Category Archives: Duke

You Merely Adopted the Dark, P.J. Hairston Was Born In It

The best part of any movie ever is that scene in the cemetery at the end of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Every aspect of film cooperates to deliver an inarguable three-minute snippet of pure genius: Tuco knows the location of the graveyard, but not the name on the headstone under which is buried a fortune in Confederate gold. Clint Eastwood knows the name, but up until this point did not know where the graveyard was. Every event in the film has been leading inexorably up to this point, and the greatest film score in history is playing behind it.

Similarly, the best part of college basketball is that scene at the end of the ACC regular season when Duke and UNC play, after the Wolfpack has faded back into regional obscurity (watch that clip again: symbolically, perhaps, a dog scurries away at 0:43). Every moment of the season has led us here, and various sundry other clichés. The stories, which have woven together like fine tapestries all year, finally take their place on the wall above the hearth of the 2012-13 season, etc. etc. bar-none the Finest Rivalry in Sports etc. etc.

Which all can and will be discussed by folks with better working knowledge of basketball and a more complete understanding of Tobacco Road history, so I’m going to focus on taking a bright spot on this years Carolina team and making it just a little bit brighter. We’re finally going to give P.J. Hairston what he deserves: a monochromatic animal nickname!

In 2010, Harrison Barnes rolled into Chapel Hill  surrounded by a Tasmanian Devil tornado of hype, bearing the “Black Falcon” moniker. The story goes that he wanted a nom de guerre along the lines of Jordan’s “Black Cat” and Kobe’s “Black Mamba,” and someone who works for ESPN obliged him (the part about him wanting said nickname might make it invalid, though, based on my understanding of the rules of nicknaming).

In January of 2011, the creator and proprietor of this very website, the benevolent Odin to Tobacco Road Blues’ Asgard, dubbed Ryan Kelly “The White Raven,” which put him (intentionally or not) in binary opposition to Barnes, because Kelly had gone to Ravenscroft, a Raleigh school with a similarly passerine mascot.

Which brings us to now. With our Black Falcon gone, Duke’s White Raven stands as the only animal-man in the triangle, exploring the duality of light and dark, good and evil.

P.J. Hairston’s rise to popularity and overall excellence was predicted on this very website, and it is now time to bestow upon him such a nickname, to let him know he has arrived.

Firstly, is P.J. a bird? The answer is no. Does he soar? Sure, but he plays gritty, he plays low to the ground, he spends as much time sliding on the hardwood as he does gliding to the basket. P.J. plays yeoman’s basketball. He plays hurt and gets concussions, and absolutely he sinks those long three-balls, but he’ll rebound with players twice his height as well.

Secondly, does a White Raven even exist in nature? The answer is yes. The white-necked raven is indigenous to the mountainous regions of Southern Africa. It is a scavenging bird of prey, a scoundrel of the air. Most reasonable people dislike the white-necked raven.

Thirdly, does this real-life white raven have any natural predators, perhaps a non-avian one that could serve as a nice basis for Hairston’s very own nickname? Why yes, and thank you kindly for asking such a specific and leading question. The white-necked raven faces great danger from an animal called a Marten, which invades its nest and feasts upon the raven’s eggs. The Marten is a small but ferocious mammal, a close cousin to the badger as well as to the most accurate animal descriptor for Mr. Hairston: the wolverine.

So is he a wolverine of the light or a wolverine of the shadows? Is he Chapel Hill’s White Knight or is he Dean Dome Batman? I’ll answer that question with another question: when the White Raven is flying around, riding the thermals upward into the sky, what does he fear? Ryan Kelly will score lots of points on Saturday, I don’t think anyone has doubts about that. He’ll score lots of points and play phenomenal basketball and Duke will be the complete, excellent, terrifying unit that they were at the beginning of the season. But P.J. Hairston will do work, he’ll hit threes but he’ll also dive over scorers tables and scrap around under the paint and steal the ball from Seth Curry and get fouled about 17 times by Mason Plumlee, and he’ll exhibit great quantities of what they call grit. It might not be enough to win the Tar Heels the game, but at some point P.J. Hairston is going to sneak into the White Raven’s nest and eat some eggs.

P.J. Hairston is in the starting lineup now because he excelled in the shadows, and by becoming an idea he forced a mythologically obstinate man to change the way he coaches basketball.

He is the hero that UNC deserves and needs. A silent guardian. A watchful protector.

The Black Wolverine.

