3/17 | Duke Blue Devils | 2:40PM | CBS (NCAA 2nd Rd.)

[reef]

Now Duke gets Syracuse so let's get ready for another zone fest
Duke should win easy

[NYGFan_Section208]

Duke is pretty good this year. Still...go 'cuse...

[bigappleram]

To add to what TP said, they have a preseason AA as basically a role player, Grayson allen. EC and Jared, our two best players would be 6th or 7th or 8th in their rotation. Literally any other 1 or 2 seed we would have had a fighters chance, including Pursue minus Hass. I don’t see anyone that can match up with them. We had to let the #1 PG recruit basically shoot uncontested threes to help the interior.

[reef]

Yeah I agree that seed we got with the Duke draw killed us

Sucks that we were in great shape to get a 5 or 6 seed but we stumbled down the stretch and the committee stuck it to us in the shorts with NBA Duke

[CHICO 78]

As I sat t there watching Duke's front line destroy us on Saturday I could hear ROD FROM CRANSTON's
words ringing in my ears." A four guard team is not going to do it in the Dance. We need more Quality
size if we are going to play deeper in to March Madness." He was, as he usually was, correct and
in this case prophetic. Although Duke has NBA quality bigs we might have at least slowed them down with
quality 6'9" bigs. Cyril is OK but he wouldn't see the court for Duke or many of the Power 5
schools. We need a quality JUCO big and/or a 5 th year senior to have real success next year.
I don't think the Mikes are going to improve enough by next season to give us what we are going to need
to compete at the this level.

That being said Thanks to the seniors for a great run. They deserved to finish off the season
better than what happened Saturday. GO RHODY !!!

[ATPTourFan]

It's matchups. Don't call the team's composition a failure because we were placed up against the worst possible opponent. Look at all the other teams that we could have beaten.

[Section104]

I don't think its necessarily about a JUCO/Grad Transfer big. That'd be important if we were projected to be a NCAA tourney team. We're not far off, but I see getting the best scorer possible (SG/wing/stretch 4?) than a standard big. Harris/Tate/Cyril and maybe one of either Tertsea/Laysard should be adequate. More important to make up for the scoring punch we lose with our seniors.

Best scorer available, in my opinion, bridges the gap in the biggest way.

[Blue Man]

This game was the perfect storm of a tough draw and a team playing out of their mind. Duke hit 9 shots in a row. NINE. The Celtics don't do that.

Seeding is almost meaningless - look at how many top 4 seeds lost this week due to bad matchups. Sweet 16 will feature a 2 1/5 games, a 2/3, 2/11, 3/10, 4/9, 5/9, 7/11...of the 16 possible seeds to see you're getting 9 of them. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11. 3 teams will play with double digit seeds. They just happened to have the right matchup for them.

The NCAA tournament is a combination of playing the game, but more importantly matchups. We could have been anywhere on a 6-8 seed line realistically. We could've been matched up against any combo of Loyola/SDSU/Cuse/Butler/TAMU/OK/Texas/FSU/KState/VT/NC State for the right to play UMBC/Tennessee/Cinci/Xavier/UNC/Nova/Purdue/Kansas/Duke.

Of all those matchups I wouldn't like us against UNC, Kansas, or Duke in the 2nd round. Of the 12 possible teams we could've played in the second round - I didn't think we had a great shot in 3 of them. We got the worst draw possible for us. If we were in the South region - we're an Elite 8 or Final Four team as it currently stands.

If we were in the West we're certainly playing next weekend. Same thing with the East.

Just so happened the 3 worst possible matchups for us to see all tournament would've happened before cutting down the nets in Boston, Atlanta, or LA.

We're still new to this. The more tournaments we go to, the better a chance of a more favorable draw. Loved this season. Loved the last 2. We've barely scratched the surface of what this team can do in the next few years with the incoming class.

So proud to be a Ram.

[rhodysurf]

This game was the perfect storm of a tough draw and a team playing out of their mind. Duke hit 9 shots in a row. NINE. The Celtics don't do that.

Seeding is almost meaningless - look at how many top 4 seeds lost this week due to bad matchups. Sweet 16 will feature a 2 1/5 games, a 2/3, 2/11, 3/10, 4/9, 5/9, 7/11...of the 16 possible seeds to see you're getting 9 of them. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11. 3 teams will play with double digit seeds. They just happened to have the right matchup for them.

The NCAA tournament is a combination of playing the game, but more importantly matchups. We could have been anywhere on a 6-8 seed line realistically. We could've been matched up against any combo of Loyola/SDSU/Cuse/Butler/TAMU/OK/Texas/FSU/KState/VT/NC State for the right to play UMBC/Tennessee/Cinci/Xavier/UNC/Nova/Purdue/Kansas/Duke.

Of all those matchups I wouldn't like us against UNC, Kansas, or Duke in the 2nd round. Of the 12 possible teams we could've played in the second round - I didn't think we had a great shot in 3 of them. We got the worst draw possible for us. If we were in the South region - we're an Elite 8 or Final Four team as it currently stands.

If we were in the West we're certainly playing next weekend. Same thing with the East.

Just so happened the 3 worst possible matchups for us to see all tournament would've happened before cutting down the nets in Boston, Atlanta, or LA.

We're still new to this. The more tournaments we go to, the better a chance of a more favorable draw. Loved this season. Loved the last 2. We've barely scratched the surface of what this team can do in the next few years with the incoming class.

So proud to be a Ram.

Dont forget... a bunch of those tops seeds got blown out worse than URI did somehow too

[ace]

I’m always so confused by the talk of bigs, as if Hurley and company are consistently turning away 4 and 5 star centers who can’t wait to throw down in the Atlantic 10 conference. “Cyril is ok, but they need better!” Well, yeah, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? All a staff can do is look at the roster they have and put out the rotations they think will get them the most wins. They had the same 4 guards last year but didn’t start them because they also had Hass and KI. You want to blame recruiting? Ok, you do you, I guess. But, they have recruited bigs. Going back to guys like Williams and Folahan at Wagner, Hurley knows his preferred defensive approach works best with a rim protector. In the A10, bigs are almost always going to be a risk, and their pieced-together front line did ok this year and got some wins I didn’t necessarily expect. ARD loved Layssard. Preston, Tertsea? They sure look the part, let’s see if they can get better. We all love the idea of Harris at this point. Paired with Langevine for two years? Would be great if that worked out.