I remember last year we were one of the shortest and especially least experienced teams in all of D-1. It's amazing that a year later with almost no graduates and bringing in a 6'11 5th year senior we still are in the bottom third of both.

What can we say? We're a short team.

Hope to see many of you braving Pittsburgh's winter preview tonight at the game. Go Dukes

Terrible start for Steele. 0-7. 

Thankfully, it's over with a W.  Ball-handling/passing was atrocious.

Mike Hughes to the rescue! Nothing from the bench. At least Steele offset his horrible offensive game by hitting the boards.

A double digit win after that performance is quite impressive. Carry, Austin, and Hughes stepped up big time. Everyone else, especially Steele, has a lot of work to do going forward if we want to be competitive in conference play.

This game bothered me...I just don't know how much we have advanced.  I watched some of Robert Morris vs. Pitt tonight and it just seems that Robert Morris often looks so much more competitive then we do.  Yes, I'm glad we won but we played poorly.

They didn't play like it was their home court.  I expect that they will get more used to playing there.  Still, if not for a few lazy passes by our guards to quick points for Lamar, the Dukes could have put this team away instead of a close game. Hope they work on better passing this week.
 

We don't know how good Lamar is going to be, but Lamar at least, doesn't quit. Nice to see the team get a win when they don't have much working. Not one to reminisce  about necessarily, but 2-0 is better than being anything else after two games.

Agree with others, the first half was definitely sloppy and in some ways we were sloppy throughout (passing). Still thought we played relatively good defense and played much better all around in the 2nd half. Maceo definitely looked pretty strong in this one and that is encouraging.

Mike Hughes has to find a way to stay out of foul trouble because he really has a big impact on the game on both sides of the ball. He had 17 and 10 in 18 minutes, that is ridiculous and should not go unnoticed.

We could be Pitt losing to Nichols State. I’m happy to be 2-0 it’s so early and this team will continue to get better.

Separate Note: A10 Preseason #5 Pick St. Bonaventure is now 0-3 after going down to Siena tonight by 13 and preseason #2 Davidson is 1-1 after losing to UNC Charlotte tonight by 13. Sucks for the conference but my real point is it could be worse.

Good teams find a way to win even when they don’t play their best, Go Dukes!

duq81 wrote:

luckymcd wrote:

I remembered this board keeps a good archive, so I looked back to see. I can only find those parts of Phoenix's previews as far back as the Maine game last year on 12/15. At that point we were 349 / 353 in experience and 306 / 353 in height. So we've improved 107 spots in experience and 40 spots in height.

Last year we had no seniors, and no juniors after Mike Lewis, and Craig Randall left. This year, we have a senior, and 3 juniors after losing Frankie, so that's the difference. That said, we're not as inexperienced as that would indicate, because all of our juniors, and sophomores played major minutes last year. You could have a team full of seniors, and juniors, and your team would rate high on that list, but if you had just graduated 5 starters who dominated playing time the previous year, you would now have an old, but inexperienced team. We have guys who have played a lot of minutes. Also, keep in mind that we actually have 3 academic seniors, and a grad student on the team, all of whom play major minutes, so we're not a team full of kids. Next year we'll jump way up that list, which is why we expect to be one of the favorites next year. That said, I think we have enough talent, and experience to make some noise now. GO DUKES!
 

duq81, good points that can be backed up by KenPom.  KenPom tracks "Minutes Continuity".  He defines it as "determining what percentage of a team’s minutes are played by the same player from last season to this season. Conveniently, the national average happens to be around 50%."
Here are the last 3 years under Dambrot:
2018 - Experience 1.58 years (228 in country); Minutes Continuity 44.5% (217 in country)
2019 - Experience 0.70 years (346 in country); Minutes Continuity 19.6% (333 in country)
2020 to date - Experience 1.44 years (239 in country); Minutes Continuity 53.5% (103 in country)

I will add this stat to the Game Thread.

 

This Dukes team has plenty of size, experience, athleticism, & scoring to easily be a top 100 team this year with an outside shot at top 75. Unfortunately, until the players & coaches can consistently control tempo/pace, treat the ball like the precious object that it is, walk the fine line between swagger & jackassery, be the smarter team, & play super-hard for 40 minutes, they will be doomed to float in the 200-130 range. 

The bad shooting night doesn't concern me. Getting outworked, showboating/celebrating when nothing has really been accomplished, playing down to the competition does. 

Lamar played harder, showed poise/discipline, & lost mostly because of a significant talent gap. Having written that, it should be said that they are a very bad Division I team.

We knew Steele wasn't as good as the Princeton game. I also believe that he is much better than this game.

Sin did some very Un-Sin things tonight. This was by far my least favorite of his performances. He looked to have read too many of his own press clippings. He should save the shot celebrations for an evening when his assist to turnover ratio is better than 1:7. Even so, he has certainly shown a real talent for timely scoring & is never afraid.

After 2 games, the FT shooting looks great.

Maceo can certainly play. He may already be the smartest player on the team. His conditioning needs work. He is crazy loooong.

I'm worried Weathers is getting a little lost in the shuffle. He does so many great things but he is also such a tweener. I really don't get the 5 out sets in the first half with him stationed almost exclusively on the perimeter.

Hughes was awesome for 15 of his 18 minutes. The high-risk/low-reward early fouls & technicals are garbage. If he can grow-up the team's chances will go up. His crap & TDM's shot selection force me to believe that accountability is something KD demands only on a case by case basis.

Well, those are my 2 games into it overreactions.