(Goosebumps, right? I got goosebumps)

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5 Classes for Duke Fans During the Winter Break

As usual, the end of the calendar year means that Duke’s schedule slows down so that the players can take fulfilling the ‘student’ part of their ‘student-athlete’ status. Rather than pass the time with NBA games featuring millionaires playing lazy defense, why not pretend to study something just like your favorite college athletes (who are also only pretending to study)?

So here are five subjects Duke fans should study during the end of semester break (by the way, you can probably get actual college credit for these if you play football at UNC).

History

Watching Mason Plumlee dominate the paint while shooters like Seth Curry, Rasheed Sulaimon and Ryan Kelly bury threes feels somewhat familiar doesn’t it? Well the best way to understand the present is to learn your history. And a scholarly look back at Duke’s 2010 Championship team shows some startling similarities to the current crop of Blue Devils.

Ryan Kelly is a big man who likes to drift away from the paint to take outside shots, not unlike Kyle Singler. Seth Curry is a senior dead eye shooter more or less playing the Jon Scheyer role. Meanwhile, Mason Plumlee is dominating the paint the way Brian Zoubek did during Duke’s Championship run.

True, the comparisons aren’t perfect. Kyle Singler stood in the small forward spot while Ryan Kelly is playing power forward. Jon Scheyer was probably a better shooter and all around scorer than Seth Curry. And while Brian Zoubek wasn’t as good a player as Mason Plumlee, Zoubek was better at swiping offensive rebounds.

Of course history doesn’t so much as repeat itself as it provides interesting insight into understanding the present.

The 2010 team held an average per-game rebounding edge over opponents of 6.2 while through nine games this Duke team has a per-game rebounding edge is -1 (via DBR). Can Duke win without a Lance Thomas style role player to rebound alongside Mason Plumlee?

The 2010 team had Nolan Smith scoring from the point guard position. Does the combination of Quinn Cook and Rasheed Sulaimon equal the contributions of Nolan Smith?

The two teams are similar, but there are some key differences that might shine a light on just how far this Duke team can go. So the question remains: what, if anything, can Duke learn from its history.

Religious Iconography

In Duke lore there is nothing more religiously iconic than a retired jersey. Mason Plumlee is making a case for Player of the Year, so it’s worth wondering if the middle brother might find his number dangling from the Cameron Indoor rafters along with the other Sainted players.

The best measuring stick for Plumlee’s worthiness of highest praise is to compare him to another sacred center/forward, Sheldon Williams.

Sheldon Williams never won a Player of the Year, though his teammate J.J. Redick did, but Williams did earn Defensive Player of the Year twice. “The Landlord” also has better career stats than Mason Plumlee.

Sheldon Williams’ career stats at Duke are 13.9 points-per-game and 9.1 rebounds-per-game. During his junior and senior years, Williams averaged a double-double for the season (via GoDuke).

Until this year, Mason Plumlee’s junior season was his best statistical year as he averaged 11.1 points. Sheldon Williams only averaged lower than Plumlee’s 11.1 as a freshman. As a sophomore “The Landlord” averaged 12.6 points and improved on that total as a junior and senior.

That being said, Sheldon Williams never won a National Championship whereas Mason Plumlee was a part of the 2010 Title team. True, Plumlee was a freshman on that squad and only played 14.1 minutes-per-game, but he still got a ring (via GoDuke).

The point is, if Mason Plumlee lands Player of the Year honors or delivers an NCAA Championship, the second in his four years at Duke, then hanging his jersey in Cameron next to Sheldon Williams’ for everyone to idolize might be something to consider.

Chemistry

This holiday season you’re bound to run into a UNC fan who will insist that the ole Roy’s boys have much better depth than Duke. This UNC fan will probably point to Coach Williams’ propensity to use an 11 man rotation and the fact that Duke has almost no bench points.

This is when lessons learned from a chemistry class come in handy.

Bench points is the most worthless stat in basketball and the refuge of desperate fans looking to clutch to any straw that might save them from drowning. Points are points. Whether they come from a starter or a bench player, they all go up on the scoreboard the same.

Duke doesn’t ask anyone off the bench to score because they don’t need offense off the bench. All of Duke’s starters are averaging double-digit points. On the whole, Duke’s starting five averages a total of 71.6 points-per-game (via ESPN).

So Duke is getting plenty of offense. What the Blue Devils need is defense and rebounding from its bench players.

Tyler Thornton has picked up 18 steals so far while Amile Jefferson and Josh Hairston are filling in admirably when they spell either Mason Plumlee or Ryan Kelly.

