I say you still have to play the 5 best players that give you the best chance to win.
with that said, i think one or two of the guys who are currently getting the playing time dont fit that role..
 

If I can do this correctly, I share with the board some thoughts of the guy who formerly had the Dukes beat for the PG. 

LAST POST
"good summation.  i don't know how you teach players to play that one. maybe it could be something really simple. no pep talk, no rah-rah bullshit. maybe just a simple reminder, an appeal to self esteem, maybe. like telll a kid,"hey, you're the only one on the court. how long do you want to go on embarrassing yourself?"
-----Original Message-----
From: jama13544@hotmail.com>
To: mapbirdie@aol.com>
Sent: Sun, Dec 14, 2014 11:46 am
Subject: RE:
MY RESPONSEWish I knew the answers.  I saw the Dukes players all summer vs.  Robt Morris, Pitt and W.V.U. players and they stacked up well. Thought we'd actually have a good chance to beat Pitt.  We had it close until the 3 minute mark.  We outrebounded them for the first time since Jesus served as an altar boy!  We gave up more unforced turnovers than forced turnovers.  We gave the game away at Penn State by missing front ends of foul shots-had last possession with 17 seconds to go and shot fell short.   And then they just  (profanity) the bed vs. Robt Morris.  Our kids just do not know how to play thug basketball.  I say that in a polite sense.  Play like Jarrett Durham did!!  They need, as Adam Sandler's "Waterboy" character would say a can of whoop-ass gas to inhale.  Ferry is the right guy and he has the right staff--all former division one or division two head coaches, albeit lower levels.  Bottom line-how do you teach mean?  The guy at Robt Morris knows how.  Jamie Dixon knows how.  And how do you know you've recruited a kid with a thug mentality without his being an actual thug?  If you answer those questions you get an undefeated team!! As an aside, Coach Ferry said before the year started we need players to make two more plays a game.  Against NJIT we did not get two inbounds passes made and they stole the ball and scored two hoops.  We lose by 3.  Against PSU we were three "bricks" (bricked foul shots) short of winning and lost by 2. Not quite like the Steelers being three bricks shy of a load!  Change those things and we are 5 and 2 and nobody is as fully pissed off as they are now.  And with four "cupcakes" to play the out of conference record would have been 9 and 2-  Not exactly chopped liver.  If it were up to me right now I would start Darius Lewis, Tysean Powell, Jordan Robinson, Micah Mason and Jordan Stevens.  This is the closest lineup I see of guys who play with an edge, if you get my drift.  I'd also not be afraid to bring in the other six scholarship players as subs.  They are capable.  As our dear friend Myron would say, Bye now!!
 To: jama13544@hotmail.com
Subject:
From: mapbirdie@aol.com
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 20:57:56 -0500
FIRST POSThey, (grammudder)  --  i see where even the bobby mo's beat your guys. and that was only bobby mo's third win against six losses.  i'm beginning to think that duquesne is so deep in a malaise after all these years that they will never get out vs. div. 1 competition. and that they should do one of two things: 1. drop down to div. 2 or 3 and be contented with intramural-type basketball, or 2., give up hoops altogether. save all that money and energy. alack and alas, it's clear nothing is being done right, and nobody has a clue how to do it, and if they did, they don't have either the financial backing or the energy to do it. even st . bonnie, from their dismal location, can get better players. they showed that against pitt. pitt might not be great this time, but they are still a quality div. 1 team, and they could hardly handle the bonnies -- at home, even. the bonnies lose by 4 at pitt. dukes lose by 14. and then the dukes lose by 16 to bobby mo. holy mackerel. lose 16 to bobby mo?  what's going on? or what isn't going on?  

Steel city AJ wrote:

You have to give ferry atleast 4 years. I'm worried about next year because we only have one scholarship available and the kid already signed. Sanders sounds good, but one player along with the kids who will return next year, I don't think that team can make the dance. I won't be surprised if a kid leaves after the semester is over. Im sure a kid or 2 will transfer, but we don't need another travaughn white, and the coaches will get another late signee whos a juco kid.
Instead of scheduling teams like NJIT and sisters of the poor, and even PITT we could get a buy game or two against teams that will help our RPI and see better competition. If BONA can get a payday against Pitt we should be able to get one from a team easily. We always lose to awful team Albany, New Hampshire, NJIT, RMU(5X) mise as well lose to a good team. I'm not even saying playing kentucky. I'm sure we could get a winnable pay game or two. J jones needs to sit on the bench, he's not a a10 player let along a d1 player. Can't shoot to save his life and gives me a heart attack when he dribbles the ball. Darius needs to start too he looks so much better than he did last year and he is contributing to the team.

You're forgetting that we have 2 transfers sitting out, both of whom I believe were rated higher coming out of high school than anyone on the current team. I would feel better about that if i had more confidence in the coach to get the most out of his players.

