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Re: The sad state of our basketball program - JohnR34231 - 01-20-2013

I don't follow basketball that closely anymore, but my impression is that basketball under Dawkins is something like football was under Wiggin. We play well sometimes, poorly others, and the end product is (charitably described) somewhat mediocre.

I initially thought people weren't giving Dawkins enough time to prove he had the right stuff, but you certainly can't say that now.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - Bruce Wang - 01-20-2013

I had thought Craig Robinson would have been a better choice than Dawkins, given Robinson's familiarity with high academic standards.  (We all know that University of New Jersey, Durham campus doesn't have real academic standards when it comes to their basketball team.)  Anyways, does anybody have a sense what kind of job Robinson is doing considering the level of talent he is working with?


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - 82 Card - 01-20-2013

(01-20-2013, 12:47 PM)Publius link Wrote:.... (We all know that University of New Jersey, Durham campus doesn't have real academic standards when it comes to their basketball team.)  ....

How does Duke become University of New Jersey? If it's a reference to the supposed connection to what is now Princeton University, shouldn't it be "College of New Jersey", Princeton's original name?

For the official Duke version of the Princeton-Duke connection:
http://library.duke.edu/uarchives/history/histnotes/myths.html


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - washingtonismoney - 01-20-2013

(01-20-2013, 02:05 PM)82 Card link Wrote:How does Duke become University of New Jersey?

It's full of tristate area kids, which is why Duke makes it a point to show up at Madison Square Garden every year or so.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - washingtonismoney - 01-20-2013

Here's Mike Montgomery's take on the team:

Quote:“I don’t think Stanford is particularly physical."

http://www.dailycal.org/2013/01/19/crabbe-cobbs-shoot-blanks-in-loss-to-stanford/

Probably accurate, but still: SCOREBOARD.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - 82 Card - 01-20-2013

(01-20-2013, 02:18 PM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:[quote author=82 Card link=topic=7432.msg57599#msg57599 date=1358715918]
How does Duke become University of New Jersey?

It's full of tristate area kids, which is why Duke makes it a point to show up at Madison Square Garden every year or so.
[/quote]

Having grown up in NJ, going to Duke never crossed my mind. I cannot remember Duke ever coming up as a possible destination. Princeton, Penn, Columbia and Stanford would come up in discussions. I imagine there are lots of NJ students at Duke. But that's not anything special. NJ sends most of its students out of state. When I was at Stanford, the place was full of cars with NJ plates.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - yvonne - 01-20-2013

Hey, don't look at me. I didn't do it.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - socalstanfan1 - 01-20-2013

(01-20-2013, 02:38 PM)washingtonismoney link Wrote:Here's Monty the Traitor's take on the team:

Quote:“I don’t think Stanford is particularly physical."

http://www.dailycal.org/2013/01/19/crabbe-cobbs-shoot-blanks-in-loss-to-stanford/

Probably accurate, but still: SCOREBOARD.

The rest of the quote, at least as I saw it on one of the local media websites, was something pretty degrading about his own team's lack of physicality, and how Josh Heustis, in particular, just took rebounds right out of the hands of his own players.  So, really, Montgomery did acknowledge the SCOREBOARD.

r.e. the discussion of Duke's nickname: I have relatives in Chapel Hill (actually UNC fans, even though one worked for a long time at the public health program at Duke); my impression from them is the nickname is a derisive one fastened on it by local North Carolinians who feel that UNC serves their community, while Duke just draws rich kids from other states, especially the Northeast.  I never had the sense there was any connection to Princeton, a link that would be complimentary to Duke. 


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - terry - 01-20-2013

(01-20-2013, 05:08 PM)socalstanfan1 link Wrote:I have relatives in Chapel Hill (actually UNC fans, even though one worked for a long time at the public health program at Duke); my impression from them is the nickname is a derisive one fastened on it by local North Carolinians who feel that UNC serves their community, while Duke just draws rich kids from other states, especially the Northeast.

