Let’s Not Go Overboard with the Demise of Duke
College Basketball March 24th. 2008, 12:16pm
Plucky Davidson (and to a much lesser extent, Western Kentucky) kind of stampeded all the expected schadenfreude that was to be directed at Duke this morning following a second-half collapse against West Virginia Saturday. We suspect that after the Stephen Curry lovefest subsides, the claws will come out for the most hated basketball program in the country.
Two consecutive early March exits. No Final Four appearances since 2004! No title since 2001! The sky is falling Durham – the Blue Devils are the new Yankees! Somebody owns FireCoachK.com! (But that may have been gobbled up by Duke long ago to prevent such suchery, who knows.) Their recruits suuuuuuuuuck!
How much will they regret the obvious package deal of Luol Deng (who stayed just one year) and this guy, who never plays? How weak is the sophomore class of Steve Johnson, our main man Jon Scheyer, underwhelming Lance Thomas and Brian Zoubek?
So help’s on the way, right? Uh, no. Coach K has inked just two players for next year, one a lightly-regarded PF from Nevada, and one a scoring machine who plays – obviously – shooting guard. So Gerald Henderson and Kyle Singler, it’s on you two. Bon channce! Enjoy the standard 20-25 wins, 10-12 in the ACC, and another early-round ouster!
Man Up Monday (Us Versus Them)
Duke finds the other edge of the sword not to their liking (Casey’s Clipboard and Wally’s World)
61 Responses to “Let’s Not Go Overboard with the Demise of Duke”
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March 24th, 2008 at 12:18 PM
It’s time to fire Coach K.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:19 PM
I’ve always thought that Duke gets exceedingly overemotional during the regular season. Without a doubt, they have played better in the regular season (with some admittedly brutal schedules) than anyone else. They dominate time after time at Cameron. The problem is, they don’t get that home court advantage in the tournament (and only half of the favoritism from officials). They have nobody to turn to emotionally when things don’t go their way in the tourney.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:21 PM
could the acc just be vastly overrated, thus duke really wasn’t that good?
i saw the acc tournament in tampa last year. all my life all i ever heard was how acc basketball was just short of god. i was stunned. aside from carolina, it was brutal, miserably basketball.
carolina appears to be solid. but really, is the acc that good? doesn’t seem to be. thus, we really shouldn’t be surprised about duke getting bounced this early (nor clemson).
March 24th, 2008 at 12:22 PM
I guarantee you we’ll be having this exact same conversation next year. Duke will again get a 2 seed, they’ll again lose in the 2nd round, and the sky will again be falling.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:22 PM
Czaban made the point this morning that Duke is now a glorified mid-major program largely due to their lily white roster. I’m not a big fan of bringing race into the discussion, but there’s probably something to what Czabe had to say in that Duke just doesn’t have a terribly big or athletic squad.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:24 PM
@412: Ha, interesting… I remember seeing Drake and thinking, “Who are these guys, Duke Lite?”
March 24th, 2008 at 12:24 PM
Duke has been overrated the past couple years. One key reason to that, ESPN and all there hype they do about them every single year.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:28 PM
I am not going to buy into this. Duke is a good squad. They had a bad day and shot poorly. I don’t know if this was because of good defense or what, but I think Duke is a good team that just had a bad day.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:30 PM
fuck this…LET’S GO OVERBOARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
coach k shouldnt just be fired, he should be publicly executed. that or fed a wheel of cheese and NOT have fresh newspaper put down in his cage. and don’t even begin to think about that new hamster wheel he’s been pining for.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:30 PM
please. that’s a reach (by a terrapins homer and nba guy btw). i’m no duke fan at all but they’re hardly a mid-major team.
overrated? yes.
mid-major? com’on.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:30 PM
agree with irish.. they’ve been overrated for a few years.. they have no post game (zoubeck doesnt count) and all they do is shoot jump shots.. not to mention they are not athletic at all.. just a blah team.. seem like a 6 seed to me
March 24th, 2008 at 12:30 PM
@pki- no they didnt have a bad day, they got beat by a better team. I guess you didnt see or hear Joe Alexanders comment about if Duke were to play in the Big East. He said they would be middle pf the pack every year, and i believe that. Fuck Duke
March 24th, 2008 at 12:32 PM
why are they gonna recruit a guy whose name is olek shizz
March 24th, 2008 at 12:34 PM
jason…same reason Ten. recruited a guy who’s name was ‘Chism.’
