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Well, the final was Duke 70, Stanford 59. We got the margin down to 7 with under 10 minutes to go but failed to score on 2 straight possessions. A couple of Duke baskets followed, and that was it.
I'm gonna chalk this loss up to bad shooting and too many fouls. Brown and Randle combined to go 2-11 on 3 pointers, and we shot just 36% overall. We missed several shots at the rim, including a wide open layup by Nastic where he was unguarded under the basket. As for fouls, Duke got 29 FT attempts to our 14. Duke seemed to get a lot of questionable calls in their favor. On Nastic's 5th foul, he was literally standing in place and was bowled over by a Duke player backing into him. I guess standing in the path of a Duke player is a foul now. The crowd was decidedly pro-Duke, and the game was officiated like a home game for them.
If you're looking for positives from this game, the game didn't get completely out of hand until the last 5 minutes, and we held Duke (who came into the game #1 in adjusted offense per Ken Pomeroy) to just 70 points and 39% shooting. We also matched them in rebounding despite their frontcourt of future NBA first rounders.
But for those who see the glass as half empty, there are troubling signs. The bench was mostly ineffectual--9 points total, 5 of which came in the last 2 minutes after the outcome was decided. Our centers cannot stay out of foul trouble. Nastic fouled out, and Humphrey had 3 in 12 minutes. And we managed just 5 assists on 22 made shots. Randle had 0 assists and 5 TOs, most of which were bad passes directly to Duke players.
Fortunately, between now and the Tourney (should we make it), the only opponent of this caliber we'll face is Arizona.