Last I heard, Duke had a quota for students from North Carolina and South Carolina. I believe something like 12% to 15% of Duke's class was set aside for those students. It's quite unusual for a top-notch private school to give that kind of preference to local students. If that's still true, then I would say Duke goes to considerable lengths to serve the local community.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - Roberton3 - 01-20-2013

(01-20-2013, 08:03 PM)terry link Wrote:Last I hear, Duke had a quota for students from North Carolina and South Carolina. I believe it somewhere in the 12% to 15% range. It's quite unusual for a top-notch private school to give that kind of preference to local students. If that's still true, then I would say Duke goes to considerable lengths to serve the local community.

It's very common for top private schools to give some preference to local students, because it promotes goodwill in the local community.  It's typically just for kids from the town the school is in (and perhaps some nearby towns), though, not for the whole state.  So Duke is different in that respect.  And it might be a bigger boost than other top schools give to local students.  But otherwise, that doesn't sound particularly unusual.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - terry - 01-20-2013

That's news to me. My kids visited and/or applied to schools such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Georgetown, Northwestern, Pomona, Claremont, and Stanford, and I don't recall hearing anything about a quota for local students at those schools. Duke, on the other hand, was very straightforward about its quota for the Carolinas. Which other top private schools have a local quota similar to Duke's?


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - 81alum - 01-20-2013

(01-20-2013, 10:31 AM)garvin link Wrote:The men play well and win a fairly exciting victory over those debauched swine from across the Bay. And on the CardBoard, the hottest threads are about Stan Musial and a football game in New York nine months from now. Meanwhile, Stanford announces that the announced (ie inflated) crowd 5,877 is easily the biggest of the men's season. And yet it's smaller than the crowd Tara's team drew last week for the 59ers. If Johnny Dawkins serves out the final three years of his contract, will there be a program left?
I am one of the culprits.  I used to be an avid men's fan during the Monty years--going back to Todd Lichti.  But my interest in the men's game drained away, and I guess I am waiting for something to reignite it.

Part of it may well be my nostalgia for the Monty era.  I was very fond of him, since it was his doing (and Todd Lichti) who got me interested in basketball for the first time.  I remember that when Monty was finished with the pros I was very hopeful we would get him back again--Stanford had essentially reserved his services by putting him on the payroll as some sort of advisor so he would be on hand for whenever Trent left.  But in the flurry of coaching changes the timing was off by five days.  Monty took the Cal job on April 5 and Trent Johnson announced his departure on April 9.  Hard for me to call Monty a traitor for that--but it eats at me that we let him get away.  But who knows.  There is probably an inside story.  But when he went to Cal he probably sealed the fate of my interest in men's basketball.

I've watched a number of men's games over the last few years but not once have I become attached to a player or overall team the way I used to do regularly with the men's program, and still do with the women's program.  I'm not exactly sure why.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - 81alum - 01-20-2013

(01-20-2013, 09:23 PM)terry link Wrote:That's news to me. My kids visited and/or applied to schools such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Georgetown, Northwestern, Pomona, Claremont, and Stanford, and I don't recall hearing anything about a quota for local students at those schools. Duke, on the other hand, was very straightforward about its quota for the Carolinas. Which other top private schools have a local quota similar to Duke's?
In 1977 when I was admitted Stanford had something a little like a regional quota system that worked against Californians.  I came from a small rural state and always thought that it was probably a marked advantage for me.  By the 1980s I was told they had a similar system for overseas students--so they did all come from the same handful of countries.  I do not know if these practices continue--but regional diversity has often been a goal of elite universities.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - 82 Card - 01-20-2013

(01-20-2013, 08:03 PM)terry link Wrote:Last I heard, Duke had a quota for students from North Carolina and South Carolina. I believe it somewhere in the 12% to 15% range. It's quite unusual for a top-notch private school to give that kind of preference to local students. If that's still true, then I would say Duke goes to considerable lengths to serve the local community.

