After a disastrous first 5 minutes the Irish played pretty well. Typical Duke team that
is hard to like. Burton was excellent, Shrews needs to shoot more and Mohammed might indeed be a player who needs to play more starting next game.
Replies to: After a disastrous first 5 minutes the Irish played pretty well. Typical Duke team that
Need to play the freshmen, particularly Muhammed and Sundra.
At this point, the team is playing for the NIT, at best, and getting the young guys more minutes trumps an NIT berth.
I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of Allocco's game. He came in with hype about his confidence and leadership. Tom Noie participated in this hype, and then he wrote a thinl-veiled insult at Allocco's big talk after he blew the game last weekend with that idiotic foul. The truth is that Noie's comparisons of Allocco to Ben Hansbrough were ridiculous. He's not even close to Hansbrough skill-wise, and not in the same universe in confidence in game situations. Allocco doesn't make much happen on the offensive end. I hoped that with Burton back, he would shoot more, but he hasn't. He isn't able to create his own shot at this level and even his jumper has been inconsistent. His free throw shooting has been poor after shooting 90% at Princeton. I warned before that the vast majority of these Ivy League players struggle mightily making the jump to the highest levels of competition. I would much rather have Muhammed getting his minutes. Njie is a ninth through twelfth man in the ACC. He should not be anyone's starting center. Give most of those minutes to Sundra. You'll note that Burton led the team in rebounds with five. That's a really pathetic effort on the boards from the team. I think Davis had two, and Njie four. That can't happen. I know that about 20 years ago, Coach K and some other top coaches abandoned the box out/find a guy approach to a "go and get it" philosophy of rebounding, and that may work when you have Duke athletes, but this ND team needs to find opponents when the shot goes up when defending ND's basket, and you can see that they often struggle with this.
another take:
they were down 14 - 0 after the first 5 minutes. they lost by 8. that means they outscored duke by 6 over the final 35 minutes.
just a tidbit to think about.
Yes, once we have Burton and Mohammed healthy we can shock a lot of people.
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frankly, I'd be one.
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