RTC 09-10 Class Schedule: Duke Blue Devils

Posted by zhayes9 on August 27th, 2009

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Ed. Note: for all of the posts in the RTC 09-10 Class Schedule series, click here.

The ACC has been North Carolina’s league for three straight seasons now. With four prolific stars departing from Roy Williams roster, this could be the year Duke re-claims supremacy in the most fabled conference in college basketball. The loss of athletic swingman Gerald Henderson early to the riches of the NBA hurts, but the late inclusion of a young point guard to compliment two potential blue-chip power forwards and the dynamic duo of Jon Scheyer and Kyle Singler means Duke has the goods to capture their first ACC regular season title since J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams manned the Cameron Indoor Stadium floor.

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Let’s face it: this program hasn’t quite featured the mystique and aura that normally comes with Duke basketball since the heartbreaking loss to UConn in the 2004 Final Four. Duke’s pinnacle has been the Sweet 16 since that crushing blow and critics are lining up over whether coach Mike Krzyzewski‘s Olympic conquests are hurting the program. Still, a top-two ACC finish and an Elite Eight seem like reasonable goals for this Duke team that only lost Henderson, transfer Elliot Williams, quarterback Greg Paulus and glue guy David McClure. Three top-50 recruits and four of the Blue Devils’ top five scorers return for a squad looking to knock an inexperienced North Carolina team off the mantle.

How does everyone’s favorite hoops team stack up schedule-wise? Let’s examine:

Non-Conference Schedule Rank: 8. Duke normally doesn’t back down from challenging their team in non-conference play, so their participation in the NIT Season Tip-Off and neutral/road games against Georgetown, Wisconsin, Gonzaga, Iowa State and St. John’s doesn’t surprise me. The Blue Devils normally excel in November and their only formidable foe in the NIT tournament this year is Connecticut. They’d match up in the finals if Duke can slide past Coastal Carolina, Charlotte and most likely an Arizona State team that lost both James Harden and Jeff Pendergraph. A November 27 final against UConn at MSG would certainly not lack for entertainment. The ACC-Big Ten challenge pits Duke a difficult road game at the Kohl Center, a venue where Wisconsin rarely loses. Neutral floor games against Gonzaga in NYC and Iowa State in Chicago are included, along with a January 30 visit to Georgetown to face a Hoya team that could be a well-oiled machine at that point. Conference USA favorite Tulsa also makes a trip to Cameron in late February, which has the potential to be dangerous for Duke. The non-conference slate certainly presents challenges, and credit Coach K for agreeing to send Duke to places other than Durham for tests that will certainly benefit the Blue Devils come ACC play.

Cupcake City: Only six true cupcakes on the slate for Duke this season as UNC Greensboro, Coastal Carolina (part of the NIT), Radford, Gardner-Webb, Long Beach State and Penn travel to Durham (although I should count Charlotte the way they played last season). A program with Duke’s stature doesn’t have to schedule Gonzaga in NYC or travel to Chicago to play Iowa State, but they do anyway. Unlike Washington, Duke will be battle-tested for conference play and their computer numbers will give the Blue Devils a boost when it comes to seeding debates. Duke is usually in the top-ten in RPI every single season and there’s a reason why.

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Boom Goes the Dynamite: 02.07.09 Edition

Posted by nvr1983 on February 7th, 2009

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We’re back with another thrilling edition of Boom Goes the Dynamite where we try to cover every single game on TV. Since we have only two people working on BGTD, we appreciate any reader tips on what games everyone should be watching since there are so many on TV and the Internet. For a rundown of the games today, check out today’s Set Your Tivos.

11:40 AM: ESPN GameDay is live from Spokane site of the Memphis-Gonzaga game tongiht at 9 PM. The crowd is fairly small, but I’ll give the Bulldog fans a break since it started at 8 AM local time on a Saturday morning at a school with just 4,515 undergraduates. I’m still waiting for a basketball GameDay to match a college football GameDay in terms of attendance and crazy fans. Looking at the schedule, I’m going to have go with February 21st when Oklahoma plays Texas in Austin, TX as the ESPN GameDay where the fans actually show up.

