It's late so I'm keeping this (relatively) short. Reading back over some of my earlier posts, I suppose I ought to feel a bit silly advocating so strongly for Oden now that he appears to be quite injury prone. Oh well, he's still young and surgeons are insane these days. I just hope he comes back and is able to compete at the level we know he could when we saw him play in the Final Four. He seems like a really good kid who doesn't deserve this kind of bad luck.
As for actual Duke basketball, there's not much to say. I got to see a team practice last Wednesday and that was exciting. It looked like everyone who returns had improved, and the freshmen look competitive (Singler looked outstanding). Henderson and Singler will likely be All-ACC at the very least. The style the coaches were advocating was a real up-tempo Phoenix-like game, which perfectly suits a team without a true big guy but with a great number of athletic wings and guards.
My short preview for the season: Duke will win a lot of games, some of which they maybe shouldn't. However, some games we'll run into foul trouble guarding big guys and have issues defending the paint and lose games we maybe should win. I also think we'll be fine rebounding and be one of the best perimeter defensive teams in the country (up there with Kansas and UCLA), as well as a very good 3 point shooting team. Such a team is volatile and unpredictable in some ways because if shots are dropping, they can seem unbeatable. I can see a team like this losing in the first round or going to the Final Four. Either way, I'm excited just to see what the hell we're going to look like this year.
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