The bottom line is that everyone on the Blue Devils has a clearly defined role. That may not improve the draft value of the players as individuals, but it does ensure that Duke goes into games with a strong mixture of players contributing in a bunch of different ways.

Teams centered around a single star (like Austin Rivers) tend to fizzle out in terms of team chemistry. This Duke team, however, has bonded at a subatomic level and that makes them a tough team for opponents to break down.

Pre-Med

Seth Curry has been battling a leg injury since before the season started. So far Curry has been able to play well, averaging 16.1 points-per-game. However, there have been times when he has looked to be limited in terms of mobility and when he rolled his ankle against Ohio State that certainly didn’t help matters.

Duke can beat cupcakes like Delaware without Curry, but depth isn’t this Duke squad’s strongest point. If Curry can’t play, then Duke will most certainly struggle against conference foes and in tournament settings.

In fact, over the course of the Battle 4 Atlantis Tournament, where Duke played three games in three days, Seth Curry’s stats go progressively worse. He scored 25 points against Minnesota, 15 against VCU and 14 against Louisville (via ESPN).

Maybe that was due to increasingly stronger opponents, or maybe it was evidence that Curry can’t handle that much wear and tear in a short time frame. Either way, the rigors of conference play will certainly test Curry’s health.

If Seth Curry can’t go, Tyler Thornton takes his spot in the lineup. While Thornton offers a better defensive option than Curry, the amount of offense lost in Curry’s absence might be too much for Duke to overcome.

Therefore, it’s imperative that Curry make it through the season in good enough shape to be able to contribute to ACC and NCAA tournament runs.

Armchair diagnostics will also come in handy when Marshall Plumlee returns from his injury. MP3 will probably get worked into the lineup slowly so as to not upset the team chemistry, but his height adds a much needed backup center to Duke’s bench options.

Cryptozoology

What is Cryptozoologoy? It’s the study of animals that may or may not exist. That includes things like Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster and Alex Murphy.

When he arrived at Duke two years ago, Alex Murphy was purported to be a new incarnation of Kyle Singler. The fact that Murphy redshirted last year only helped to heighten the mystery around whether or not this rumored Kyle Singler 2.0 was real or just a myth.

Through nine games Alex Murphy has appeared just seven times and played a total of 40 minutes. The Chupacabra shows up with more regularity than that. And like the Chupacabra, Alex Murphy has done quite a bit of sucking when he’s on the court.

Until the Delaware game, Murphy was 0-3 from the floor and looked lost in the offense. Currently, the only Blue Devil with a worse field goal percentage than Murphy is Tyler Thornton (via ESPN).

That being said, in the game against Delaware Murphy came off the bench to play 21 minutes and scored 10 points. For the first time all season he showed signs of the rumored Singler sub-species. With a few more cupcake opponents, Alex Muphy will have more chances to prove whether or not he’s the real deal or just a mirage produced by swamp gas, shadows on the water or an elaborate hoax.

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Loss and the Ethics of Rivalry, or, Putting a Postitive Spin On Being Told Repeatedly to Go to Hell

The most brutal thing I’ve ever heard anyone say to anyone else was said by a girl to a boy in my tenth grade math class. “I don’t even hate you,” she said back then, “because hatred is a kind of love. I’m indifferent about you.” I won’t dignify the question, of whether or not that boy was me, with a response.[1]

I’ve been proclaiming my status as a future Tar Heel Dead for about as long as I’ve been eating solid food. So I hate Duke, yes, but I realized startlingly how close that hatred was to love sometime in the third quarter of this past battle for the Victory Bell (note to the confused: sometimes Duke and UNC play each other in the sport with the eggish-shaped ball instead of the spherical one). I had always thought of Duke fans in the same way that I imagine Superman probably thinks about Bizarro: as warped reflections of my own strengths and weaknesses, whose values would probably align with my own if they’d only been born on the right planet. Our thoughts on Tyler Hansbrough or Coach K probably couldn’t be more different, for example, but at least we’d both place a basically equivalent value on college basketball. Case in point: I hate seeing Duke lose to teams who aren’t UNC. In a way it reflects poorly on the school I devote so much emotional bandwidth to[2], to see their biggest rival fail to defeat an outsider.

Which is why it was not that surprising to me when I realized that, in terms of narrative payoff and an understanding of athletic victory as a reward for one team’s expenditure of superior effort, Duke had to win. I did not want Duke to win, I merely realized that they should. It was nauseating.