March 24th, 2008 at 12:34 PM
tend to agree a mid-major is a bit of a harsh label for Duke. They’ve had 2 down years, but let’s not forget, you’re not really ‘down’ when you’re 22-1 at one point. Even against a down year in the ACC.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:35 PM
2002: 29-4, S16
2003: 26-7, S16
2004: 31-6, FF
2005: 27-6, S16
2006: 32-4, S16
2007: 22-11, 1st round
2008: 28-6, 2nd round
They’ve come up short in the tourney, definitely, but that resume the last seven years sure screams Top 10 Program to me.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:36 PM
This is what I’ve been harping on for a while – we need Duke to make Final Four/title game appearance every 3-4 years just so we can keep the hate factor at the proper level in the vial.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:36 PM
Kyle Singler started out the year well, but good to see he sucks during tourney time. Talk about a decrease in production from the start of the season to the end of the season. And this big guy ZUBAK,he sucks as well.
it would be nice to see Greg Paulus play areana league football and see him get crushed into the boards every other play. He sure as hell wont play in the NBA. Look where Dukes greatest player ever is, sitting on the orlando magic bench collecting dust. Duke sucks
March 24th, 2008 at 12:38 PM
It always makes me happy when Duke loses in the tourney.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:38 PM
christian laettner is on orlando now?
March 24th, 2008 at 12:38 PM
slow clap for Spencer. The cheese wheel part made me laugh out loud in my office.
I agree with 412 that there might be something to that discussion, but since it involves race and athletic assumptions thereof, it’s automatically a dicey subject. The bottom line with Duke is that they live and die by spot up shooting and when the 15-20 footers aren’t dropping, they’re in huge trouble because they haven’t had much of an inside game since Cherokee Parks (which explains much about Duke as a program by itself). I’m starting to wonder if Coach K is the Jeff Tedford of college basketball: builds great one dimensionally talented players but inculcates them with bad habits that lead to abysmal pro careers. David Carr=Christian Laettner? Not the best comparison perhaps…
March 24th, 2008 at 12:40 PM
christian Laetnner is making out with Brian Davis somewhere
March 24th, 2008 at 12:42 PM
BTW, Tiger is absolutely pummeling John Daly’s gut to the tune of 78 to 22%.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:42 PM
@Irish: I don’t like that argument of “if that team was in this conference” because when it comes tournament time, that shit goes out the window. The Big10 was supposed to be very weak this year, and yet 2/3 teams are still in it and are looking strong. Duke is in the ACC and plays the style of ACC basketball.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:42 PM
its pretty good tho.
i prefer thinking of them as PSU running backs. dominant in college, drafted WAY too high, pretty fuckin awful in the pros.
j. williams = ki jana carter (who knows? couldve bucked the trend)
trajan langdon = curtis enis
elton brand/boozer = larry johnson (the glorious exception ultimately doomed to disappoint)
March 24th, 2008 at 12:43 PM
Everybody dogs the ACC yet every year when the Big 10 ACC challenge is played the ACC wins the majority of those games. Top to bottom their 12 is better than anyone except maybe the PAC 10. The Big East teams feed off of Seton Hall, Rutgers, Central FL., etc. The worst teams in the ACC would be at or near .500 in any conference in the league.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:44 PM
yeah it all matters at tourney time/playoff time huh, well they cant come through when it counts no matter what conference they play in
March 24th, 2008 at 12:44 PM
SONYA CURRY > DUKE BASKETBALL
March 24th, 2008 at 12:44 PM
Grant Hill, whom Coach K describes as the greatest player he has ever coached, wasn’t too bad either. Reddick was basically Jerry McNamara with the benefit of the ESPN hype machine.
