Duke faces former Coach K assistant Mike Dement and his UNCG charges Thursday
night as the Spartans come to Cameron. Odds are that they'll lose, of
course, but as Winthrop reminds us, a group of guys who truly stick together can
challenge almost anyone. It's the nature of the game, and good thing, too.
And Greensboro is leaning heavily on one player - 6-6 Kyle Hines, who has
been a powerhouse so far this young season. He had 38 against Marshall.
Not many people can pull 38 in high school. That's a great game.
Unfortunately, UNCG has lost both its first two games, to Marshall and Penn
State, neither of which is a powerhouse.
And Duke has a number of people to run at Hines, including DeMarcus Nelson,
Lance Thomas, Dave McClure, and Gerald Henderson, among others.
Like most teams at their level, UNCG doesn't have an enormous amount of size,
but they do have 6-11 Bart Tooms, a native of the Netherlands.
He'll have to contend with Duke's Josh McRoberts and Brian Zoubek, both of
whom are likely more skilled and more athletic.
Does UNCG have a chance? Well, as already mentioned, any group that can
stick together has a shot. And any time we've gotten cocky about an
opponent it's like automatic that Duke gets a game. Karmic payback!
So we won't get cocky.
But there's a significant gap between talent, facilities, coaching - pretty
much everything. It would take a perfect storm for UNCG to pull it off,
but with a team almost entirely made up of freshmen and sophomores - DeMarcus
Nelson is a junior, but that's it - the potential is always there.
The old line about freshmen is the best thing that happens is that they
become sophomores. In Duke's case, they have tremendously gifted freshmen,
including Jon Scheyer.
After the last game, we were not overly impressed with his performance, which
earned us some e-mailed lectures, which is cool. You guys were right in
some respects. He's a wonderful player. But like all freshmen, he's
up and down, and his previous performances were scintillating. His game
against Georgia Southern was less so, but the comparison was to his performances in the
two exhibition games and Columbia, which were extremely impressive. Four outings,
three excellent, one less than that. We thought his performance wasn't as good as it
might have been, but no one can doubt his potential. He's a wonderful
player who's going to be huge for Duke.