I know it's a little early on the calendar but let's try to work up some enthusiasm here, people! We're playing the evil empire tonight!
The edge has to go to Duke. Their frosh phenom has looked better than ours so far and they have more experience overall (though not a lot more). Also, for whatever reason, Coach K always seems to have his guys ready to go in November, whereas Self's system builds more slowly.
And they seem to have an edge over us psychologically too. Every time we play them, we just seem to WANT it too much, and so we play with a lot of passion and effort but not a lot of precision--see Tyshawn's 11 turnovers in 2011, or Hinrich's poor shooting in 2003, even though we won that one narrowly.
LJW has a nice rundown of all the meetings between the two schools. Many, of course, have been in the Big Dance, and most have been close--except for a shellacking at Cameron during Roy's first season, which I had no memory of. We've only beaten them twice, although gratifyingly both were in the tourney.
The most painful loss is still the 1986 semifinal in which Archie Marshall was badly hurt and--I didn't know this but LJW pointed it out--Duke shot 18 more free throws than we did. Sounds like chalkboard material to me. LET'S GET 'EM!
Here we go!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post, DGL.
What most intrigues me at this point is not only that we're, as you say, so early in the year, but also so early in the career of the key players on each team. As this other LJW story pointed out, it's as much--maybe more?--a matchup of freshmen superstars and high school all-stars as it is a page in this KU/Duke history.
In any case, I sure hope the combo of the big stage and having Tharpe back helps us turn it on a little more decidedly than against ULM the other day...
But enough talk--let's play this game!