Hokie Dokie

A very solid win overall for the Dukies tonight. I was in and out during the first half tonight but I loved the balance and up until the end of the game, the poise they showed when it was completely obvious that Seth Greenberg's game plan was to play dirty and out of control.

Deron Washington, as indicated in the previous post during the game, is lucky he wasn't arrested for his behavior tonight. He continues to disgrace this Virginia Tech program and instead of leaving his mark on the program like Zabien Dowdell, he will be nothing more than a black mark on this schools reputation up there with the Vick brothers. The funny thing is that Washington isn't even the biggest punk on this team? Jeff Allen, their second leading scorer, is currently serving a two-game suspension for bumping an official.

Enough with the negatives and focusing on a disgraceful human being like Deron Washington. I thought Duke played very well tonight and to me, this was the most balanced effort offensively all year long.

BOX SCORE

Nine players played 6+ minutes, eight players played 14+
4 players scored in double figures
No player scored more than 16 (Singler) and no player scored less than 4 (McClure)


To me, there were two stories in this game for Duke:

1) Kyle Singler: How freakin' good is this guy? I will go as far as to say if he stays four years, I will have a full blown man crush on him, even more so than I had for JJ because remember, JJ was a good shooter in his frosh year but he was repulsive with all of the back-ne and he didn't have a very good overall game. Singler played 30 minutes, had 16 points, 9 rebounds, and 2 blocks and yet it felt as if his impact was even greater than that. He is so versatile and when he pops out and hits the 3, he is virtually unstoppable.

2) The 5 Spot: I said in a post earlier this week that Duke needed to get more point production from their 5 spot even if it were only 10 points combined. Tonight, they went for 10 points, 7 rebounds, 2 steals, 1 blocks. I will take that contribution every single night.

Side note: The last two games, Lance Thomas has looked pretty good. Hopefully, he can keep it up.

Next up is Maryland in College Park on Sunday night. I must be honest with you, I don't have a good feeling for this game. Sure, you can say how can you fear a team that's lost to Ohio and American AT HOME?? You want to know how? Maryland gets up to play highly ranked teams, especially Duke. Take a look at what they did to UNC last weekend...

No prediction until later in the weekend...