Alright I’m just going to throw it out there
K’s the GOAT and I don’t think you can say this or that strat would have been better throughout the season.
However, I always thought K was at his best when he throws a wrinkle in there. Personally, I think Duke is easier (not easy) to prepare for being under the microscope. Ex: this year the entire nation and any basketball fan has our scouting report (RJ goes left, Cam wreckless on the drive, Tre’s long range, etc.). Come the tourney, I feel like teams are too “comfortably” prepared and once their game plan beings working, it builds confidence. Every one of us knows almost exactly how the player minutes are going to go and what we are going to run. Throw the obvious road game environment in the tournament and it becomes difficult..
MSU knew we were going to switch everything on D 1-5 and they 100% knew how it was going to play out with Cash running the pick and roll on our big forcing the switch. Starts working – they get confident. A really good shooter becomes lethal. Then we don’t switch Tre when he’s guarding Cash in I believe the 2nd half, he shoots 3/10. Just an example even though we lost the game b/c of turnovers and laziness on getting back. VT was pretty much doing the same thing and was confidently running it.
Sometimes the wrinkle can be personnel, certain line-ups, changing the defense for a few plays, whatever. Remember the game at UL back in ’15? The Cards were salivating at driving all over our defense and we were vulnerable coming off a loss or two – can’t remember. K went to a zone and we completely threw them off their game. Ended up holding them to like 53 points. Worked masterfully. Heck take the UL game this year. We did a personnel change with JGold and ran a 2-2-1 press..pretty much out of necessity. UL was NOT prepared for that and it is why K is who he is. The lineup of Tyus, Grayson, Plumlee and whoever else we had in there against Wisky down 9 in the 2nd half of the title game. Even with Jah and Winslow in foul trouble - Plumlee and an unproven Allen with momentum against us? Well it worked…they had no clue how to handle Allen because there wasn’t a good enough scouting report on him and he went off. Look at how Coach Dawkins threw in his wrinkle when he handled Tre…that was brilliant and almost single-handedly got them the upset.
None of us really know the answer but I always felt like doing something slightly out of the ordinary in some of these games alters the outcome in the tourney. On the flipside, it could have really went against us too so who knows.
K’s the GOAT and I don’t think you can say this or that strat would have been better throughout the season.
However, I always thought K was at his best when he throws a wrinkle in there. Personally, I think Duke is easier (not easy) to prepare for being under the microscope. Ex: this year the entire nation and any basketball fan has our scouting report (RJ goes left, Cam wreckless on the drive, Tre’s long range, etc.). Come the tourney, I feel like teams are too “comfortably” prepared and once their game plan beings working, it builds confidence. Every one of us knows almost exactly how the player minutes are going to go and what we are going to run. Throw the obvious road game environment in the tournament and it becomes difficult..
MSU knew we were going to switch everything on D 1-5 and they 100% knew how it was going to play out with Cash running the pick and roll on our big forcing the switch. Starts working – they get confident. A really good shooter becomes lethal. Then we don’t switch Tre when he’s guarding Cash in I believe the 2nd half, he shoots 3/10. Just an example even though we lost the game b/c of turnovers and laziness on getting back. VT was pretty much doing the same thing and was confidently running it.
Sometimes the wrinkle can be personnel, certain line-ups, changing the defense for a few plays, whatever. Remember the game at UL back in ’15? The Cards were salivating at driving all over our defense and we were vulnerable coming off a loss or two – can’t remember. K went to a zone and we completely threw them off their game. Ended up holding them to like 53 points. Worked masterfully. Heck take the UL game this year. We did a personnel change with JGold and ran a 2-2-1 press..pretty much out of necessity. UL was NOT prepared for that and it is why K is who he is. The lineup of Tyus, Grayson, Plumlee and whoever else we had in there against Wisky down 9 in the 2nd half of the title game. Even with Jah and Winslow in foul trouble - Plumlee and an unproven Allen with momentum against us? Well it worked…they had no clue how to handle Allen because there wasn’t a good enough scouting report on him and he went off. Look at how Coach Dawkins threw in his wrinkle when he handled Tre…that was brilliant and almost single-handedly got them the upset.
None of us really know the answer but I always felt like doing something slightly out of the ordinary in some of these games alters the outcome in the tourney. On the flipside, it could have really went against us too so who knows.
