Chapter 1: What is the significance of the upcoming Duke vs. Virginia game?
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Hey there, Duke fans. Welcome to DBR Bites, episode number 147. We are here. It's Donald. It's Jason. We're here on Thursday, February 26th to prepare for, I know we've said this many, many times, but a pivotal, a pivotal game coming up this weekend for the Duke Blue Devils. This time is against the Virginia Cavaliers.
Jason, you're still sick, but how are we feeling today as opposed to yesterday when we recorded?
Yeah, so I'm on the upswing, so to speak. I'm not symptom-free. I'm still coughing a little bit, but my nose isn't running nearly as much as it was. I don't feel as tired. I would say that I am currently in the process of kicking COVID's ass. That's good. It's good. We like those words. Yeah, so it's doing pretty well.
Hey, really quick before we get to the Virginia preview, I wanted to mention Duke is now number one in Ken Palm for the season. We talked in the last episode about Duke and Michigan and how high they both are in Ken Palm, and Michigan was a little tiny bit ahead last
You know, neither team played last night, but apparently the myriad of results that happened across the sport ticked Michigan down a little bit and ticked Duke up a little tiny bit. You know, other teams play and suddenly we look better for that team looking better. So I don't even know what happened, but Duke has moved into the number one spot in Ken Palm.
It'll probably change five times the next three days. It's, you know, kind of crazy. The other thing I wanted to mention was we've talked about the Dame Sar nicknames, Donald. People have been sending us suggestions. none of these are going to happen unless like someone on ESPN or something like that starts using it or some reporter, but they are some good ones.
And I did want to mention two of them that I really, really enjoyed. Joseph Gaudio gave us the eraser.
I love that.
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Chapter 2: How has Virginia performed this season leading up to the matchup?
As we were about to be on this road trip and kind of the business trip that we had to Notre Dame, they were taking whatever transgressions NC State had out on them. So talk a little bit about that game. I know you witnessed that and what Will Wade had to say about them afterwards.
Yeah, so, yeah, Virginia's won nine games in a row, and they've looked really, really impressive while doing it. And after that NC State game, you mentioned that they played ā you know, every team has this sort of rotating partner that you play twice. NC State had the extreme misfortune of drawing Virginia as their rotating partner this year, and they paid the price for it.
I mean, NC State is a pretty good club, a team that a lot of people think, you know, It's certainly a top-30 kind of team, a team that I think has designs on maybe making the Sweet 16 or so. And Will Wade, after that game where Virginia won 90-61, he went into the press room. And you just don't see coaches do this very often.
He goes in the press room, and in his press conference, he went ahead and said ā Yeah, they're better than us. They're just, you know, they just do everything right. Virginia's just better than we are. If we played them 10 times, we might win once. Like, maybe we get them at home or something, we could get a victory.
I mean, Will Wade basically was just conceding, we can't beat this Virginia team. I mean, that's a fairly decent NC State team. And that's a pretty, you know, boisterous kind of coach. I mean, Will Wade... He will talk. And for him to be like, yeah, we just can't beat these guys. You can face them in the ACC tournament, Will.
He did say neutral site, so maybe that's what he needs.
One out of ten on a neutral site. He was saying we could beat them maybe once out of ten times on a neutral site. Good God, man. That's how impressive this Virginia club is. That's what they're doing to teams lately, that the coaches are like giving up almost. Wow.
And it's funny, they've had some close games that we I think we mentioned it on this show briefly, but they were at Miami. I'm sorry. Yeah, they're at home to Miami and they won by three.
And that was that was a very good game.
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Chapter 3: What metrics highlight Virginia's strengths and weaknesses?
Virginia leads the ACC at 41.3 rebounds per game. Duke is second at 40 rebounds per game. Duke leads the ACC in rebounding margin at plus 10, plus 10.3. Virginia's second at plus 8.7. Duke, by the way, is fourth in the nation at rebounding margin. Virginia's 13th. This is kind of a unstoppable force meets immovable object kind of situation on the boards.
These are the two best rebounding teams in the We at Duke are used to winning the rebounding battle, quite often winning it by double digits.
That's going to be super hard to do against Virginia, and I feel like if there's any one stat you can look at and go, oh, this is probably going to tell us who wins the game, it's probably that rebounding battle because these are both teams that come to the table expecting to get offensive rebounds, get extra chances, limit extra chances for the opposition, and win the rebounding battle.
If one team or the other is able to to be successful at that in this game. It just changes the calculus for the other team so much that I think it's super significant.
Going back to the defense, I think the one thing that I always see with Virginia that has carried over from the pack line defense that Tony Bennett had to Ryan Odom's defense is they are always good at just keeping guys in front of them.
And frustrating them by, as you mentioned, having a slow tempo, making it where you're running the shot clock out and at with two or one left on the clock, you're throwing up a bad shot because you realize that the clock is about to expire. They're not trying to go necessarily for steals. Yeah, they may try on occasion.
They may try to force you to throw the ball away with some traps, but they're not a team that's going to force you. They're not going to go for broke is the real answer here. They're going to try and keep guys in front of them and make it where you are frustrated. You have to try and pass the ball around to get a good shot. And then after that...
You sit there with two, three seconds left on the clock. You go, we're 27 seconds in. We haven't got a good shot. I just got to throw the ball up and hope that I can get the rebound and start over. So that's kind of what they do on defense. And that's why they're so frustrating. And also why, you know, games usually, as we remember.
They used to have games where if you scored 42 points, you'd win the game. They're not doing that as much anymore, but they're still trying to keep teams and possessions down, which means you have to take advantage of every single one you have.
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Chapter 4: Who are the standout players to watch on the Virginia team?
Jason, get better because we need you for the stretch run here. Okay, that'll do it for this episode of DVR Brights. Again, that game on Saturday at noon Eastern time on ESPN. We'll be back at some point this weekend to recap that and preview the next game because we have our final Saturday-Monday double of the regular season.
That game on Monday will be against NC State, but we'll be back after the Virginia game to recap everything, preview everything for you. Until then, here's the Duke band. He's Jason. I'm Donald. Duke band is playing us out and taking us home.