Taking into account the size of the states, that percentage is in line with the 38% that Stanford draws from California and on the low side compared to the 28% that Penn gets from Pennsylvania and the 17% that Princeton takes from New Jersey. Data sources:
http://facts.stanford.edu/undergraduate.html
http://www.unigo.com/university_of_pennsylvania/info
http://www.princeton.edu/pub/profile/admission/undergraduate/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population



Re: The sad state of our basketball program - terry - 01-20-2013

But that's not the issue. My point is that Duke reserves a certain percentage of its class for North and South Carolina students, and that I'm not aware of other elite universities that have similar quotas for local students. So the question is whether Stanford has a quota for California students, whether Penn has a quota for Pennsylvania students, or whether Princeton has a quota for New Jersey students. I know for sure that Stanford has no such quota. Are you saying that Penn and Princeton (or other similar schools) have quotas for local students?


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - 82 Card - 01-21-2013

As far as I can tell, the Duke quota is just a rumor. At Penn, the rumor was that the mayor, councilmen and governor each got a certain number of seats. Every campus has these stories. Some of them may even be true. 

Even if Duke does have some publicly announced goal, I doubt that represents a real difference in what goes on. I find it hard to believe that other schools don't have similar goals. Given the proximity of the schools, I don't see any reason why Penn an Princeton would both have disproportionate representation from their home state without a thumb on the scale. The schools are only a few Amtrak stops apart. They have very different physical environments. But most of NJ does not identify culturally with the Princeton area and I doubt that most of Pennsylvania identifies with West Philadelphia.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - Leftcoast - 01-21-2013

Yup .... this is an accurate reflection on Stanford Basketball.  Even a thread on "The sad state of our basketball program" can't hold our interest and drifts into a discussion of elite school admission policies.

I miss attending Stanford basketball games and feeling excited about our team.  I'm looking for some sort of sop from the AD showing the administration cares about basketball and that they get just how much they've alienated fans.  Stanford needs to do something to revive the program quickly before people forget how good (and how FUN) Stanford basketball used to be.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - 82 Card - 01-21-2013

(01-21-2013, 01:26 AM)Leftcoast link Wrote:....  Stanford needs to do something to revive the program quickly before people forget how good (and how FUN) Stanford basketball used to be.

I expect that those who were on campus during the enlightenment will never forget. For those of us who attended during the dark ages, forgetting comes quite naturally. Watching the women's team and ignoring the men's team is like old times.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - Bruce Wang - 01-21-2013

I have heard through the grapevine that it is a little easier to get into Harvard if you go to Cambridge Rindge and Latin.  I don't imagine that's the case for Stanford applicants from Paly or Gunn.


Re: The sad state of our basketball program - Roberton3 - 01-21-2013

(01-20-2013, 09:23 PM)terry link Wrote:That's news to me. My kids visited and/or applied to schools such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Georgetown, Northwestern, Pomona, Claremont, and Stanford, and I don't recall hearing anything about a quota for local students at those schools. Duke, on the other hand, was very straightforward about its quota for the Carolinas. Which other top private schools have a local quota similar to Duke's?

I know Harvard favors applicants from Cambridge (and possibly Boston as well, though definitely not any of the Boston suburbs other than Cambridge), and that Amherst and Williams favor kids from the towns those schools are in.  I have heard (but don't know for sure) that most of the Ivies, top liberal arts colleges, and other similar-caliber schools do something similar.  I'd bet, for example, that Stanford gives a little boost to kids from Palo Alto.

As I noted earlier, this is a bit different from how you describe Duke's system.  First, it's only for the local town, not for two states (and indeed, those schools tend to want regional diversity -- so, for example, if you're from Massachusetts but not from Cambridge, it's harder to get into Harvard than in you're from Montana).  Second, it's an extra boost in admissions, not a quota (though in practice, the effect is the same).  And third, it sounds like Duke was telling all applicants about that quota, which is weird -- other schools don't do that (though they do publicize it heavily in the local community, which makes sense). 

The rationale for favoring local kids is really simple: it earns the school goodwill in the local community, which is really important (schools need cooperation from the town on things like zoning, policing, etc.).  The rationale for a "Carolinas quota" is less clear -- I can't see how it benefits Duke to have more students from South Carolina.