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A Personal Letter to Quinn Cook

Dear Mr. Cook-

Quinn, when you signed the scholarship to head to Duke University and play for Coach K, I’m sure it was a dream come true. You were the future point guard, able to be groomed for a year or two, then unleashed onto the poor ACC to dominate.

Well, the future is now! There are two types of Duke fans (you are kidding yourself if you think a middle ground exists). First are the ones who will support you no matter what, always giving you credit and finding any weird statistic to prove the team is wonderful even if they just lost by 50. The other type is the Chicken Little fan, which is the side that is much more fun to take. Yes, I understand that I, taking that stance, am unreasonable and unfair. But I have a responsibility to myself as well as other Duke fans to expect more than winning. Who do you think I am, Al Davis? Just win, baby? Hell no! I want to be entertained! (No, you don’t have to murder anyone gladiator style, but you get the point).  I want all games to be aesthetically pleasing bloody beatdowns of inferior opponents. I want Duke teams running up and down the court the whole game in transition. What? Duke was outscored by 1.9 ppg in transition last year? Totally unacceptable!! You think Johnny Dawkins, Bobby Hurley, Jason Williams, Chris Duhon or Kyrie Irving (I like to count each of his 11 games 10 times to pretend like he gave Duke a nice four year career) would have let that happen?

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Kyrie Irving: The Best Kept Secret in the NBA (For a Limited Time Only)

Kyrie Irving was the third ranked overall recruit out of high school in 2010. He then played point guard under coach Mike Krzyzewski at Duke University, was chosen #1 overall in the 2011 NBA draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers and proceeded to win the Rookie of the Year award. His personality is both teammate and fan friendly, paving the way for him to be embraced by Cleveland at a time when the city desperately needs a new star. To put it simply, Kyrie Irving’s life is better than yours.

That resume doesn’t exactly scream “under the radar.” So am I crazy? Maybe just presenting a typical pro-Duke view of things? Or even worse, laying out a Skip Bayless type of discussion where I can give generalized personal feelings of Irving while failing to acknowledge the existence of another side to the argument? Let’s take a look.

Yes, Kyrie Irving was the #3 overall recruit in 2010, but his name only started to rise up the charts after his Junior Season in 2009. Just a couple of months later, Irving committed to Duke. Without a lengthy recruiting process, he was freed of the unnecessary attention. The first time I heard discussions on the best middle school basketball players in the country, I almost fainted. Maybe a kid is really good enough to be ranked, but it seems unfair for the media to take away the privacy of the child by labeling him a star athlete before hitting puberty. Austin Rivers dealt with this kind of recruitment, and was well known throughout the country barely into his high school playing career. To be fair, I’m sure some players love all the attention that comes from the recruiting love fest, and more power to them, but I liked the fact that Kyrie committed to Duke just before his high school basketball reputation started to reach a level that could have cause his recruitment to become unhealthy. (I.E. Tony Parker’s “wankfest”)

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Hate the Heat, but boo Battier?

The NBA Finals have made me want a professional sport to be like professional wrestling. Not only would I like to see Russell Westbrook fly off the top rope with a drop kick to Lebron James, I really want to see Shane Battier turn face.

In the world of professional wrestling, like the WWE, good guys are faces and bad guys are heels. The Miami Heat are the quintessential heel team. They are the nWo from the 1990’s glory days of WCW, complete with James playing the ultimate turncoat villain, Hollywood Hulk Hogan.

The Oklahoma City Thunder play the face role perfectly (for everyone except half-interested Miami fans, disgruntled Seattle Sonic fans and Shane here at Tobacco Road Blues). OKC is led by the young, hungry and humble Kevin Durant, the high-flying, risk-taking Westbrook, and the lovable bearded guy James Harden.

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The Last Best Class

He had to make this call.  He had said that he wouldn’t shortchange himself this time.  But in his heart, he knew his efforts were futile.

The phone rang three times before the fourth went to voice-mail.  Jamal Johnson’s hologram appeared from the screen.  Even in this display, his wingspan and strength were notable.

“Hi, you’ve reached Jamal, NBC Sports Network’s Top 50’s 18th-ranked recruit in the class of 2022, and future USC Trojan.  I’m not here right now, but–”

Collins slammed the phone down in frustration.  He hadn’t expected Johnson to commit to Duke, but he had at least promised to let them talk to him one last time, to make one final pitch.  But still, USC?  This would give Calipari nine of the top 20 recruits in the 2022 class, his best performance since his 2018 efforts at UNLV.  Collins shook his head.  The rich just got richer.

