It’s that time of the year again. No, I’m not talking about the Christmas season (although, that’s pretty sweet too). I’m talking about college basketball season, and for fans of Duke Basketball, it’s looking to be a very good year. We’ve got an excellent team full of young players as well as the seasoned veterans J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams. With all the young players, the team is still learning to play together, and it’s clear that the younger players are still making the transition to the college level of play. Despite this, they seem to be interacting well on the court, and I already like what I see from certain players such as Greg Paulus and Josh McRoberts. So far we’re 6-0 in the preseason and hopefully we can pull out a win in our first conference game tonight against Virginia Tech.
We’re down by a point at half-time, but we haven’t lost at home in Cameron Indoor Stadium to an unranked opponent in 58 games; so I’m not too worried. It’s been a rather physical game so far, and I think the referees are a little hesitant to call any fouls after last year’s home game against Virginia Tech. That’s a shame, too, because it seems like VT is getting away with being overly physical in this game, but I’m sure the Duke haters out there (and there are a lot of them) will strongly dissent. Still, Duke needs to play better defense and start knocking down some shots because in all fairness to VT we were outplayed in the first half. Afterall, we are playing a Virginia Tech team who’s schedule has been miserably weak so far. In fact, all of their wins have come at home, and their 1 loss has been on the road. Most would probably agree that they’re not a very good team, and if we were to lose, it would be because we allowed ourself to play sloppy, poor basketball.
In any case, the game is back on so now my attention is going back to that. Hopefully, this post will escape the eyes of the legions of Duke haters out there because I’d rather not deal with their comments, and I’m sure they’ll have plenty to say about Duke given our #1 ranking. Though if all goes well, we’ll have the ultimate laugh in the end with a national championship.
UPDATE: Duke won but only after a sensational 40-ft half-court shot by Sean Dockery. However, as amazing as the shot was, the rest of the game was miserably played on our part. We definitely didn’t play basketball at a level deserving of a #1 ranking, and we’d better get our act together before we play a capable #2 Texas team this coming Saturday. All that being said, Go Duke!
UPDATE: It’s official. We’ve got video! Woohoo! Click on the picture above to see the the last seconds of the game and Sean Dockery’s amazing shot.
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