I think this is less a case of a guy being past his prime and more one of a coach imposing his own limit on the talent pool. At this point, I’m pretty convinced of one thing about K and the acquisition and development of players – that he abhors the one and done player. Deng burned him in 2004 and since then only Shavlik Randolph and Josh McRoberts have gone pro as underclassmen (and I don’t think he was too upset about Shavlik leaving).

Now K is good enough as a coach to keep this team at an elite level with B grade talent, but there’s no reason not to have the cream of the crop if you’re in K’s position. That Duke in 08-09 was a team without a single competent post player on the team (sorry Zoubek, you sucked against anyone with a pulse) and without a point guard who could break down the defense is pretty inexcusable for a top program who isn’t in a major rebuild.

All in all, there’s a high probability that K knows what he’s doing and we’re just all baffled by his international style of play, but there’s also the possibility that he’s just too arrogant to admit that it isn’t going to work at this level. For a team so reliant on the three point shot, Duke doesn’t really shoot them very well – 34.9% is good for 128th in division 1 and significantly behind UNC’s 38.1. No Duke player hit 40 of his threes or more while four UNC players did. Duke’s defense, at one point the best in the nation, fell apart down the stretch and corresponded to Nolan Smith being taken out of the lineup.

All in all, Duke started 18-1 this year and looked like one of the three best teams in the nation. In their last 18 games, they went 12-6, losing twice to their hated rival and getting bounced from the sweet 16. Last year, they started 22-1 only to go 6-5 to finish up. 2006-07 is unfortunately the same story – 18-3 start, 4-8 finish. Fair or not, they’ve fallen apart at the end of the season three years in a row and doing that is a great way to make people start to think something isn’t quite right.

UNC

Duke

UCLA

Mich St

Uconn (despite some lean years)

Arizona

Kentucky (tradition keeps them on the list)

Kansas

Syracuse ( despite missing the tournament 2 out of 3 years they have enough tradition to keep them in)

Either Coach K is a terrible evaluator of talent, or he is deliberately targeting players who aren’t good enough to go to the NBA in the hopes that they will stick around longer and be solid players by their senior year.

The Duke name still has enough cache that it could snag some of the elite recruits if Coach K wanted them. Instead he ends up with slow, unathletic players who can get run off the court by a team like Villanova. And they have no one in the post so they would’ve gotten creamed by Pitt instead if things had gone that far.