Review of the Duke game

OK, after a good night's sleep I feel better. At the end of the day, we lost to the #1 team in the country and that's nothing to be ashamed of. So what happened?

1. Missed free throws. Ended the game 15-25. Ish in particular went 0-5 from the line. It's frustrating because a guy who is SO good at getting to the basket has to be able to shoot free throws or he won't be as effective. Teams are starting to realize that about him and put him on the line. The other guy who struggled was McHenry who went 1-4. Everyone else shot fine from the line.

2. Missed shots. Ended the game shooting 38%. Can't win like that. And the reality is we had a lot of open looks. It wasn't like every shot was contested. The end of the game was particularly frustrating. 3pt shots, lay-ups, mid-range, it didn't matter. We could NOT score during the last 3 minutes of this game. Bynum was stunning with his dribble penetration moves but ended up 1-11 in the paint. To win games against big teams you have to make shots - we didn't and we lost. In fact, just look at 3pt shots by half. In the 1st half GT was 5-11, Duke 1-8. The 2nd half we were 2-11 and Duke was 6-10. There it is.

3. Nobody stepped up at the end. Goes with missing shots, but our key leaders did not step up. BJ, Marvin and Bynum finished a combined 8-33. Sorry but it's great to step up and score 36 against Clemson, but these are the games that separate a team from the pack.

So what was good about this game?

1. Intensity. The team played VERY hard. They hustled and got into Duke's head, particularly in the 1st 10:00 minutes. Defensively I thought they did a decent job, but with all that Duke still shot 50% for the game.

2. Luke S. He was the GT star of the game. Ended with 18 points (7-10), hit 4-5 free throws, had 8 boards (5 offensive), 2 blocks, 1 assist, 1 steal. Bottom line he played a monster game. I was proud of his performance, which to me was highlighted by his going to the floor, getting a loose ball and shovel-passing it to C-Moore for a lay-up. His hands were good tonight - he caught tough passes in the lane. He finished strong. And to top it off, his girlfriend was pretty darn cute. "Good on ya mate".

3. Rebounding. How is it good that we got outrebounded 44-38??? Well, on the offensive glass we outrebounded them 17-12. That has been the achilles the last 2 games and we did a better job (not great), considering Dook is #1 in ACC rebounding margin.

Here are my concerns looking forward

1. Isma'il. Played a total of 15 minutes, mostly in the 1st half. Saw him stretching at one point. Was it cramps again? We need his energy and spark in the game. He does no good if he cannot play. In fact the last few games we have not seen much of his driving ability at all.

2. Confidence. Hopefully the team will rebound back from this loss. A VERY tough FSU team awaits and we need to be ready as they have already knocked off WF, UNC and almost Duke at Cameron.

At the end of the day, we were in a position to possibly win this game at the end. We gave ourselves a chance. That's better than we have historically done against Duke. So we will see them again later in the season and hopefully our team will be even more mature and more ready to play. Great effort that fell short. Let's get them next time. GO JACKETS!!!!