Look, Duke’s team is built of the PHX style of offense now. They rely on 3’s to win and they tend to be tired around tourney time and get beat when the 3s stop dropping. Is anyone really shocked by this?
March 24th, 2008 at 12:45 PM
@irish: you completely missed my point.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:49 PM
I’ve said for years that Duke AND UNC are done a disservice by ACC refs during the regular season. Any contact whatsoever elicits a foul call on the opponent, but in the tourney the game is called much more evenly.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:49 PM
@pki- was your point for me to agree that the Big ten is a good conference?
March 24th, 2008 at 12:49 PM
It’s just like the fricking Yankees when they lost to Cleveland. The story is that Duke lost, not West Virginia won. Duke losing is getting more press than the 16 teams that won, combined. Please, God, make it stop. And you wonder why people in West Virginia have a complex. They win BCS bowl games and reach Sweet 16s on a regular basis and still lose their coaches to a “better” program. Now they beat Duke and Duke is still a bigger story than them.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:51 PM
http://www.fireshashefski.com is still open. They can’t fire that guy. He is Duke basketball. And in turn, Duke basketball collectively amounts to a geeky white guy no one wants to hang out with. Regardless of the ethnicity of the players.
BostonCanSuckIt is the greatest name ever. If Boston were a person, he’d smell bad and wear sweatpants everywhere.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:53 PM
@pki- what is your definition of ACC basketball then? if you think running a Phoenix Suns style offense is ACC basketball please let me know
March 24th, 2008 at 12:55 PM
I am not a Duke fan…I hate Duke and UNC…sick of them both…BUT…Duke’s problem is inherent to being a top Academic institution…a few years ago Coach K went out and got Brand, Maggette, Deng and players like that…they left early and supposedly the powers that be were not happy about that…they want Shane Battier/Grant Hill types…Really good players that stay 4 years…so if you have noticed over the last 3 or 4 years Coach K has not gone out and recruited the big player if he knows they are going to leave..and that of course leaves his team lacking (and I think anyone who wasn’t Josh McRoberts was shocked he left early)
March 24th, 2008 at 12:58 PM
+1 to Chitwood…
The ACC officiating falls all over Duke and, to an extent, Carolina during the regular season. It really has kicked Duke around in the last 5 years or so when it comes tourney time and they don’t get the same breaks.
The pressure defense with sub-par athletes won’t work when you get called for the fouls that the commit all year. Also, the charges while standing directly underneath the basket don’t get called in the tournament either. That is a huge part of the Duke defense when they have no size.
The 3 point offense only works when the team is shooting well. Alas, come March, playing a 3 man bench, the legs get tired and the shots stop falling. Cameron is a great weapon for them, but they are effectively neutered come March when they lose that advantage (and the striped advantage too).
March 24th, 2008 at 1:01 PM
@irish: My point was that no matter how good your conference was ranked in the season, come tourney time that goes out the window. The Big East was supposed to be a powerhouse conference this year and as soon as the tourney started, their teams started dropping.
I think that the difference between the ACC and Big East is that the ACC is more of a finesse/shooters type conference while the Big East is a gritty blue collar type basketball.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:02 PM
@Jay you are absolutley right. WVU should be getting more hype. They consistently have a good program with solid players who don’t get on anyone’s top 100 recruits. Huggins will have them as a top 10 program in two years. You might not like the players as much though.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:02 PM
@pki-so how would you compare the Big East to the Big Ten? when i think of the Big Ten, i think blue collar, hustling type players.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:07 PM
I think that the big10 does have more in common to the Big East than the ACC. I went with the Big East because there is such a stark contrast between the two and the Big East was hyped up so much during the regular season.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:09 PM
Yeah, J Style, it’s not like West Virginia has made it out of the Sweet Sixteen more recently than Duke or anything. How dare they demand respect and attention
March 24th, 2008 at 1:10 PM
@pki- i totally agree with your point. But most of that hype was for Georgetown. I am not a big fan of Georgetown, but i think they were over hyped all year.
sorry i misunderstood ya
March 24th, 2008 at 1:12 PM
@irish: don’t forget about Uconn and Pitt. I know Uconn lost a valuable player, but that shouldn’t have mattered against a weak opponent like SD.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:14 PM
@pki- i saw that entire game. I think the injury played a key role whether you think so or not. I like Pitt though, the Mike Cook injury was huge to them. Its the competition they play though in conference. There is no greater in conferece competition out there to me than the Big East.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:17 PM
Mid-Major, really?
