The Downside- Duke | Syracusefan.com

The Downside- Duke

SWC75

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- Obviously we can’t keep falling 20 points behind teams and expect to win by miracle comebacks. Pat called into the post game show and said that we fall behind early in these games 80% of the time. I checked the play-by-play of our games this year and it’s not nearly 80% but it happens too often. We fell behind 14-36 in this game, 15-30 in the Notre Dame game, 7-17 at Clemson and 8-16 at Virginia. We won one of those games and were lucky to do so.

- Pat is one of many people who feel the key is getting Kadary Richmond in the game at the beginning. It’s often said that it doesn’t matter who starts: it matters who finishes. But if you are having problems with bad starts, it does matter. I like Joe but there isn’t any way he’s one of our five best players and coaches are always saying that they put the players out there who give us the best chance to win. Why not play the players who give us the best chance to have a good start. Steve Infanti said that we can’t blame the bad start on one guy: he’s right but Joe has bene a big part of it. Teams have been hedging out on us and our guys haven’t handled it well. Joe has the ball more than anyone else and he certainly contributes to the bad starts. Demetris Nichols was sitting in with Steve and tried to remain neutral while stressing what you need to succeed. Even he said that if Joe keeps playing this way, “eventually Kadary will start”. We have two, probably three games left in the regular season. Shouldn’t it have happened by now? He also admitted that Kadary is “the future of the program” and “if he ever gets a jumps shot “it’s over” and said he’d like to work with Kadary on his shot over the summer, so he wants it to be ‘over’. It was suggested that demoting Joe from the starting line-up would “crush him”. Jimmy Satalin said after the game that Joe was ‘pressing because he feels Kadary behind him. I asked if perhaps it were presented to Joe as a redefining of his duties, where he, the combo guard will back up the two specialists and get the same number of minutes (18 tonight) doing that, maybe that would not crush him and instead would take the pressure off of him. Steve and D-Nich felt that was an ‘interesting’ suggestion but D-Nic recalled that when he was challenged by Louie McCrosky he used that to motivate himself to play better and said that that is what Joe needs to do. I think what matters is what Boeheim must do: stop starting a play who has been recruited over. We need to win now.

- I also asked D-Nic about Robert Braswell, a player with a similar physique to his own who came into this year with a reputation as a shooter but is thus far 8 for 38, (21%) from three this year, including 0 for 4 tonight. Demetris agreed that Robert reminds him of himself. He said that both Robert and Joe have to do a better job of “being shot ready”- in the right place and squared up to the basket when the pass gets t here. They also need to not be still thinking about the result of their last shot when the next opportunity comes. He wants to work with both Kadary and Robert this summer.

- JB said that he overheard one of his starters in the locker room say “I didn’t play any defense in the first half”. He wasn’t happy with that statement, (however true it might be. You wonder if somebody will start the game on the bench on Saturday.

- Mark Williams had been riding the bench all year in his best game he’d had 13 points and 5 rebounds. He scoring in double figures just twice. But we can add him to the list of big guys who had career days against us this season because we have no center: 18 points, 12 rebounds. Bourama Sidibe better come back and have a big year next year – or Frank Anselem, Jesse Edwards and John Bol Ajak had better to be ready to contribute next year. I’m tired of our ‘stretch fours’ and Marek, who is a ‘stretch three’. I don’t want to see Benny Williams playing center for us. Of course, Williams was a McDonald’s Al-American. Our guys weren’t. But I also think that it’s a factor that our guys were foreign-born and didn’t grow up playing the game. Williams was born in Norfolk, Virginia and is developing into a star as a freshman. Can we please start recruiting big men tin this country?

- Not only is Marek Dolezaj not a center on defense but Quincy Guerrier, who inherited the role of trying to score from underneath the basket, is not a center on offense, either. Ouincy just can’t get up and over a 7 foot center to score. He’s just too short and doesn’t elevate much, at least not from a standing position, (he had a huge dunk off the press but had a standing start).
Q was 3 for 11 from the field for the second straight game and was 3 for 9 in the one before that.
- Alan Griffin was collecting double-doubles earlier this year but he’s been struggling lately. He had only 5 points and 4 rebounds against Notre Dame. He improved that to 11/8 in this game but most of it came long after the game had been decided. The “G’ men have to get going.
- The “trunk monkey” stayed in the trunk because Duke knew how to attack it- pass over it downcourt to get fast breaks to the basket. Other teams saw that and will be ready to do the same thing.

- One thing we sort of bragged about was that in all our losses, we were out-rebounded by at least 12: if we could hold our own on the boards, you couldn’t beat us. We’re pretty good other than that one weakness. Well, tonight we were out-rebounded 37-39. And we were +3 in turnovers. And we got crushed.

- We have competed well with Duke since we joined the ACC despite the rut we’ve been in. We won that first game in the Dome in 2014, the Tyler Roberson 20 rebound game in 2016, the John Gillon game in the Dome in 2017 and the Elijah Hughes 80-footer game two years ago. Then there was the 2014 ‘jacket’ game and a four-point loss in the Sweet 16 in 2018 that we might have won except that Marek Dolezaj, who was having an excellent game, got in foul trouble and had to sit out 8 critical minutes. But we are now 4-9 against the Blue Devils since we became conference rivals and they have won the last four in a row. 54-73 and 44-60 losses in 2015 and 2018, respectively, had large margins of defeat but this was the one time we really got blown out and it wasn’t much fun.
 

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