I continue to be surprised the Dukes are favored this season. I generally don’t gamble on sports and never on my teams, but it seems like easy money. As I always say, hopefully I’m wrong.

I believe the Dukes will win tonight. When you are down and nobody believes in you that is when you are the most dangerous. Go Dukes 🏀

I’m not optimistic that the Dukes can make any significant noise this season if Jake is going to be injured, or not playing consistently, or playing reduced minutes.  Though he hasn’t been a great facilitator he is probably the best one on the team and  HAS been the guy who can score consistently especially when a basket is drastically needed. When he’s not on the floor the team is lost offensively. Maximus aside, Corbett has been the most frustrating because he’s shown glimpses that he’s capable of being a volume scorer.  I just don’t understand why he is so out of sorts so far both offensively but ESPECIALLY defensively. I think Dru needs to stick with him a bit longer.  And I don’t expect his FT shooting to remain this bad.  He’s never been a “good” FT shooter but at least we should be able to expect 65%. Not 44%

FAM wrote:

This IS NOT A POLITICAL Dig at anyone… I was thinking of the Harris campaign and their slogan
We Are Not Going Back - well, then I thought of the many years of DU basketball before the last couple of years and then looking at this year and am thinking…
I THINK WE ARE GOING BACK!!!

(:

Unless Coach Dru changes this offense to an open running style, I think we got the wrong guy. He has the best talent of any DU team since the big time 60's and he's wasting  all this offensive talent on this very bad half-court with no real point guard. He might have some point guards, but they aren't playing point. 

Come on Dru. This team can't be this horribly coached. Wake up already.

Bad team on offense.  Open looks clanks. Not as much talent as I figured.  Or…is an exorcism in order?

Perfect example Dukes up 50-44 with all the momentum. Dinkins and Barre go out. Rozier and Dixon come in and it's 50-48. Dru has got to learn what's working and what obviously isn't. Not rocket science. 

Good win. Rebounding, foul shooting, two point attempts, etc...team has talent and will get better. Apologies to Rozier on previous posts. Frustrated posts for the most part. He stepped up and I always love his efforts. Lets get rolling Dukes. Crawford really impressed tonight. Total team effort.

This team clearly is better on the move than standing still. They used more of that tonight.  80 points was enough to win nearly all of our games with this defense. Dinkins had a great night.

Last edited by NapaDuke (12/06/2024 9:18 pm)

Rayrich wrote:

Good win. Rebounding, foul shooting, two point attempts, etc...team has talent and will get better. Apologies to Rozier on previous posts. Frustrated posts for the most part. He stepped up and I always love his efforts. Lets get rolling Dukes. Crawford really impressed tonight. Total team effort.

Rozier’s effort is always exemplary. But no need to retract your statements. He was bad and hurting the team for much of the game. Taking terrible shots, missing key free throws.  He was also, gritty, energetic, and scored timely baskets.  He is what most of us have stated. An asset to the team in a reduced role.  Unfortunately, with Jake on the bench, he’s our best option at guard along with Dinkins. 

Crawford impressed me tonight. I wonder if he can play point.

Sure, a a lot of teams are “better on the run” than in half-court, but you need to be able to score in both ways to win against better teams.  Running doesn’t just happen by saying “we want to run”.  Last night in the second half the Dukes created running opportunities by playing aggressive defense, forcing bad shots by Delaware, getting hands on passes, and rebounding the basketball, all of which created open-court running opportunities.  You have to create those opportunities in order to run.  So if teams are getting good shots and making them, or hitting foul shots, it’s pretty hard to run because you don’t have open-court opportunities. 

I thought Dru must have lit a fire under the team at halftime.  It was a different team in the second half.  Dru played a smaller quicker lineup to take away the matchup problems we had in the first half when our bigs were getting beaten to the hoop by smaller quicker players.  This adjustment made it hard for Delaware to score along with the more aggressive Duquesne defense.  Nice work!

NapaDuke wrote:

Nice win. Make foul shots, out rebound Delaware, drove the lane for points and Rozier alley-oop floaters to Barre for dunks were brilliant. A few transition baskets and timely 3's near the end to ice it. Beat the press late in the game and  if this team had this offensive effort every game we would be 7-2 instead of 2-7. 

The assists on Barre’s 2 alley-oops came from Dinkins. In between those, Rozier had a nice assist via an interior bounce pass to Barre for a layup.

Barre had a very strong 5 minutes to open the second half; provided some real energy and movement without the ball. He has good hands and good footwork; I’m happy that all of his hard work is paying off and I wish him continued good health.

Although we didn’t see much of Dixon (5 minutes total), he did a nice job in keeping the momentum going in his 2¼ minutes replacing Barre in the second half. 2 points, 2 rebounds, 1 steal, 1 foul and 1 turnover- when Dave is right, he will fill up a stat sheet making something happen (some good and some not so good).

Coach Dru also called an effective time out before the 12 minute mark when Delave cut the 6 point Dukes lead to 2. They Dukes stretched their lead back out to 7 after that and started to close the game out.