DevilWolfing | Duke Hoop Blog

Feb

In The Lines – Musical tribute to the Plumlees

One of the greatest scenes in the 2002 Stephen Frears film “High Fidelity” is when John Cusack’s character, Rob Gordon goes through the massive task of re-organizing his record collection. Rob’s friend Dick, played by Todd Louiso, asks if he’s sorting them alphabetically or chronologically, to which Rob replies, “Autobiographical”.

I’m a huge fan of obscure sports trivia, especially when it’s something that happens that begs the question, “when’s the last time this happened?” I’m also a huge fan of music, and I truly believe that “High Fidelity” may be the best work that’s ever been published that really captures how I think … although, here I’m substituting sports facts in place of horrible, failed relationships. So each week, I’ll be picking something that happened in sports and going back in time to research when it happened last. To provide some context, I’ll be connecting the sports trivia with three songs released during the same time in history … one song being a track that we’ll all remember, another being one from my favorite playlists, and a third from a guy who’s responsible for writing, recording, or distributing probably 70% of my own record collection, Mac McCaughan of Superchunk and Portastatic, and co-founder of Merge Records. Read more

Feb

Devilwolfing: Basement Life

Jan

Is NC State the ACC’s Biggest Disappointment So Far?

Prior to the kickoff of ACC league play, I went through game-by-game and predicted the outcome of all league games for the purpose of predicting just how many NCAA bids would come out of the conference. Conventional wisdom says the ACC is a three-bid league, especially when taking a look at the unpredictable blob of mediocrity that resides in the middle of the standings. History has shown us that the ACC operates on a bell curve … a couple of teams at the top, a couple at the bottom, and a mass of humanity in-between. I had hopes that this year would be different. So far, my hopes are fading quickly.

In terms of picking games, my record has not been that bad. I’m at 12 correct picks out of 18 games, and 7 of the 12 team records correct so far. Two of the 5 teams I’ve incorrectly pegged are completely understandable, as Boston College is off to an improbable 2-1 start and Wake Forest earned a big home win against Virginia Tech in their opener. Speaking of Virginia Tech, I really liked their opening schedule with games against Wake Forest and Boston College on the road, and with Florida State at home. I had the Hokies at 3-0 in those games, figuring they would out-coach and out talent Boston College and Wake Forest, and I predicted that Florida State would have their eyes on a weekend matchup with the Tar Heels (a game I predicted FSU would win, by the way). So obviously a three-game swing puts the Hokies as my most disappointing team so far, right? Not exactly. Read more

Jan

Confusing End to Game Demands ACC Intervention

At least Stilman White was provided a life jacket at Late Night With Roy

There certainly has not been a shortage of discussion regarding the early exit of Roy Williams and his scholarship players with 14.2 seconds remaining on the clock in Tallahassee on Saturday. The story should have been about the 33 point loss by the national championship favorite UNC Tar Heels, but it quickly turned into harsh criticism and rabid “jump circle defending” of the decision to pull the team early to allegedly avoid the onrushing students at the end of the game. From there, the story further dissolved when Roy Williams explained that he was under the impression that all UNC players had left the court and that the game would end prematurely, and then later verbally attacked radio hosts Joe Ovies and Adam Gold on Coach Williams’ Monday night call-in show for calling him a “liar”. It’s never a good look when your team of NBA lottery picks loses by 33 points, and it’s incredibly puzzling when a man with one of the most powerful jobs in all of college sports is able to be so easily trolled by fans and radio hosts. While the whole fiasco has decomposed into jokes to be thrown at UNC fans for years to come, there is a real need to get to the bottom of what happened.

If you believe Coach Williams (good luck with all of that), UNC requested to forfeit the game, and all of the Tar Heel coaches, players, and support staff (AYO’s, or “all you others” as Roy so lovingly calls them) were to leave the court and head to the safety of the locker room. Of course, we all know that’s not how the end of the game played out, but it does raise the question “what, exactly, constitutes a forfeit”? Well, according to NCAA rules, the game officials are the only parties involved with the authority to rule a game a forfeit. Per Section 28, Article 2, referees shall declare a forfeit when a player, team or coach “makes a travesty of the game”, which was certainly warranted in this situation. Coaches do not have the authority to have a handshake agreement at mid-court to call a game for any reason. It’s probably for the best as surely John Calipari would save his team the trouble of shaving points by just offering to end the game before reaching the spread. By the way, the Kentucky Wildcats have lost 12 consecutive games against the spread, going 11-1 straight up during that timeframe. But I digress … Read more

