Purdue vs. Duke thoughts

Yea... this game was pretty bad. It's upsetting to get that excited for a sports game and have it end so poorly. It's even worse when the game starts just as bad and your team never makes a run or makes you feel like they're going to make a run. It's even worse when you saw your team play earlier in the year and you saw things that you thought could definitely bite you in the behind in the future but you try and reason with yourself that you do other things well enough that it won't make a difference, and then those things are the very things that kill you. That was my experience on Tuesday. Simply put, it sucked. But despite that, there is hope. Here's why:

Duke is a top 5 team. Easily. The Paint Crew officers put together a scouting report which basically said "This is the same Duke team that is overrated by ESPN every year, and that's pretty much the case this year." I didn't really believe them when they put it out, and I don't think anyone believes that now. This team might have the best duo of starting wings in the country with Singler and Henderson. Nolan Smith is extremely fast with the ball and can hit shots. Scheyer is EXTREMELY underrated and, if he could consistenly make the three, could easily put up 20 on almost anyone in the country. Greg Paulus is a great veteran prescence off the bench. But you know what most impressed me about this team? They never panicked. At all. Not for one possession. They always played within their game, within their speed, they were never rushed or hurried to the point of turning it over. Anytime we got any momentum, Coach K called a timeout and calmed his team down. But they didn't really need it. One of the many reasons we lost that game: they played like they knew they were going to win that game the entire time. And we were scared to death.

We did not come ready to play, physically or mentally. Physically I knew we'd be slightly overmatched, but not this bad. I knew we'd have some problems stopping the drive to the hoop. I saw it in the Oklahoma game. But I thought our help defense would be good enough. Wrong again. It doesn't help when Duke shoots lights out from three. But seriously, we gave them plenty of open shots to do it. And even when they started 40 feet away from the basket, they'd still manage to get to the rim. Poor strategy? Yea, maybe we should've backed off a little. Undermanned a bit defensively? Most definitely. Offensively was even worse. Our movement away from the ball was horrible, and, having run a motion offense before, if you don't make good cuts, your offense won't work. Period. We never did that. That's why we never got open shots. Even if we hadn't had a poor game shooting I still think we'd have been hard-pressed to reach 40% from the field. We just simply were not working for open shots.

Even if this was a problem, teams face that issue all the time. The big reason we looked so bad was because we were defeated from the start. We came in way too amped up and missed some easy layups we shouldn't have missed. We looked rattled once we got down early and never made a serious run. Anytime we'd get any sort of positive momentum, we'd throw the ball away or commit a silly foul. Nobody took charge offensively until it was way too late. Overall, I don't think we truly believed we could win that game. I knew we had some poor starts earlier this year and I really didn't want to fall into that again, but we did.

So that turned out horribly. Here's the good news: we're still the best team in the Big 10. If you want to argue with me as to why Michigan St.'s better, be my guest, because I simply don't see it at this point. We will learn from this game, we will recover, and we will be better because of it. Tuesday taught me we're not at Duke's level yet, nor may we ever be. But there's no Duke in the Big 10. And all it takes is getting hot for six games in late March/early April. Who knows what can happen in the tournament. I fully believe we can beat all but the very best teams on a consistent basis... and that should be good enough to get us relatively deep in the tournament. And then maybe we can pull an upset or two.