Don’t you think maybe the standards are a little high?
Look at all the championships since Duke last won their title in 2001.
2002 – Maryland, one sweet 16, two second rounds and three NITs.
2003 – Syracuse, one sweet 16, lost in first round, followed by three straight missed tournaments.
2004 – Connecticut, Lost in second round, lost to George Mason in the Elite Eight and lost in the first round this season.
2005 – North Carolina – Lost in the second round and then the elite eight to George Mason.
2006/2007 – After back-to-back titles, they missed the tournament.
Outside of North Carolina (who will probably make it to the final four this season), no past champion has done well recently. In fact, no team has returned to the final four (except for the Gators last year) and only UNC appears to be the team that will do it again soon.
Two things:
A) Gerald Henderson is part of that second-year class.
B) Duke went after and failed to get Patrick Patterson. Forget his injury for a second, but if Duke landed Patterson, Duke is back to elite status.
The two failures of Duke have been debt (never getting a legit third option during the Redick/Williams years) and failing to land that big man; Sheldon, Brand, Battier, Boozer.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:18 PM
Does someone own FireCoachWojo.com?
March 24th, 2008 at 1:19 PM
I forgot the second thing, sorry. Whether Coach K is not looking guys who will leave early or not (he’s never said that, so we assume), but Duke has lacked the elite players.
What Duke will have the next two years though, is probably the most experienced team in the league, since none will probably leave early.
Of course none of it matters if they can’t land a big.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:21 PM
@ Roman – I agree with you. While it would be niave to say that Duke has the same academic standards for both athletes and non-athletes, I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that they shy away from the kids with big red flags surrounding them.
You see it all the time with the “big-time” programs that try to have it both ways. Boston College football, Stanford basketball, Notre Dame football (lately, like past 10 years).
March 24th, 2008 at 1:28 PM
Dean Smith won 3 titles in 40 years. Same with Knight. Roy Williams has one in 25 years. Boheim 1 in 35 years.
It’s real hard to win titles every year and make the Final Four every year.
Its about having a program that is in the top 10 every year and makes the tourney. That’s Duke.
Every single program in the country would trade places with Coach K and Duke right now.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:28 PM
It astounds me that absolutely no one on ESPN knew this was coming. If Duke’s jumpers don’t drop, they can’t score. No size in the interior doesn’t help them either. Coach K has never been a big defensive minded guy and their only chance at getting big buckets in transition is off long rebounds and not trapping guys. Any team with any kind of size could have beaten this year’s team. Coach K has fallen by the wayside of the “one and done” philosophy most guys have about going to school nowadays. He needs to stop trying to land that coveted McDonald’s All-American and recruit players that give you quality minutes with tough interior play and good rebounding skills.
March 24th, 2008 at 2:32 PM
I wish television would reflect the parity we see in college basketball these days. Robioland’s numbers reflect that there is almost no sure thing anymore. But we are always fed that steady diet of Duke/UNC/UCLA/Kentucky/Indiana/Michigan/Syracuse/UConn/Notre Dame games. Schools like Memphis, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Xavier are just as good if not better than many of these teams in recent years. But nobody sees them all year and then they act like they came out of nowhere (with the exception of Memphis).
March 24th, 2008 at 2:36 PM
Every single program in the country would trade places with Coach K and Duke right now.
You’re right. I wish my team hadn’t made it out the Sweet Sixteen in four years, and still had 95 of its games nationally televised.
March 24th, 2008 at 3:29 PM
Assuming from your photo Jay, that LSU is “your team”. I have to assume you’re just happy making it to the final four every 20 years. Maybe LSU would get on TV more if they weren’t 30-33 since their last final four run.
