Cambridge
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Canes Pugnaces
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Post by Cambridge on Apr 12, 2005 8:48:24 GMT -5
I don't understand your logic. How was this not a good coaching job. The team made it to the sweet sixteen. People thought Duke was going to struggle this year. Nobody expected a sweet sixteen nor an ACC title victory. Yes Duke is a perrenial power, but this was a down year for them. You say if the class is good, he did a poor job developing players? How much has Shelden Williams developed? A lot. He has developed a low-post game and learned to play smarter without fouling as much. How much has Ewing developed. He went from playing small forward to point guard his senior year. And did a good job of it. How is that not development? J.J. Redick lost weight and improved his quickness in getting open for shots this past year. How is that not development? Sean Dockery went from a sparingly used guard to playing well at times during the year. So to say Coach K did a poor coaching job or his players aren't developed is not true. I mean I"m not a Coach K fan and Duke is not my favorite team. But lets call a spade a spade here. He did a great coaching job this year. Outside of JTIII,, I don't know if any other coach in the country got the most out of their talent this year through an entire season. Saying Coach K did a great job is like saying he went out and bought a 2003 Porche Cayenne and should be commended that with a little tinkering he got that bad boy to accelerate from 0-60 in just under 6.5 seconds. Is that fast? Sure, real quick, real respectable...a fast sports car can do that...but so can a Subaru Imprezza. Yes, a Subaru. A Porche Cayenne should do it in under 4. We shouldn't be lauding him for outracing a Subaru when he's in a Porche. I think we all expect a little more from a hand-crafted car, built by the top engineers and the finest materials than to outdrag a car basically constructed of aluminum and plastic.
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OldHoyafan
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Post by OldHoyafan on Apr 12, 2005 9:26:31 GMT -5
Being a long time Duke detractor, I could not resist joining this thread. I think Coach K is a good coach, but this idea that he should be given extra credit for having to play the season with four McDonald's All Americans rather than six or seven is a bit much. Ewing, Riddick, Williams and Randolph were all high school All Americans for pete's sake. Of the teams that made the elite eight how many had more than one McDonald's All American on the team. The guy really has the media psyched out when the perception is if he is not stacked eight deep with All Americans then we should expect Duke to have a down year. That Randolph is a bust like Cherokee is no excuse, it was Coach K who made the judgment on his ability when he signed him to come to Duke.
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bmartin
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Post by bmartin on Apr 12, 2005 9:45:32 GMT -5
Duke lost at Va. Tech and were swept by Maryland. They were 5-4 on the road. They were a 1 seed who lost by 10 points to a 4-seed after almost losing in the 2nd round. They did not overachieve this season.
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on Apr 12, 2005 9:46:14 GMT -5
If you have your pick of recruits every year -- essentially, whomever you want -- the Sweet Sixteen is not an acceptable performance.
West Virginia went Elite Eight with Pittsnogle, a transfer from St. Bonny's and the coach's son. That's a great coaching job.
Duke has a Top Five recruiting class every year. Yet the team was not Top Five.
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Post by HoyaLawya on Apr 12, 2005 10:08:14 GMT -5
In an article (mostly about Billy Packer) the failure by K to adjust soon enough in the Blue Devils first round game against Delaware State was picked apart. Excerpt:
THE CASE FOR BILLY PACKER. Negative Influence by Jason Zengerle
One of my favorite moments from this year's tournament might strike some people as a bit odd. It came in the first round, during a game between number-one seed Duke and number-sixteen seed Delaware State.
In the first half Delaware State was managing to hang around Duke by employing a transparently simple offensive strategy. Every time down the floor, it would determine who Duke's center, the shot-blocker extraordinaire but slow-footed Shelden Williams, was guarding. Then it would pull that player out to half-court and put the ball in his hands. Williams would follow, the Delaware State player would drive by him, and then one of two things would happen--the Delaware State player would get an uncontested lay-up or, if another Duke player rotated over to guard him, the Delaware State player would pass the ball to his teammate who was now open.
It was an easy enough offensive strategy to counter: All Williams had to do was to sag off his man and not guard him out near half-court; but Duke, under Coach Mike Krzyzewski, prides itself on its stifling man-to-man defense, so Williams dutifully guarded his man more than 40 feet away from the basket, and Delaware State made Duke pay for it with easy basket after easy basket.
With five minutes left in the first half, the game was tied at 23--at which point Billy Packer, CBS's lead college basketball analyst who was doing color commentary on the game, stated the obvious: Krzyzewski's stubborn insistence on sticking with his standard defensive scheme was hurting his team. Maybe Krzyzewski heard him, because it wasn't long before he instructed Williams to lay off his man and stay in the paint. Soon Duke put the game away, proving Packer's point.
