SI/Mandel on why Duke isn't what Duke used to be

He is stretching with that article.

The argument about the nonconference is pretty dumb b/c Duke does play good teams on a regular basis. Sure, they often are on neutral sites but they are playing them.

The fact is CBB now has a lot of parity (see Mason, George) and it is foolish to assume that Duke should just be in the Final Four every year, like they were in the late 1980s / early 1990s.

The one point he doesn't mention is Coach K's coaching. The guy is really Bobby Knight with a more better public persona. He is a total *** to his players. Knight's later Indiana teams always collapsed at the end and some speculated it was b/c they were just worn down from the General.

Not sure if this is necessarily happening with Coach K but it is a theory he should have addressed.
 
I'm know a few former Duke Bball players and one story I heard about Coach K was funny as hell (well depending on your point of reference). There was a time in the lockerroom during halftime or during practice Coach K askedone of the players what classes he was taking that semester. The player responded with something along the lines of sociology, history, ect. Coach K then told him he better drop those classes and sign up for some Portugues, Italian, and Spanish because he'll never play professional basketball in the United States. And this was in front of the entire team. Cold blooded or funny as hell. You make the call.
 
The bottom line is they are not as talented as they once were and they are not as athletic as most of the other teams. They lost to VCU last year because they weren't athletic enough.

Oh yeah and Paulus SUCKS. UNC was a aberration, if Lawson is 100% the next game we'll see how well Paulus plays.
 
Most interesting part of that article to me was where he points out how McDonald's all-Americans who go to Duke make it to the NBA at a much lower rate than the McD's all-americans who go elsewhere.
 
Well that's because more times than not the McDonald's AA that go to Duke are only McDonald's AA because they're going to Duke.
 
Ahh, who gives a rat's *** about Duke anymore, anyway? They are just another consistently good team that has its share of moments of asininity like responding to a loss by breaking a guy's nose with 12 seconds to go in a game then blaming the guy for being on the floor or like starting a practice player to deliberately foul the opposing star in an attempt to bait him into getting thrown out of the game.

F them and Coach Shuh, too.

Kind of a shame that I have this attitude toward Duke now. I went to high school in North Carolina and became interested in ACC basketball then--I was a freshman when David Thomspon's team beat UCLA. I was never a big UNC fan, me being the iconoclast I am, so I would generally root for Lefty's teams, those miserable Virginia teams that would try to win the ACC tournament despite last place regular season finishes, and lpre-Jim Spanarkle, Mike Gminski, and Tinker Bell Duke teams featuring guys with names like Chili and Fox who could blow a 9 point lead in 17 seconds. I still liked watching them in the 90s failing then succeeding in killing the dragon that was UNLV.

Now, they are just a good program with a coach I dislike. That **** they pulled on Chris Paul was disgusting.
 
What happened with Chris Paul? The only incident I remember Paul being involved in was when he punched Julius Hodge in the nads during the ACC tourney I believe.
 
Duke really has fallen off. What has it been two years now since they went to the final four. What a ****** program
rolleyes.gif
 
Two or three years ago, Duke started a guy named Patrick Davidson against Wake Forest. He proceeded to play bump and not run defense against Paul. He came out after a couple of minutes to a standing ovation from the Cameron psychopaths and a hug from Coach Shuh.
The Link

I'm trying to find a video. It was pretty ugly stuff. It wasn't karate chops to the Adam's Apple, but it wasn't basketball.
 
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