The coach stood and poured himself a tumbler of whiskey, finished it, and poured another.  He walked to where his window was, but then he remembered his current circumstances.  His office, once overlooking the sprawling athletic grounds of the Duke campus, had been relegated to the basement of the intramural building.  “We need more space for Danowski’s assistants,” they had told him.  “Where else would we put the indoor lacrosse field?”

Collins gazed at the far wall mindlessly, unsure of what to do.  The one holdover from his old office was the portfolio of framed photos of the recruiting class of 2012: Marshall Plumlee, Alex Murphy, and Rasheed Saluimon all smiled at him.  Who knew that these three would be part of Duke’s last claim to near-greatness?  Their talent and hustle made them endearing and just as successful: fans quickly nicknamed the three of them “PMS” because opponents always complained when they had to deal with the trio.  Collins knew it didn’t do any good to think about those years, but he couldn’t help it.  It was a simpler time. K was here–they could do no wrong.  How the times had changed.

But he knew that it would have been tough for even Coach K to survive today.  Duke didn’t care about basketball anymore–it had just applied to join the Ivy League, starting in the 2025 season.  Although the competition would be weaker there than in the ACC Big 10-12 Sky South division, Collins wouldn’t have any stars interested in coming to the Ivy League.  Nor would he have the same budget allocated for daily player stipends.  The infamous Supreme Court ruling in the Davis vs. Louisville case had done them in again.

After that, Duke basketball was on the ropes.  Gone was even the hint of the concept of the “student-athlete.”  Yes, often the NCAA made the students go to class during the basketball season to receive their pay (except during the three weeks of the Facebook Presents “March Madness” NCAA Tournament), but they didn’t have to go to class in the rest of the year.  But since the season was roughly 10 months long now, most players declined that duty and just worked year-round day jobs.  Since academic requirements had been almost entirely eliminated, it didn’t matter.  The NBA still paid better, but since the draft was now limited to one round to improve job security, it wasn’t rare for players to play 7 or 8 years in college to try to improve their draft stock.

Collins knew he had to change up his strategy, do something drastic.  He had heard that St. John’s recruiters had started signing top 15-year-olds off the Rucker Park courts, just to guarantee themselves a minimum of 8 semesters from each player.  Maybe he could corner the market on gyms throughout Carolina.  Or maybe the training grounds in Europe.  The logistics were trickier, but the days of simply picking 5-star prospects were in the past for Duke.  And with (the recently rescinded) time constraints on recruiting no longer a factor, now was as good a time as any to get started.

His phone buzzed.  It was a text message from Duke’s big man coach, Greg Paulus.  Something about cost-of-living adjustments for the players and how that would affect their roster size next year.  Cut-backs would likely be necessary.  Jesus, he thought.  Even Duke football is doing better right now.

The coach’s grandiose plans for next year would have to wait, though–it was nearly time for practice.  The team had a big stretch coming up: three games in four nights across NC State, Wake, and then the home game against Carolina.  Collins used to love these match-ups.  Now he dreaded them.

Collins gathered his things and started to make the short trek to Cameron Indoor.  He passed the seventeen tents gathered in the surprisingly well-maintained Collins Colony area.  The student section would likely only be at two-thirds capacity for the UNC game, if even that.  He sighed.  The school was no longer allowed to run an organized tenting system as it had in years past, due to one student’s expose of the crude behaviors tenters were forced into.  “Confessions of a K-Ville Crazie,” it was called.  Now, the only fans remaining in Collins Colony were those committed to reclaiming the tradition of tenting for Duke games.  They wouldn’t receive tickets, however–it was only for pride.  Duke’s student newspaper, The Chronicle, had been printing letters from alumni complaining about the lack of school spirit from students for months, but nothing had changed.  And nothing would change.

The hot Carolina spring air was nearly suffocating Collins.  He had to get inside to the relief of the air-conditioned arena.  But what would he tell his players there?  Sure, they were battling for one of the tournament’s 97 at-large bids, but who really cared?  Ever since their star player announced last week–via an Instagram graphic novel–that he’d be transferring to NC State at the end of the year, the team had been plodding along.  Collins owed it to his players to be inspired, to inspire them.  He knew just the place to go.

