Appreciate your kudos to K. We’ll stick by him no matter what…yes, even through the Lehigh fiasco.

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As for Duke, we’re going after these types of players. Shabazz Muhammad, Amile Jefferson, Theo Pinson, Julius Randle, Jabari Parker, etc. etc. Whether these prospects will buy into the Duke philosophy is another thing. But we’ve had great success with such players (think Luol Deng and Grant Hill). Let’s hope we can get these recruits to believe that what Gilchrist and Davis are doing at UK is possible at Duke, too.

1. Duke’s big men are inconsistent and have regressed throughout their careers. Watch Tyler Zeller, Cody Zeller and many more and match them up with the Plumlees. Its not even close.

2. Our best point guard sits on the bench. Yes Quinn Cook should have played materially more minutes than Thornton. One need only watch the ACC tournament to witness Thornton’s limitations. The lack of playing time for Quinn hurt us this year and will likely have a multiplier effect next year as well—I speculate he may transfer.

3. How many shooting guards does a team need to win an NCAA championship. Lets see-Rivers, Dawkins, Curry and you can basically add Kelly to that mix since he spends his time on the perimeter as well. None-other than kelly, are over 6’4″ and only Rivers can create his own shot. And by an amazing coincedence who is our only recruit for next year—–a 6’4″ shooting guard. I am being generous by not including Thornton as a shooting guard since after his exhibition versus Virginia Tech he clearly feels that he can shoot.

At the end of the day, we have overachieved vis a vis our talent. The challenge is why is Duke fielding a team that lacks length and athleticism. We could be so much more but in my humble opinion our team has fatal flaws that get exposed by decent teams. I so badly want them to make a run through the South Region but I hold my breath. If we end up short its not the players fault, they fought and fought all year, its simply the composition of the team in a world where there are exceptionally athletic, long teams. I hope over the next few years that Duke can become a “long and athletic team” but that will likely take some significant recruiting wins and change in the coaching staffs preference for guard heavy teams. Coach K can only game coach so much. Give him UNC, Kentucky, Syracuse, Memphis, Baylor and a few others and they might win games in the NBA. Duke needs to focus on recruiting recruiting and more recruiting and not only McDonalds all americans because as we have seen many great teams are built on rosters lacking them.