Jan

Tar Heels Rely on the Three-Ball; Duke Just Relies on Balls

I’m going to go ahead and say it … what the ACC lacks in their ability to live up to their hype as an elite basketball conference, it makes up for by being incredibly interesting, if not downright exciting. Not that I’m calling Boston College’s 61-59 win over Virginia Tech in front of a half-empty Conte Forum “exciting”, but Boston College is 2-1 in the league while Virginia Tech is now 0-3, and in the same way train-wrecks are exciting, or garbage fires are exciting, the ACC is sure as hell exciting. Ten ACC teams entered the ring this weekend, and if you felt like you had a firm grasp on how things would play out through March heading into Saturday’s games, surely you’re just as confused as the rest of today. There’s plenty to talk about today, so let’s try to keep focused on the basketball itself and not talk about any developments that aren’t related to the teams’ performances on the court.

But first, can you believe Roy Williams pulled his team off of the court with 14.2 seconds remaining in his blowout loss to Florida State? I don’t like it one bit. I didn’t like when Mike Krzyzewski did the same thing during JJ Redick’s tenure when Duke lost in Tallahassee, and I don’t like it now. I think there are much better ways to handle that situation if your real concern is getting safely to the locker room. Ask for more security to be around your bench, or to have a stronger police presence escorting your team to the locker room. By leaving the court early, you’re clearly doing it to make a very visible statement … either putting your team through the humiliation of having to shake hands and go into the locker room with 14.2 seconds left on the clock, or putting your foot down against court-rushing and arena safety in general.

But back to basketball …

Duke looked poised to suffer the same death at Clemson as the Tigers jumped out to an early lead forcing Coach K to call timeout just two possessions in, and leading him to pull a page from Roy Williams’ playbook by sending the next five guys to the scorer’s table at once. Different from most upsets where an inferior opponent rides the home crowd and insanely hot shooting to knock a top-ranked team back, Clemson posed some actual matchup problems for Duke and did well in exploiting those advantages. After Mason Plumlee put the clamps down on ACC Player of the Year front-runner Mike Scott, holding the Virginia star to just 7 points in the second half of Duke’s Thursday night win over the 16^th ranked Cavaliers, Clemson forward Milton Jennings was getting whatever he wanted against Plumlee by forcing him away from the basket, taking him off of the dribble, or getting points on put-backs when Plumlee would have to rotate off of Jennings. Tanner Smith played like a senior leader and hurt the Blue Devils in a variety of ways by scoring points, playing good defense, getting rebounds, and setting up teammates for points. But while all the ingredients were there for the upset, for the second game in a row Duke relied on the one attribute that is the clearest advantage Coach K has over Roy Williams … balls. Read more

Jan

Why “Any Given Saturday” Is a Bad Look for ACC Football

In the wake of ACC Champion Clemson’s 70-33 thrashing at the hands of Big East champ West Virginia in the Orange Bowl, the folks who cover the ACC have been crawling over each other to deliver the reasons, and the potential solutions, for the league’s failure to keep pace with their peers on the gridiron. There’s certainly plenty of low-hanging fruit to pick, such as the abundance of private schools in the ACC membership, the constant turnover in the coaching ranks, and the deep-rooted basketball-centric culture that exists in the league. While none of these are incorrect and certainly all contribute to the hurdle the league must clear to reach that next-level of football, could it be the ACC’s attempt to manufacture a football culture across 12 campuses that leads to the ongoing BCS embarrassments?