Noon: Some great work by the ESPN camera crew making Philadelphia look like something other a dump. The Syracuse-Villanova game should be one of the better ones today with both teams being in the 2nd tier in the Big East after UConn, Pittsburgh, and Louisville. The jury is still out on Marquette after last night’s debacle. Like we said watch the Jonny Flynn versus Scottie Reynolds match-up. The Arinze Onuaku injury could be big particularly with Dante Cunningham on the inside.

12:40 PM: Sorry for the delay in posting, but we’re having some problems with WordPress. Anyways, Villanova is absolutely destroying Syracuse right now. A basket by Cunningham stretches the lead to 21 at 36-15. It might be a while before we have another update on this game unless the Orange make a run. If the game continues like this, Jim Boeheim‘s squad will fall out of the top 25 leaving just 5 Big East teams in the rankings.

1:00 PM: The ESPN announcers just said that Donovan McNabb played some basketball when he was at Syracuse. Either he had some ridiculous intramural basketball career that I’m not aware of or they just assume that every mobile black QB was a two-sports star. I’m guessing it is the latter.

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08.27.07 Fast Breaks

Posted by rtmsf on August 27th, 2007

In the spirit of the new school year and the imminent college football season… 

  • First we offer the top 10 party schools in America.  Looking at the top 5, might there be a link between hedonism, the South and football? 
  • Speaking of the dirty South, this future Clemson grad wants us to know that she has “the Iraq’s” education on her mind, er, something like that… 
  • Moving back to our bread & butter, in a tragedy of Odin-esque proportions, Oregon plans to take Phil Knight’s $100M largesse and use it to build a new on-campus arena.  Sadly, McArthur Court will be tossed into the dustbin of great historical arenas.  Why doesn’t UO end the charade and just call themselves the Oregon Nikes from now on?
  • Richard Jefferson donated $3.5M to his alma mater Arizona for their new practice facility.  But he’s still only the third best UA alum in the NBA, according to fellow Cat Agent Zero.   
  • SLAM put out its early top 25 last week.  Intriguing omissions – Duke, Florida, Oregon.  Say what inclusions? – Clemson, Alabama, Cal.
  • Mike DeCourcey at TSN picks five teams from which he believes a 2008 champion will emerge – Georgetown, UNC, Kansas, UCLA and Memphis. 
  • All kinds of knee problems – Syracuse guard Andy Rautins blew out his left knee during the Tournament of the Americas while playing for Team Canada – the Cuse’s leading returning three-point shooter will miss the entire 2007-08 season.  Duke’s David McClure (6-8 weeks) and Bama’s Ronald Steele (ditto) also had less serious knee surgeries last week – both are expected to be 100% by the season.   
  • Illinois guard Jamar Smith will miss the season due to his DUI arrest in February.  He will be eligible to return to the team in the 2008-09 season.  Oh, and Jeff Goodman reminds us that Bruce Weber still can’t recruit.   
  • From the rumor mill –
    • Word is pickup basketball at UCLA got heated Monday when Golden State star point guard Baron Davis engaged in some trash-talking with heralded Southern Cal freshman point guard O.J. Mayo. Davis got upset with Mayo after he didn’t respect one of Davis’ calls. Word is Davis, a native of Los Angeles, told Mayo that he doesn’t know who he is other than the fact that he wasn’t from Los Angeles and he also needed to respect a veteran’s call. Word is Mayo more than held his own in the games. (h/t to Bruin Report Online)
  • Former ECU head coach Ricky Stokes has been paid $250,000 to not take the administrative job originally offered him after his demotion.   
  • In a sad and bizarre end to what was probably a tortured life, former one-and-done Seton Hall star Eddie Griffin died of an apparent suicide last week when he drove his car into a moving train.  RIP Eddie. 
  • Finally, from the opposite end of the spectrum, Butch van Breda Kolff, former Princeton coach and hoops purist, died at 84 last week.  As head coach, he led Bill Bradley’s Princeton Tigers to the 1965 Final Four, its only appearance.  RIP Butch. 

 

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