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I'm quite perplexed by Duke's success myself. I feel a little skeptical about how well the current won-lost record reflects the team's absolute strength. They haven't beaten a top five team yet; although Stanford is currently top 5 and they lost an early season game to the Cardinal by one point. I'm not even sure they've beaten a top 10 team yet. Other than those two teams, their schedule to date has been pretty weak based upon the rankings of their opponents. Also, the ACC appears to me to be the weakest that it's been in decades which may help a team with a solid core and potential like Duke's stand out much more than it would've as recently as the mid-90's. Jason Williams has been superb and is already much better than Will Avery ever was or could be in that position. I agree that, aside from extreme shallowness at the point, Duke's potential achilles heel is up front. However, I'm beginning to believe that Carlos Boozer was greatly underestimated by the media and others based upon his early season play. Having a broken foot in August and being unable to participate in pre-season conditioning or practice seems to have left him a much reduced player from what he was in high school. Yet now he is a vastly improved player overall and his potential is becoming much more apparent. Also, the players all say this team is truly unified; whereas Jason Williams has commented in the past that last year the players were factionalized off the court and incoherent on it. Brand, Avery, and Maggette formed a clique. Last year's team reminded me of the talent laden Carolina team of 1994, which had perhaps even more talent, yet lost in the second round of the NCAA to Boston College when I think the title was theirs for the taking. That team had obvious personality problems and failed to play in a team oriented fashion. Now I'm also reminded of a LSU team from the early nineties featuring Chris Jackson (before he changed his name), Shaquille O'Neal, and Stanley Roberts that I think lost in the NCAA third round to Indiana (?). I don't know what the problem was there but that one surely had enough talent to win the championship as well. |