In 2005, the ACC played its first ever championship game in front of 73,000 people in Jacksonville, Florida, and 22^nd ranked Florida State edged out 5^th ranked Virginia Tech 27-22. It was the matchup the league was designed to produce when the Atlantic and Coastal divisions were created following the inclusion of Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College. The four “football schools” of the ACC were positioned to ensure the best chance of one of these teams moving on to the Orange Bowl … Florida State and Clemson in the Atlantic, and Virginia Tech and Miami in the Coastal. It was a great thought from the office of John Swofford, but it creates a problem that I’ll get to in a minute. The most obvious problem from this alignment is that, outside of Virginia Tech, the other three schools have not held up their end of the deal. Read more

Jan

Forecasting the ACC – Game by Game Predictions

ACC play FINALLY opens up this weekend, so I thought I’d take a look at the league and try to figure out where I think everyone will finish. UNC’s obviously the most talented team in the league, and there’s a clear bottom-tier that may be the worst the ACC has ever seen. Duke belongs in the top-tier, but there are concerns. Teams like NC State, Virginia, and Florida State are battling it out to be named that “third best team”, but it’s way too simple and inaccurate to predict finishes based on gut feel. Every win has a loser, so the only real way to come to a prediction of how teams will finish is to go through game-by-game and predict the outcomes. Surpringly enough, my finished product brought some changes from my “eye test” rankings that began with UNC as the clear top team with Duke and Virginia behind them. In the end, I came up with the following standings, and I see the league getting four teams into the NCAA tournament: Duke, UNC, Florida State, and a battle between Virginia, NC State and Virginia Tech to put together the most impressive resume to join the Big Dance.

In the end, I have NC State beating Virginia in Atlanta to reach the semi-finals of the ACC tournament to solidify that final bid. Read more

Jan

The DevilWolf Podcast #2

Quick thoughts on the Orange Bowl, instant replay in college football, and Austin Rivers’ place at Duke.

Jan

Say Whatever You Want About Duke; Except This

Type the letter “D” into any sportswriter’s word-completion enabled software and there’s a solid chance you’ll end up with a highlighted “Duke” on the document. For better or for worse, Duke is the most scrutinized, analyzed, written-about team in all of college basketball thanks to a combination of unabashed hatred from the masses and irrational sensitivity from the fanatics. There’s no in-between either, because perception says if you don’t love Duke, you hate them, and if you don’t hate them, you love them. But you have to talk about them.

As much as Duke gets broken down by everyone from ESPN to Bleacher Report, there is one bit of analysis that is both consistently present and horribly inaccurate: Coach K has a system, and that system is robotic, mechanical, and demands precision, and can only be run effectively with the right players on the roster. I have spent my entire life watching Duke basketball, and I have given an equal number of face-palms directed towards those who blindly hate and those who blindly love. This is the one fallacy that turns me into “that Duke guy”.

Growing up around sports in the Triangle area of North Carolina has afforded me opportunities beyond the wildest stretch of my imagination to rub elbows with some of the best coaches who have ever paced a sideline. I once stood on the tower at the Dail practice facility at NC State watching Spring practice, and was startled to feel a sudden strong hand firmly grabbing my shoulder followed by a familiar voice calling the sound of football pads clashing against each other “the greatest sound in the world”. “Yes sir, Coach Bowden,” I replied after I collected myself enough to realize I was standing beside a football legend. I’ve met Jim Valvano, Dean Smith, Lou Holtz, Steve Spurrier, and countless other household names from the coaching profession. It was my experience with UNC women’s soccer coach Anson Dorrance, however, that opened my eyes to what so many choose to miss when they look at Mike Krzyzewski … his ability to adapt. Read more

Dec

Devilwolfing: New Year’s Resolution; What to Expect in 2012

I read a joke one time that said Facebook was for people you know in real life but want to avoid, while Twitter is for people you’ve never met but you’d probably be friends with if you did. I find that to be true because unlike Facebook, or real life for that matter, you have 140 characters to say what you’re thinking in a way that resonates with people who aren’t able to put your thoughts into the kind of context that comes from familiarity. That’s how Twitter works, and it’s why I love this platform as much as I do.

Shortly before the ACC tournament, I reached 100 followers. As we’re heading into 2012 just 9 months later, I’m about to go over 1300. A few months ago that would have been incredibly important to me due to the Rovell factor, which is when your importance in life is defined by followers, re-tweets, and mentions. But it’s important to me now for a different reason because, in my opinion, once you reach a certain number of followers, you’re no longer using Twitter just to find content, you become a provider of content as well. It’s important to make that decision on when you stop being a follower and becoming a follow because it impacts the way you utilize Twitter to get your message across. It’s no longer “who do I want to see?”, it’s “how do I want to be seen?” Read more

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