K = Chaney??
It's been a week since Duke's win over Wake Forest and yet the talk about Mike Krzyzewski's decision to start walk-on guard Patrick Davidson continues.
At first we had a Rashamon-like debate over why Davidson was in the game. The Duke perspective - Davidson was inserted into the game to provide a spark to the benched regulars, by showing them what heart and hustle was like, first hand. The Wake Forest perspective - Davidson was put in the game as a bush league ploy to try to make Chris Paul angry and get him off his game. My perspective - Duke went into the game with the belief that Paul pushes off quite a bit when he's dribbling (he does, but so does almost every other guard in the ACC). So they put in Davidson to body him up, in the hopes of at leas proving a point, without picking up fouls on a more critical player, like Ewing or Dockery.
Just as that debate was settling down, the K-Davidson story got an additional boost when Temple coach John Chaney admitted he'd inserted a little-used reserve into a game against St. Joseph's to rough things up. That's when the radio waves started heating up and we started getting emails like this one - in which the writer equates Krzyzewski to Chaney, sending in goons into the game to rough up more talented players.
Here's what the emailer wrote:
"Weren't Coach K's practice players "goons"? If not, why not? Why was Coach K not as much at fault as Coach Chaney?"
I think this one's a bit of a stretch. The guy that Chaney put in the game weighed 250 pounds and actually broke the arm of a St. Joe's player with a hard foul. Patrick Davidson may weigh, oh, 170, and might be able to break an arm only if he was allowed to use an alumninum baseball bat in the process.
Look, I understand perhaps thinking that K violated the spirit of the game with the move. I know that's how Wake fans feel, certainly. But I don't think even Skip Prosser would argue that Chris Paul was in physical danger because of the hard, and somewhat clumsy, defense played by Davidson.
So that, to answer the emailer, is the difference between K and Chaney on this one.
Now, can we move on? We've got an ACC tourney coming up, you know.
Comments (6)
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Do you recall a UNC/Duke game a few years ago when Jay Heaps, a soccer star who also was a walk-on for Duke, essentially tackled (tripped) Jeff McGinnis, perhaps with the goal of prompting an over-reaction, which it did, leading to a technical foul on McGinnis? Do you recall the circumstances?
Posted on February 28, 2005 3:34 PM
K's intentions obviously were not to hurt anyone, but it still was a cheap shot. He wanted to make sure he could get the refs to hear him and get the game called his way. You may say that foul calls remained relatively even (Wake was only whistled for one more foul than Dook), but 7 of Dook's fouls were by their walk-ons. Still sound even?
Check out the article by reporter Jason Mazda in Wake's newspaper: the Old Gold & Black
http://ogb.wfu.edu/?id=2113_0_7_0_M
P.S. I don't know how to link, so I put the URL as "my URL" as well. I think it'll link by clicking on my name.
Posted on February 28, 2005 5:03 PM
Okay, a couple of questions/points to address.
I'll start with Johann's question. Yes, I do recall the Jay Heaps body check of Jeff McInnis into the scorer's table at Cameron. A very different situation though. Duke was trailing in that game and Heaps was simply trying to foul McInnis to stop the clock. He did a pretty clumsy job of it though, almost sending McInnis into the clock operator. That said, McInnis did overreact ino response. But that was a case of a very thin Duke team sending in a walk-on to commit fouls at the end, similar to Wake's Scott Feather being a designated fouler against Duke.
Now for Kenny's email. As I said before, there's certainly room for a debate as to whether K's move to start Davidson was in the spirit of the game. By I think Jason Mazda's article - the one Kenny links to - veers off into underclassmen zealousness.
As I said before, I think K's goal was to provide a quick example of a Paul pushoff. Was it successful? Well, Paul scored 27 in 38 minutes, so I'd say probably not. Did K succeed in firing up his team? Absolutely. Did K sway the refs in his favor? That's a harder question to answer.
Mazda's foul numbers though, are a bit misleading. You can't throw Reggie Love's five fouls out the window. Although he has been a walk-on in the past, he's a key member of this team this season. He's clearly moved past Shavlik Randolph in the rotation. His fouls were earned during the regular course of the game. Plus, you have to consider that Wake was fouling for the last two minutes or so in an attempt to lengthen the game. So add back Love's fouls and subtract, say, three Wake fouls from the end and you end up at 25 Deac fouls to 24 Blue Devil fouls.
That doesn't necessarily mean the game was called evenly. Certainly Prosser believed Duke should have been whistled for more fouls. But the bias that Mazda believes was present isn't really borne out in terms of total fouls.
I'm more inclined to say Duke got the slight edge in the calls because it was the home team, and that usually happens in the ACC (just ask the Blue Devils about their recent trip to College Park). That's simply due to human nature, not Patrick Davidson.
Posted on February 28, 2005 10:23 PM
Yes, Love is an important player. But he has averaged less than 20 minutes over the past few games, so he's not that important. I still believe Coach K figured that Wake is that much better than Duke right now that he needed to make sure the refs gave him even more than the usual Cameron advantage by having guys like Reggie, Davidson and Johnson run up the foul total, especially early.
By the way, Reggie Love picked up his first foul 13 seconds into the game and his second less than 5 minutes in. He picked up 5 fouls in 14 minutes, while scoring just 6 points and getting 1 rebound. Tell me that's an important player who was in there for some reason other than to let the Cameron refs avoid signaling 2-3 to the scorer's table when a Wake player is mugged down low.
Posted on February 28, 2005 11:18 PM
I guess the other issue is simply whether Coach K goes a bit too far in his zeal to win. I think more and more casual observers are beginning to tire of his sideline antics: he has to be one of the most foul-mouthed coaches when working the refs. Some would argue that working the refs so ferociously is part of the game; others would call it bad sportsmanship. Likewise, all coaches want their home courts to be an advantage, but I wonder if it is bad sportsmanship to turn a blind eye to some of the over-the-top antics of the Cameron crazies. Make no mistake: Coach K is a helluva guy off the court, and a master recruiter and tactician on the court. But I wonder if he has crossed the line, just like John Cheney, in his zeal to win.
Posted on March 1, 2005 9:18 AM
Jason it looks like you and I will have to agree to disagree on Reggie Love's relative importance. But can we at least find common ground in agreeing that K's actions don't equal those of Chaney's?
By the way, I think if this whole episode has revealed any truths, it's that the depth of ill will toward K among non-Duke fans is pretty significant. They were still railing about him on the sports radio shows in the Triangle yesterday, a week and a half after the Wake game. And I'm pretty sure this wasn't just angry Deacon fans calling in.
Posted on March 2, 2005 8:52 AM