for the sake of what is not even remotely repeatable, Duke’s NCAA tournament seeds from 1988 through 2019:
2, 2, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, X, 8, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 1, 6, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 4, 2, 2, and 1
Over 31 seasons, they missed the tourney once with his back injury, got an 8 seed once, a 6 seed once, a 4 seed once, a 3 seed four times, and were a 1 or 2 seed 23 times.
When a 3 seed in the tourney can be considered a bad year, you have been amazing. For comparison, Michigan has 6 seasons as a top 2 seed all time. K was a 1 seed 7 times in 8 years.
No coach earns the right to pick his successor
Jesus this is absurd
I now think we need the eyes emoji as a ‘like’ option because
Speaking of people that should retire, you know Vitale will be on the call so you can use your barf bag at home too
My favorite quote:
“Michigan could knock down the door and become a true bully in the recruiting world”
People might have been a bit hasty on Mike Woodson being a strong X and Os guy.
Indiana fans obsession over hating the pack line is something. One defense was far from archies biggest issue. Two the defensive success of uva and wiscy with marginal athletes playing that system shows it’s probably the best cbb defensive scheme you can run.
I think they just began to hate everything associated with Archie
Not sure you can say that. “Pack line” is such a college term so I don’t know why Woodson would know it. It just isn’t the language that an NBA coach would use to describe the game IMO.
Maaaaaybe. But I feel like it exhibits a bit of incuriosity that generally isn’t super compatible with being a strong X and Os guy. Like has he never watched a college game in the past 30 years? Would seem kind of crazy to just never pick up that language ever when a lot of fans could give you the broad strokes of it.
Oddly, Woodson implemented a similar style defense when he was at Knicks
Seems like a terminology issue not a conceptual issue…
I mean, this sort of gets at that… Everyone talks about the whats pack line quote, but then he actually describes all of his defensive philosophies.
The fact that he doesn’t use the word pack line doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to coach defense.
And I suspect that he hasn’t sat around watching many college games over the last decade. And if he did he wouldn’t describe how Virginia plays as a “pack line,” he’d describe what they did in his NBA terminology.
People who were against the Juwan Howard hire took similar victory laps when he would sound wishy washy about Xs and Os in interviews before his first season.
More on this… Here’s the full quote:
Q. You talked quite a bit about what you like offensively, maybe four out and one in. You mentioned hard ass defense. Indiana’s played this pack line over the last four years to mixed results. Can you explain what an Indiana team of yours that’s playing well, what kind of defense will we be seeing?
MIKE WOODSON: First of all, I’ve seen this pack line. What is that?
Q. We don’t know. No, it was meant to pack the lane, to stop driving and penetration, leaving Indiana vulnerable to three point shots because guys were slow to recover. Tony Bennett’s system that Archie picked up on.
MIKE WOODSON: All right. Now that I know that, I’ll say this from a defensive standpoint: The ball is the first and most important piece when you start building a defense, and somehow I got to get players to have pride in guarding the ball and not beg for help. That’s where it starts.
And then you got to put a system in place where if there is a break down you got to have help there and that helper has to have help and then the next man has to have help, so it becomes a team defense.
I think great defensive teams, they work as a unit. Everybody is on a string, and when I that damn ball goes up everybody is responsible for rebounding, so you can go and do what you do the other way.
So there is a lot of pieces in place that I got to put in because I’m very picky when it comes to defending, but it all goes hand in hand. Great defensive teams learn to protect the paint and they learn to get out to shooters. It’s all about effort and putting forth just the will to defend. It ain’t going to be perfect.
I’ve learned over the years there is this thing called what ifs. If I say I want you to send the ball this way and it doesn’t get sent that way and gets sent the other way, what are you going to do? You going to quit on the play? Next guy in line, in position to help you, is he going to help you stop the ball?
You’d be surprised. There are probably more what ifs in a game than there is the real deal. These are things that as a coach I kind of think out of the box when you’re dealing with players, because, again, Knight thought out of the box when he worked with me here, and when we didn’t do what was asked of us, he made it a point to make sure we got back in the box and did what we had to do.
There is going to be lot of things moving forward with this team. Again, they don’t know me and I don’t know them yet. Just by watching on film. That’s why I’m so excited about getting them together and getting to work.
So we’ll see.
My skepticism about Woodson from an Xs and Os perspective is simply that he did not have a good reputation for it in the NBA. His biggest strength in the NBA was managing egos.
Maybe he will turn out to be a wizard with the clipboard at Indiana, but I would be somewhat surprised if that happened. Most likely outcome IMHO is he is a mediocre coach who will need to recruit at a very high level.