If you missed Part 1 of the End of Season observations, you can see it here. Now on to the Blue Devils.
Duke
For Duke fans, this season will go down along with the '93-'94 and '98-'99 seasons as a year in which the expectation of a National Championship was realistic, but unrealized. This Duke team exhibited the same brand of dominance that those teams did. It may not have made the Final Four, but this team will stand the test of time as one of those "what might have been" Duke teams.
In reality this was a three part season for the Blue Devils. A three act play if you will.
Act I: Here's how this season began for Duke: hours worth of preseason coverage on ESPN, almost every national writer anointing them the favorite, predicting them to repeat as champions, returning the preseason player of the year and a preseason All-American, and a transcendent freshman point guard who, as a friend put it, was given the keys to a Lamborghini and told to just drive.
This was Duke's preseason world. Let me repeat, their PRESEASON world.
Then the games started and, for once, the prognosticators were right. Duke was that good. Adding Kyrie Irving to that team turned a formidable team into a great one. Possibly a historically great one. They rolled through every team they faced, and looked as if they were toying with them.
I watched a preseason game when Duke played St. Augustine College (a small, private, HBCU from Raleigh). Now this wasn't high level competition, but it being a preseason game you knew that Duke would go all out for 40 minutes, because they were trying to work out the kinks and see where they stood. I figured it would be a good chance to get an early look at how the team was shaping up. Plus the tickets were free.
The team went out and dropped 140 on St. Augustine. One hundred and forty points! St. Augustine scored 25 in the first half. Duke scored 75. That's the type of game that would give Ken Pomeroy a hard on. They looked unstoppable, they looked like world beaters. And they were...for the first eight games.
Act II: Like most second acts, this is when the plot thickened. In this play, the thickening was courtesy of a freak toe injury. Kyrie Irving's injury changed the entire college basketball season. It affected not just Duke, not just the ACC, but the entire country (at least the relevant teams anyway).
But then Nolan Smith decided that he was going to carry this team. It would be his team, and he would will it to greatness. And he did...for the most part. Duke overcame the loss of its star point guard by replacing him with another star point guard.
Smith's play this year cannot be overrated. He simply was outstanding. There are far too many games to count where Smith carried the Blue Devils to victory. I'm hard-pressed to find a more dominate season from a Duke player in recent memory.
Nevertheless, Duke fans should have known it was too good to be true. Not just after the beat down at the hands of St. John's, but also in the loss to Florida State. Duke was exposed as a team that had trouble with good defensive teams that could attack off the dribble. They just weren't powerful enough to overcome their deficiencies.
Yet Duke rolled through much of the year, and then rolled through the ACC tournament, dispatching UNC like they were swatting away an annoying gnat. And to top it all off, the savior was coming back. Everything looked like it was setting up for a story book finish. The derailing of Duke's most dominate season since 2001 would be set straight by the return of the prodigy. The stage was set for joyous finish. The 2010-11 Duke Team's preordained destiny would be fulfilled. Or so we all thought.
Act III: If this season really was a play, then Duke would have rolled through the NCAA's all the way to Houston, riding Kyrie Irving's climatic return and overcoming a host of historical foes. But this wasn't a work of fiction, and the storybook ending did not materialize.
Before we go into why this Duke team fell, think about who Duke would have played on their way to the finals if they had kept winning. Playing Michigan in the second round on the heels of the Jalen Rose drama. Then facing Arizona in a rematch of the 2001 title game. Then facing UConn, a team that had beaten Duke in '99 and '04, and realistically cost Duke two national titles. (Obviously the '99 game was in the title game, but the '04 Final Four game was the de facto National Title game, given the competition on the other side.) Then a potential match up with UNC in the final four, and then facing Butler again for the title. If Duke had won the title this year, I could have written a book with all the subplots involved.
Of course none of that came true, and Duke got its doors blown off by Arizona, which played an almost perfect offensive game in beating down the Devils. Not that Duke didn't have anything to do with that. Momo Jones consistently beat Irving off the dribble, and Duke could not rebound the basketball to save its life despite have a considerable height advantage.
Two thoughts on the Irving drama. (1) He was not all the way back from that injury and (2) his return hurt the team's chemistry. Neither of these things are easily or simply explained.
First, while the injury was healed Irving just wasn't 100% back. His lateral quickness was especially lacking, which is why he didn't shut down Momo Jones like he shut down Kalin Lucas, Korie Lucious, and Jacob Pullen earlier in the year. That, more than the next point, is why Duke got beat so bad.
Some folks, including Coach K (and myself), had no worries that Irving's return would affect the Blue Devil's chemistry. And we were right. In terms of getting along with his teammates, there was no noticeable problem. But it did affect the way the team performed. It changed the team's identity, and changed it to something the team wasn't able to execute as well as the post-Irving offensive identity. It was obvious if you watched those three tourney games. Duke looked out of sync. And it's no coincidence that Nolan Smith's worst game of the season came after Irving was inserted back in the lineup.
(And for all of you Duke fans who think that Irving's return didn't have some negative effect, just stop talking. Seriously, go away. You're starting to remind me of the State fans who still think they're going to get a top level coach while Debbie Yow is doing the hiring. And you're embarrassing the rational Duke fans around who aren't blinded by their fan-hood.)
All in all this was a season that had a lot of high points, but it will always be a big disappointment in the annuls of Duke history.
And now some quick hits:
Seth Curry/Andre Dawkins: There was a lot of hype coming into the season that Curry would be the next great shooter in the long line of Duke shooters, but I was of the opinion that it was Dawkins would have the breakout year. For the first 10 games I looked like quite the fortune teller, with Dawkins lighting it up as a fourth option and Curry looking lost playing high level basketball for the first time in 19 months.
But once we got to January, Dawkins fell off a cliff, and never showed more than flashes of his early season self. Curry, on the other hand, finally acclimated himself and began to show what all of the hype was about. He became a significant contributor, especially on defense, and it’s no coincidence that his injury coincided with Arizona's run that put that game away.
The future is bright for both of these players, but they need to be more consistent. They too often seem to get lost in the shuffle for long periods during games, and that has to change for them, and Duke, to be successful in the future.
Mason Plumlee/Miles Plumlee: Duke's biggest question coming into the year was how they would fill the leadership/rebounding/energy void left by Lance Thomas and Brian Zoubeck. The Plumlee brothers were suppose to provide that filler, but they came up short this year. While Mason rebounded at a high level for most of the season, both brothers, much like Curry and Dawkins, would disappear for long stretches.
Both brothers have a ton of talent, but they don't seem to be able to translate that talent to production on the court. It’s a mystery why they aren't bigger parts of the offense. Miles has a decent shot out to 15 feet, and Mason's athleticism should translate into better post offense. Perhaps you can blame the players, but you have to blame to coaching staff as well. Regardless of who is to blame the problem needs to be fixed for the Blue Devils to contend for a title next year.
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