Memphis is getting Elliot Williams

#10
#10
They just won the ACC tournament! How is that nearing "irrelevance" or mean they are not at "elite" status considering the National Champs came out of that conference?
 
#11
#11
They just won the ACC tournament! How is that nearing "irrelevance" or mean they are not at "elite" status considering the National Champs came out of that conference?

What conference you are in has nothing to do with it. Duke has failed to make it to the Final Four since Luol Deng and for some reason K hasn't been recruiting as well as he once did. Duke missed out on Patrick Patterson, Jon Brockman, and Greg Monroe, all which Duke had a good shot at. Next season, Duke will have Kyle Singler, Nolan Smith, and Jon Scheyer who have proven they can be somewhat effective. That's it. In Duke's heyday, they had 4-5 guys at a time that would be playing in the NBA sometime. Right now, I'm not sure one guy on their current squad will be a first rounder.
 
#12
#12
They just won the ACC tournament! How is that nearing "irrelevance" or mean they are not at "elite" status considering the National Champs came out of that conference?

Georgia won the SEC Tourney. How relevant are they?
 
#15
#15
They just won the ACC tournament! How is that nearing "irrelevance" or mean they are not at "elite" status considering the National Champs came out of that conference?

They are not a top 10 program at this point. That's how.
 
#18
#18
They are a top 15 program, with an almost guaranteed appearence in the top 10 every year, before they fade.

I am speaking more of NCAA tournament results, than rankings. Duke will always be ranked in the top 10-15. The tournament tells the tale.
 
#19
#19
What conference you are in has nothing to do with it. Duke has failed to make it to the Final Four since Luol Deng and for some reason K hasn't been recruiting as well as he once did. Duke missed out on Patrick Patterson, Jon Brockman, and Greg Monroe, all which Duke had a good shot at. Next season, Duke will have Kyle Singler, Nolan Smith, and Jon Scheyer who have proven they can be somewhat effective. That's it. In Duke's heyday, they had 4-5 guys at a time that would be playing in the NBA sometime. Right now, I'm not sure one guy on their current squad will be a first rounder.

Coach K's career has had 4 phases:

Phase 1: Coach K has a lot of success early on in his career with guys that were really good basketball players but not necessarily great athletes.

Phase 2: Then there was a couple year period where Duke was down (the wojo years). I have heard that Coach K was having some health problems (hip replacement?) that may have prevented him from bringing his "A" coaching game. But for whatever reason, Duke was down for a couple years.

Phase 3: Coach K decides that he wants to start winning championships again, so he goes away from the Phase 1 model and starts recruiting the best players out there. Athletic players. He has a lot of success with these players. Wins a lot of games. Wins a national championship. But gets frustrated when guys leave after only year. He can't really run the system that he wants to run when guys aren't there long enough to learn it.

Phase 4: He goes back to the phase 1 model, except he takes it too far. In Phase 1, he recruited great basketball players, but many of those also happened to be greath athletes (e.g. grant hill). In phase 4, he is going after good basketball players, but it is almost as if he is selecting them based on their likelihood of staying all four years. And, in so doing, he isn't getting the kind of athletes that a team needs to advance deep into the tournament.

Phase 4 has been going on for a while. Duke even throws out the whitewash on occassion. You don't advance deep in the tournament with a whitewash. Unless coach K is willing to abandon this model, Duke will remain mediocre.
 
#22
#22
Wow!!

No Henderson + No Williams = a bunch of unathletic choir boys who live and die by the 3 for Duke next year...

Just when I thought Duke might actually start challenging UNC again this happens
 
#24
#24
Phase 4 has been going on for a while. Duke even throws out the whitewash on occassion. You don't advance deep in the tournament with a whitewash. Unless coach K is willing to abandon this model, Duke will remain mediocre.

Totally agree. I think Brand leaving, Deng leaving, the Shaun Livingston recruitment, etc. made K go for the lesser talented guys. A freshman elite talent will annihilate a senior Brian Zoubek any day of the week, so I don't understand K's logic.
 
#25
#25
Totally agree. I think Brand leaving, Deng leaving, the Shaun Livingston recruitment, etc. made K go for the lesser talented guys. A freshman elite talent will annihilate a senior Brian Zoubek any day of the week, so I don't understand K's logic.

It was an experiment, I guess. But it has unquestionably failed.
 

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