Duke Basketball and March Madness

Duke got a two seed in the NCAA championship tournament. That sounds about right.

Note of embarrassment: I missed the Duke-Carolina game. I had other plans for the afternoon and so I recorded the game. I got home and saw a snow-covered television screen. I obviously did something wrong. Oh well, Duke lost. Perhaps it was for the best.

I caught all of the Florida State game. My issue with the game: it seemed that Duke scored the majority of their points from the three-point line. Actually, they scored ONLY 46% from three point range: 36 of their 79 points. Only 30% came from two-point land. And I have to think that not very many of those points came from point blank range. To me, that is a concern. There was the wonderful Nolan Smith dunk, but honestly that was him slashing into the lane versus someone going down low and fighting for position. There was very little feeding the post. I think this will hurt them in the tournament. If they go cold against a good team, they’re toast – and you know that they’re going to go cold somewhere down the line.

I think Duke can definitely get to the Sweet 16. Can they get to the Elite Eight? I guess that depends on Villanova. I think their trip down March ends with Pittsburgh for sure. If, by chance, Pittsburgh gets tripped up along the way, perhaps we have a legit chance of breaking through to the Final Four. We’ll see. The honest truth is that the game against Florida State didn’t get me overly excited about our chances in the tournament.