March 24th, 2008 at 3:56 PM
It’s the same way whenever someone other than Tiger wins a golf tournament. Last year, when Zach Johnson won the Master’s, I emailed every show on ESPN Radio, imploring them to make him the story, not Tiger’s “failure”(they did it again today. Geoff Ogilvy didn’t win; Tiger lost). Of course, I knew it was a futile gesture, but one I felt I needed to make.
March 24th, 2008 at 4:17 PM
Yes, robioland, but even they have gone farther than Duke in the last three years. And they beat Duke to get there. Actually, there’s no excuse for LSU basketball in the last two years, but I was just saying “my team” as a figure of speech.
March 24th, 2008 at 6:13 PM
Jesus, I want to kill people every time I here about the demise of Duke. A stretch of 2 non sweet 16s and Duke is a terrible team. God damn grow a fucking brain people. You people act like getting to the sweet 16 is easy, yet in reality, once you get there it really comes down to how the ball bounces on a certain night. There is 1 program that have done better than Duke this decade: Florida. UConn and UNC have comparable resumes and UCLA is having a nice run right now without a title, but otherwise, Duke is doing just fine thank you. Duke started 1 senior, 1 junior, 2 sophmores and a freshman who played out of position all year and got physically pounded every game…and still played extremely well before hitting the wall at the tail end of the season. We’re talking about a team that was expected to be decent, but not a legit title contender this year…and they over performed. Yet the “Duke prestige” is slipping away? Fuck that.
As for the dissing of the ACC…more Final Fours and Titles in this decade than any other conference…and particularly this year, dominated the other BCS conferences in out of conference games. ACC this year was comprised of a bunch of middle of the pack teams that beat up one another and cost themselves bids, but top to bottom by far the toughest league (sorry PAC-10, but you have a sub 200 RPI team in your conference…Arizona’s conference record looks even worse if you take away the automatic wins against OSU out).
And Jay…yeah it’d be nice and fair if more non-traditional teams got more TV games and coverage…unfortunately the media isn’t concerned about fairness, they’re concerned about ratings and circulation. So as long as Duke/UNC/UCLA/Syracuse/etc significantly outdraw every other team, you can be sure as shit ESPN et al will continue to obsess about them (something like 7 of the top 10 highest rated ESPN college games are Duke/UNC, even with regional blackouts).
March 24th, 2008 at 7:24 PM
Tallguy, I understand your point about television. But to me it’s a case of The Emperor’s New Clothes. The networks keep giving us more Duke, more Yankees, more Lakers, more Cowboys every single year so they can make money every year. Meanwhile, fan interest keeps dropping and dropping. And then when those teams are eliminated early in the postseason because they are vastly overrated, nobody watches the rest of the postseason and their numbers go down. And it’s mostly because fans bitch that they don’t know anything about the Rockies/Hornets/Xavier/etc, so they don’t care. Gee, I wonder why.
March 24th, 2008 at 7:48 PM
What do all 3 of those teams you mentioned have in common: shitty fan bases. New Orleans can’t keep the arena half full, the Rockies are outdrawn by major league lacrosse, and Xavier is second banana in its own city. Besides, mid majors cannot really complain about coverage…they get 200% tv time and coverage today versus just 10 year ago. Davidson played several national TV games this year, and it shouldn’t have been such a big surprise that they got to the sweet 16 (hell people, I told you it was going to happen…the only thing in my bracket I got right, but still).
Bottom line: the masses have always, and will always follow the dominant teams, and the masses drive ratings. Thus the traditional powers will always get more coverage due to established national fan bases. Do I want to slap people that root for Duke that have never set foot on West Campus? Yes, pretty much. Do I want to punch every tarhole that couldn’t spell Chapel Hill if you spotted them the C H A P E L H I L? damn straight (oh god, the 2 that sat in front of me Friday deserved to die…2 of the biggest fucking red necks you’ve ever seen and they didn’t shut up the entire time…jesus). But that’s the nature of big time athletics.
March 24th, 2008 at 8:19 PM
If you’ve seen She’s the One, then Duke is simply in a bit of a down cycle.
March 25th, 2008 at 12:33 AM
Hey TBL –
Now that Duke is done for the year, do you stand by your original assessment of Jon Scheyer?