RE: Durham's take on the game
OK, now that I've had time to collect my thoughts and clean up the blood on the floor...
As stated, losing by 1 is tough. Losing by 1 to Duke at CIS is really tough. Continually losing by single digits to "the big boys" is heartbreaking, and gets worse every time. (Fill in the blanks if I leave any out) Tennessee (3 times now), Vandy, and of course I was in DC in '08 for the big one. We've seen this movie over and over again. Belmont fights hard, falls short, everyone says it's a "moral victory" etc. At what point do we start looking at our moral victories for what they are? A loss. Don't get me wrong, I could not be more proud of our boys. Duke is a great and legendary program with a great and legendary coach, there is no doubt about that. I just think it's time that we stop selling ourselves short, as if it's an honor to only compete with these teams. We are capable of Ws.
Our offense was shaky. It didn't seem like we were really moving the ball as comfortably as usual, which may be Coach K doing what he does and being well-educated on our game. However, this led to a screen and penetration offense that we don't usually see out of Belmont. Ian didn't have a great first half, and no one could hit a 3 (usually our game) until Drew hit two to start our run late in the 2nd. We did see some classic Belmont moves though: five players with over 10 points, lots of forced turnovers and at least 9 guys getting over 7 minutes of playing time. As TennTex, standing next to me at the bar, pointed out) "we are pressing Duke, AT Duke" which is a pretty cool thing. It's encouraging to see that we kept fighting after Duke went on a 12 point run, to bring it back to single digits the whole time. I would hope that we beat every Atlantic Sun team by a 10 point margin (but I know this won't happen). I excited for the season, because we kept it close with Duke, and did not by any means play our best game. For the first game of the season, I'm impressed.
I was going to write about the poor officiating as well, but I feel like that wouldn't be necessary. You all saw what happened.
This all being said, really looking forward to Memphis on Tuesday. I'm worried because they aren't really a good matchup for us (Duke, surprisingly, is). Neutral site and coming out with fire under our @$$ from this game should work in our favor.
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