ElDuque wrote:

Grammudder, I'm not sure what the point of your post is. It's very confusing to me. It seems as though a former P-G sportswriter is recommending that we drop basketball or go down to D2 or 3 because of "deep malaise." I'm guessing that writer wasn't here when Everhart was, because there was no malaise, there was winning every year. Ron cracked the code. Then Duquesne got stupid, fired him crapped the sheets with a couple aborted attempts to replace him, and eventually hired Ferry, who so far seems overmatched. I'm not going to call for anyone's job. I know Amodio is well protected by the board member for whom his wife works, and I know we owe Ferry a lot of money for several more years. But if and when Ferry's contract winds down and we're still not competitive, then it would be time to move forward with a new AD/Coach tandem. Just because these two can't get it done doesn't mean it can't be done.

Ron Everhart proved that.

If it was a guy who covered Pitt, the problem is that compared to what Pitt has been doing, what Ron did was small potatoes. We look at things differently, because we're so invested in the program. After the horrible teams of the Edgar/DAP/Nee era, what Ron did was wonderful. Outsiders however, weren't nearly as impressed. For them, the bottom line is how many times did you dance, and how far did you go. NIT's and especially CBI's don't matter to people who aren't invested in the program. This is why attendance only picked up for certain opponents during that era. When I tried to get non Duquesne people engaged in conversation about the Dukes, they laughed, and said they didn't follow scrub teams. There were two things that happened during Ron's tenure that really caught the attention of folks in Pittsburgh. The first was making the A10 Championship Game, and the other was the 11 game winning streak. Unfortunately, we lost the title game, and the season with the 11 game streak ended badly. Nothing short of getting ranked, and staying there, or making the dance as an at-large is going to earn any respect here. Some on this board may not like that, but that's the way it is.
 

I think we all agree that relevance = the NCAA Tournament. Where we may differ is the definition of irrelevance.

Losing regularly to Pitt, which benefitted from years in the BE and now the ACC, doesn't make us irrelevant. It made us #2 in the city. Losing regularly to Robert Morris, IMHO, makes us irrelevant. So does playing a bunch of nothing teams, and struggling to stay above .500 against them.

So does a losing record every year in the conference, with no real hope of finishing among the top four.

We've got to start to kick some of this crap to the curb.

duq81 wrote:

Tejas_Duke wrote:

duq81 wrote:

. . Unfortunately, we lost the title game, and the season with the 11 game streak ended badly. Nothing short of getting ranked, and staying there, or making the dance as an at-large is going to earn any respect here. Some on this board may not like that, but that's the way it is.
 

I've said it before, but still believe that the St. Joe's loss in the first round of the A-10 Tournament was the most pivotal moment in the whole 40 years in the Wilderness, the hinge which may turn out to be the end of the program in a few years! 




Losing that first round game to a piece of crap team bounced us right out of the NIT as well that year. We win that game and we are in the NIT at worst, and still on the bubble for the Big Dance.  (I remember driving in my car about two weeks before Selection Sunday, and hearing some national sports show and the host counted the potential A-10 bids and the host said, "Duqusene is in!"  I have never felt prouder in all these years)

Who knows?  If we break the Tourney drought that year, Ron doesn't get canned and TJ doesn't leave!  Instead, as pointed out above, we go from being small potatoes to being no potatoes again!  And for many of us this hamster wheel is getting old!

oh damn you St. Joes!  oh damn You!
 

You make some good points Tejas. I think if we get to the NIT that year, RE has to be extended. Even if TJ bails the next year, (and I think he and his dad played an indirect role in RE getting fired), Ron would have had at least 2 years to get the train back on the track, or perhaps he would have been lured away after the good season, which still would have been ok, as we would likely have been a more attractive destination coming off of a good season, and without the negativity that Ron's firing created.

Of cuorse it would have.  By Dougherty's own standards in the leaked email, we would have made consistent appearances in the NIT (2 out of 3 years).  TJ doesn't leave and we get Jack and the other kid (can't recall his name).  But no, that would have made sense, which has no place at DU!
 

On the other hand, Bob Hurley's kids turned out OK ... and no programs got screwed over in the process. I guess it depends on the quality of people.

ElDuque wrote:

On the other hand, Bob Hurley's kids turned out OK ... and no programs got screwed over in the process. I guess it depends on the quality of people.

Coach Hurley is old school. They don't make em like him too much anymore.
 

ElDuque wrote:

Still he manages to get young kids to play basketball at a high level every year. Imagine that.

Believe me, I wish the average coach was still like him. Of course the parents that these HS coaches have to deal with is enough to scare anyone away from the coaching profession, and I'm not talking about in the "hood", or scruffy rural areas either. Locally, we've had wealthy, and connected parents trying to get successful, and well established coaches fired, because "little Johnny is the best player around, and he's not getting to play" nonsense. Who in their right mind wants to deal with that?
 

This situation make me think of what Ben Howland did at Pitt. When he came there, he proclaimed that he wanted to "recruit to shoot". In other words, he wanted to have a team full of guys who could shoot the three. When he got there, he quickly figured out that he didn't have the right players to run such a system. He quickly figured out what the strengths of those players was, and he tailored a style of play to match both those strengths, and the style of play in his league. Needless to say, the results were phenomenal. I don't know if Ferry has it in him to be able to do something like this, he seems wedded to his system. I actually think he has enough bruisers to play more of a grinding style. Nothing demoralizes an opponent like having a team pound the ball inside, and being unable to stop it. If they would establish more of an inside game, it would open up the perimeter for the shooters.