserve a lot of the blame. Yep, he really does. But is it all his fault? I don’t think so. Hewitt gets burned by the fucked up NCAA rule that turns college basketball into a free minor league for the NBA, and while it has been watered down tremendously by Swofford the Swine, but the ACC is still a BASKETBALL CONFERENCE. Change the coach because of a rough patch, and recruits will fly to Duke, UNC, Maryland, NC State, Wake Forest, hell even Florida State and Clemson, and we’ll be on the outside looking in for years, a la Alabama in the 90’s.
Put simply, if Tech can’t make something of this season (and they can, the team and the coach have to learn to finish games), and they don’t make dramatic improvements next year, then Hewitt will probably be asked to leave. Do I think that will be good for GT basketball? I don’t fucking know. What I do know is that I wish we played Duke again, at Duke, and had a chance to beat them there (as you remember, in 2004 Duke beat us pretty handily at home, and then we beat you at your place, which provided the catalyst for our March Madness run). Instead, I get to be pumped about a rematch with Boston College, who the new ACC has determined will be our last game of the season. NO ONE GOT A BIGGER COCK UP THE ASS DUE TO THE EXPANSION THAT GEORGIA TECH…
Fucking shit I hate Tech.
GT and NC State took the brunt of ACC expansion basketball wise. Maybe Fla State too because they were begining to show signs that they could challenge. Meanwhile, Clemson came out the best bc they play the same style as Miami, BC, and VT. Ah, but I’m not going to get started on all that.
As for Hewitt, I get what you’re saying. He is in many ways a victim of the ACC and NCAA. But look who he’s bringing in next year, Derrick Favors, the number one player in the country and a huge center that is easily NBA ready (probably goes number 1, 2, or 3 if they would’ve let him skip directly to the NBA) and some guy named Udofia who is a highly skilled point guard.
Now you’d think, hey great, GT will be good next year and Hewitt landed these guys. But Favors is clearly going pro after 1 year and unless Udofia gets hurt or thinks he won’t get drafted high enough or wants to and thinks he can win an NCAA championship with GT, he gone after 2 years at the most.
So if you don’t go after those guys they may go to unc like you suggest, but if you do go after them they end up in the NBA. Either way you lose them after either no contribution or only 1 year of contribution which possibly hurts your team in the long run bc it eliminates consistancy and team chemistry.
Honestly, the best part about being a Duke fan is Coach K. He coaches the way I like, he doesn’t act like a bafoon on the side lines all Gary Williams or Roy “I occasionally pass out ont he sideline” Williams. And he recruits people that will stick around for at least 3 years. Henderson is Jr but it wouldn’t surprise me if he came back if Singler, a So, also decided to come back. I can’t put into words how much that helps me as a fan. And it’s also why I can’t imagine how rough it must be to be a GT fan when all your best players ditch your team for the NBA at the first sign that they might be reaching their potential.
Carolina has a lottery because there are way more students and students who want tickets than tickets available. Duke has a small enough student body and enough nerds that don’t care about basketball that as long as you get there early enough or stand in line for a bracelet the day before, you’ll get in.
Having been to multiple games in both gyms I can obviously say that the Duke students were more intense than the Carolina ones. But that is the case of all other students everywhere. No one would claim that Duke doesn’t have the best student section or the best setup for them. But that doesn’t mean that Carolina’s is bad. The ‘wine and cheese’ thing is now 15 years old, that was a Sam Cassell quote. It is impossible to make the Dean Dome as loud and crazy as Cameron because it’s just too big.
As for Hewitt, I have no idea. I don’t follow Georgia Tech at all unless they’re doing something in the ACC/NCAA tourney.