My Terps lost to the hated Dukies 77-65 last night, in a game I barely watched. Vitale and Patrick had the call, and were their usual intolerable selves, and I needed to do some cooking for today’s physics department luncheon, so I was in the kitchen more than in front of the tv. A few observations based on what I did see:
— This was a really simple game, and the box score reinforces my impression. Duke couldn’t hang with the Maryland big men down low, Maryland’s big men couldn’t guard their Duke counterparts on the perimeter, and Maryland’s guards have judgement issues. When your back court combines for 7 assists and 9 TO’s, that’s not good.
— This was also one of the most violent and chippy games I’ve seen in a while. The referees appeared uninterested in calling fouls on any of the hand checks, body checks, or open shoves taking place on the court, and players on both sides were getting annoyed. With about ten minutes to go in the game, I though there was going to be a fist fight at any moment.
— Lord, how I hate Dick Vitale and Mike Patrick.
“Duke couldn’t hang with the Maryland big men down low, Maryland’s big men couldn’t guard their Duke counterparts on the perimeter”
So much of Duke’s production is coming from 3’s — they’re ripe for a loss. As a *team* they’re shooting almost 40% from behind the arc. It’s letting them stay out ahead of teams that they can’t hope to compete with under the basket. Sooner or later they’re going to hit a dry spell and drop a few games.
If you thought that was badly called, I hope you did not watch K State lose to Texas Tech. A KSU player with 4 fouls goes over the back on a rebound, then falls (hard) on the TxT player and it is a no call. A “matching” technical is called on a TxT player whose only sin was not retaliating when elbowed from the blind side, then punched, then had a fake punch thrown at him to try to get him to respond. The guilty guy deserved to be ejected. I hope someone watches the film. There were also plenty of calls or no-calls that favored TxT over KSU (these were equal opportunity refs), but those two cases were egregious.
It was especially amusing to see a reaction shot of Bobby Knight watching this all fairly calmly with a look of contempt on his face. He was probably thinking “Now they can’t fine me for talking about the refs.” 😉
Duke 73, Wake Forest 86
If you’re going to shoot 28 threes, you need to make more than 8 of them.