And we’re off!
- Duke opened up the season 3-0 but got a huge scare from Rhode Island on Sunday. Good thing for them they enjoyed their usual FT advantage over an opposing team. My take on Duke and I have not seen them play so take this for what it is worth is they lack quality of depth and multiple reliable weapons. I have never figured out why no one thought losing DeMarcus Nelson would not be a major hole to fill. The bottom line is this Duke team is different from the one last season and it is not clear to me they have improved. Much will be made of the close game at home versus a team that only beat Brown by two, that is to be expected. Based on my very cursory look, Duke seems to rely heavily on the Singler/Scheyer combination, still does not have an effective interior game and the three point shooting which was so hot last season is fairly cool now. Maybe Greg Paulus only playing 11 minutes like he did versus RI is a factor. At any rate, Duke right now has more questions marks than anything else.
- Clemson is off to a 3-0 start as well winning some small tournament in Charleston by knocking off Temple.
- UVa won over VMI which is more meaningful than it would have been before VMI knocked off Kentucky a few days ago.
- FSU continues to validate that Leonard Hamilton has no idea what he is doing as they almost fall to Jacksonville in their opener.
- NC State avenged last season’s loss to New Orleans by beating the Privateers on the road. I would ask for ideas on how we can devalue this win but I am not sure a six point win over New Orleans can be devalued much more.
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The Duke game was rediculous THF. Rhode Island were the aggressors and looked like the better team. All Scheyer & Singler had to do was show up on the court to get some of those ft attempts. The last two fouls on RI were fouls that would have resulted in a possession change had they not been called. If you get a chance to see them, you will realize that even having home court advantage shouldn’t buy you those calls. No one else in the ACC gets those free throws and it gets me damn mad when our Star, hell, the Star of the whole ACC doesn’t get half that crap. BS I tell ya.
I actually thought the Duke game was officiated pretty fairly, to be honest. URI, for the most part was either getting transition layups, or jacking threes, so there really wasn’t a lot of foul opportunities for Duke. Great game, though. Jimmy Barron was unconscious…
Also, it is plainly obvious that Duke still has zero post presence… Singler, while talented, might as well be 6′3″.
C. Michael, it was the last 5 minutes of play that was horrific, in my opinion. I thought Singler shot free throws that no one else in the ACC would have shot. Bad thing is that w/o the call the ball would have been in transition the other way.
Curious difference of opinion… I really didn’t find that foul to be overly egregious. Maybe I was just over-compensating for my natural anti-duke bias!!
And yes….Jimmy Barron was absolutely insane.
Dook has definitely been a team that has lived (and died) by the outside shot over the past couple of years. The lack of a legitimate post game is going to bite them in the butt again this year, hopefully many times over.
i have to agree with JBowling. Two calls are fresh in my mind. At the late stages of the game with RI still up a handful of points, there was an emphatic dunk by RI with one of the dookies all over his right arm, which was not called. i let that slip as i didn’t know how important that call would be. then, a few possessions later (i believe in the waning seconds of the game) with dook down by 1, Singler ends up on the favorable end of a foul call as the RI defender slaps the ball out of Singlers hands going up for a lay up. the ball hits singlers legs and goes out of bounds (hence the would-be possession change). singler drained the 2 FTs. Then Singler partially blocked Barron’s shot at the other end to effectively end the game.
i begrudgingly give credit to singler for the well-played last few minutes of the game but if the refs swallowed their whistles on the RI dunk, i can’t see how they could call the “slap” on the RI defender. i know there were plenty more instances but these two are what i recall best.
This type of poor play by Dook will catch up with them. They wont get this lucky every time.