Caught Up

Well exams are finally over and I'm finally caught up with defensive ratings. I haven't tallied them for the season yet, and probably won't until after the Pitt game tonight.

Speaking of the Pitt game, this should be a really exciting game and a great test for Duke since DeJuan Blair is clearly the most skilled and powerful big man Duke has faced all year. We have heard so much from the "experts" about how Duke will struggle defending the post this year, so this will be an illustrative game.

Pitt is an interesting team. They lost 3 key seniors from last year's Sweet 16 squad (Graves, Gray, Kendall) but might be better this year with the addition of super-frosh DeJuan Blair, a 6'7" 250 lb post player with very long arms who shoots 57.6% eFG, is a monstrous rebounding (21.9% ORB rate, 24.0% DRB rate) and who is an excellent defender (7.9% block rate, 6.4% steal rate - wow). Their point guard, Fields, has been excellent for them all year, sporting something like a 3.5 A:T ratio. Sam Young is probably their best overall player, an athletic junior 6'6" swingman who can rebound very well (9% ORB rate, 19.5% DRB rate), and shoot 3s (14 for 25 on the year). He plays the most minutes with the highest usage rate.

In addition to those three main pieces, Pitt has a few guys who can shoot really well from 3 (Ramon and Cook both shot over 40% last year). They have 6 upperclassmen in their 8 man rotation (3 seniors, 3 juniors) and have a ton of experience playing in the Garden and on a big stage.

Duke's advantage will be depth. Despite the fact that Pitt plays 8 guys 10 minutes or more and a 9th about 9 minutes, Pitt doesn't have real depth in the sense that outside of Fields, Young and Blair, their offensive weapons taper off a little. Cook and Ramon can shoot 3s, but neither can carry their team. Offensively they are an excellent rebounding team and take care of the ball. They are a pretty good shooting team overall but it must be remembered that they have not played the best defenses this year.

Blair, for all his dominance, doesn't play a whole lot - a bit over 20 minutes. I suppose that is related to early conditioning issues, or maybe foul problems (that, I don't know). At any rate, you have to expect that Fields will play more than he has all year on a stage like this, and that Young and Blair's performance will be paramount for the Panthers to pull off the win. When they are sitting, you have to think Duke has a huge advantage because 1 through 8, Duke does not see a huge drop in talent.

Of most interest to me will be seeing how Duke deals with Blair when he is playing. Who will guard him? With Lance Thomas questionable, you have to think a guy like McClure would see a fair amount of time on Blair. Obviously Zoubek will at times, but I worry about that match-up because Zoubek is better suited guarding other really tall guys, whereas Blair is smaller with great strength and mobility.

For Duke a lot of this will just ride on how we shoot. Pitt is pretty good defensively, but no team thus far has really been able to contain our perimeter attack and prevent open looks from 3 or in the lane. A big question for me is, how will they guard Duke? Some teams this year have guarded Duke by trying to prevent the penetration with a zone or with a lot of help defense, and in all cases so far, they have been burned from 3. It's really hard to catch this Duke team on an "off night" shooting because 7 guys are greenlit to shoot 3s whenever they are open, and of those guys 6 are up near or above 40%. If Scheyer is off one night, King might be on. If both are off, Paulus is probably on. Nelson has been on fire from 3 recently as well. Albany's game plan (granted, it was Albany) was to take away the 3s, and Duke still managed to create 26 good looks from 3 and hit 15 of them.

Obviously the other big issue will be rebounding. What will Duke do to keep Pitt off their offensive glass? So far this year, Duke has played 2 very good offensive rebounding teams in Illinois and Wisconsin, and against Wisconsin, we did a very good job limiting second chance opportunities, whereas against Illinois we clearly didn't. I felt that Illinois game was sort of "flukey" because a number of offensive rebounds bounced around in scrums and ended up in Illinois' possession, and we should all know from Football outsiders that fumble recovery is largely a product of luck.

Finally of interest is foul trouble. Pitt has had a pretty poor free throw rate thus far (even Blair has), so that suggests that they aren't quite as aggressive attacking the basket as other teams like North Carolina or even Duke. It will be important for Zoubek, McClure, and Singler to stay out of foul trouble.

If Duke can execute offensively, stay out of foul trouble and limit Pitt's second chances reasonably, then I can almost guarantee that Duke wins. None of that is written in stone though.