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the_way
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The Illest
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Post by the_way on Apr 12, 2005 10:14:25 GMT -5
Again. Didn't this thread start off how Randolph was overrated and Duke players are overhyped so much Which is it? Is the class an accurate top 5 or not? If you step back and be objective for once, and actually watch the team play and instead of reading press clippings, you will see Duke was not that great of a team this year. If you think this team was Final Four material, you are fooling yourself. A lot of people were complaining why Duke actually got a # 1 seed. Michigan St. was a better team than Duke. Thats why they beat Duke. Cite seedings all you want. Carolina looked like a team with a top 5 class of recruits. Duke did not. You look at both starting fives and whose was better on the court, not the press clippings. Duke was not favored to cut down the nets this year. If UNC lost in the round of 16 (which they would have if not for a bogus traveling call) than that would be a disappointment. Not Duke. If you look at the ACC. Maryland, GA Tech, and Wake Forest had disapointing turn outs in the NCAA's based on expectation level's this year. Maryland and GA Tech had disappointing seasons. They were suppose to be contenders this year. UNC and Duke finished how they were suppose to finish in the tournament based on the level of talent.
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Cambridge
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Canes Pugnaces
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Post by Cambridge on Apr 12, 2005 10:24:38 GMT -5
#1 seeds are odds on favorites to win it, no matter if the seeding is "undeserved" or not...that's why they got the #1 seed.
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Post by IlliniNYC on Apr 12, 2005 12:21:46 GMT -5
Shav's mom cut his steak into small pieces for him until he went to Duke. No kidding. And I cannot buy the argument that K did a good/great coaching job this year. The class of juniors was heralded as the greatest class of all time?!?!? And Gibbons had Shav as THE #1 player in the country. Having 7 players is absolutely no excuse. In fact, I place that squarely on K. Early entries, transfers and the like are the coach's problem. JTIII - that was a great coaching job. Same goes for Al Skinner. And I would of course throw in Bruce Weber...but K? Sorry, not this year.
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hoyarooter
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Post by hoyarooter on Apr 12, 2005 12:36:40 GMT -5
Every year there are highly rated kids who turn out to not be what they are built up to be. Shavlik "Stiff" Randolph is the poster boy for this group. Either the kid completely lost his game when he arrived on campus, or he is Exhibit A that the pundits who rate these kids coming out of high school are making educated guesses at best. Plus, there are always kids who don't even crack the top 100 who turn out to be excellent players. See Green, Jeff and Dixon, Juan. Also, I think, Smith, Joe.
As for Coach Kryschazewski, I don't think his recruiting team is all that great. He has his pick of everybody, and he ends up with plenty of McDonald's All-Americans who ride the pine, particularly big guys.
By the way, comparing Randolph to Cherokee Parks is an insult to Parks. He was a WAY better college player than Randolph has been (even though he was no great shakes).
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Post by TrueHoyaBlue on Apr 12, 2005 13:50:13 GMT -5
Again. Didn't this thread start off how Randolph was overrated and Duke players are overhyped so much Which is it? Is the class an accurate top 5 or not? If you step back and be objective for once, and actually watch the team play and instead of reading press clippings, you will see Duke was not that great of a team this year. If you think this team was Final Four material, you are fooling yourself. A lot of people were complaining why Duke actually got a # 1 seed. Michigan St. was a better team than Duke. Thats why they beat Duke. Cite seedings all you want. Carolina looked like a team with a top 5 class of recruits. Duke did not. You look at both starting fives and whose was better on the court, not the press clippings. Duke was not favored to cut down the nets this year. If UNC lost in the round of 16 (which they would have if not for a bogus traveling call) than that would be a disappointment. Not Duke. If you look at the ACC. Maryland, GA Tech, and Wake Forest had disapointing turn outs in the NCAA's based on expectation level's this year. Maryland and GA Tech had disappointing seasons. They were suppose to be contenders this year. UNC and Duke finished how they were suppose to finish in the tournament based on the level of talent. Not that I expect a logical response, but what are you trying to say, the_way? That the players are overhyped? Or that they're not? The fact is, Duke had a number of All-American high school players on their roster. Did they have the most in the country, I don't know, but I would be willing to bet they're in the top 5 on that count (with many of their AA's not freshman, so that rules out the inexperience argument). Michigan State had a bunch of kids from Flint. If Michigan State was a better team than Duke, it had a lot more to do with coaching than with incoming talent. Did coach K do a good coaching job? If he had won a championship with the "greatest shooter in the history of basketball ever," then it might classify as a good job in the sense that Phil Jackson has done a lot of good coaching job. With the amount of talent in Duke's lineup, one might argue that Coach K did a "good" coaching job (though I would argue against that). There is no justification with the talent level, that this could be considered a "great" coaching job.
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Post by showcase on Apr 14, 2005 13:22:16 GMT -5
The Maryland board has it on good authority that Shav is declaring for the WNBA draft...
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