The statue of Coach K had been commissioned immediately following his retirement in 2016, but the construction was delayed for four years as the administration and the student government haggled over the re-institution of Tailgate (which returned in 2019 only to be cancelled after one game).  Nevertheless, it was a beautiful structure, capturing Coach K at his most intense–pointing and yelling out instructions to his players, face creased and lined with sweat, yet still completely in control.  Twelve feet of solid bronze overlooking the residential quad, the quad where bonfires used to originate after big wins.  On the statue, at K’s feet, was the inscription:

MIKE KRZYZEWSKI

DUKE MEN’S BASKETBALL COACH: 1980-2016

MOST NCAA COACHING WINS OF ALL TIME

“COURAGE GIVES A LEADER THE ABILITY TO STAND STRAIGHT

NO MATTER WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS”

Most days when Collins came here, that quote gave him insight, an epiphany, or even a hint of nirvana.  But today he wasn’t looking at it.  He studied K’s body posture, looking for subtle clues in how he carried himself on the sidelines that Collins somehow had missed before.  He hunted for what made Mike Krzyzewski “Coach K.”  He found as much as he always did: nothing.

Collins turned and started heading toward Cameron, knowing that it would be a tough practice.  One final look first, though, he told himself.

His gaze was drawn to the only numbers on the statue.  Those dates mocked him.  1980-2016.  Had it only been that long since K left?  Collins could have sworn he had been coaching on his own for at least a decade.

2016.  The final year of that last legendary class of Plumlee, Murphy, and Saluimon.  K had left at the right time.  Collins couldn’t help but smile–the man knew what he was doing.

Practice was supposed to start now.  The coach turned and jogged to the facility.  The return to relevancy starts today, he told his players. We’re just a little ways from being a real championship contender, he claimed.

But he didn’t believe any of this.  Collins knew that any shot Duke had evaporated six years prior.  The wind continued to blow against him and his team, and he sensed that this storm was gonna be a long one.

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K’s Year Off

I know this will be an opinion not shared by many of those who follow Duke, but to me, this was one of the worst coaching jobs K has ever done (apologies for the Bleacher Report quality intro but I’m still upset over the loss). I know people will point out how we beat many great teams during the course of the year and how we had a chance to win the ACC regular season title as proof of K’s genius, but to me those early successes simply mask the overall poor job he did this year. A poor job that by and large was the result of the stubbornness – which admittedly has over the last 32 years generally served him better than worse – that led to a highly uncharacteristic lack of experimentation that ultimately doomed the team.

K ultimately failed this team and potentially future ones in 3 ways: 1) not recognizing that our lack of perimeter defense was not something that could be fixed with simple willpower (why was this ever seemingly considered an option I will never understand), and the unwillingness to give 2) Cook and  3) Gbinije more run at the PG and SF spots, respectively. On the defensive front, I would’ve hoped following the Temple game, that K would realize that forcing our guards to pressure out on the perimeter was only leading them to get beaten off the dribble and forcing Mason, Miles and Kelly to constantly have to help which led to offensive rebound situations and increased fouls accumulated by the bigs challenging shots. It seemed to me at least that going to the 2010 sag defense ( as depicted by Luke Winn) could solve so many of our perimeter defensive problems.

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Silver Linings in a Downpour

It’s been what–three days?  Three hours?  Three weeks?  I can’t honestly say–the 2011-12 Duke season seems like a part of the distant past, even though those last two minutes versus Lehigh are still painfully vivid in my memory.

In a word, that game was brutal–it was the doomsday scenario that most Duke fans had thought about but never seriously entertained.  A dreadful performance for the ages that was both shocking and unsurprising.  A result that was both unfair to a team that had overachieved this year and one that was exactly what the squad deserved.

Now, writing on Monday afternoon, I’m still barely coherent–there’s so much to write about this game, but almost all of the clues had been there in our previous four games. Still, I have to swallow my anger and bitterness for a little bit, and try to make the case that this loss might be what Duke needs going forward.  Without further ado, here are the five best things about Duke’s loss against Lehigh:

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Searching for Andre Dawkins

SCENE: 10 P.M., FRIDAY NIGHT. INSIDE THE PENTHOUSE OF A HOTEL ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF ATLANTA.

The man took a long drag from his cigarette and exhaled.  It would be another long night of questions from the man-in-charge.  This late in the season, though, he was used to it.

“What’s the status?”

“Nothing new, sir.  We thought going to Atlanta would bring us closer to finding him, but our intel must have been wrong.”

The man tapped his cigarette twice before bringing it to his lips.  He paused for a second.

“Something might show up tomorrow.  But I think our best hope will be Charlotte in a week or so.”

The man-in-charge sneered.

“Dammit, James.  You’ve been saying that for weeks.”

“I know, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

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