If you watched Duke’s loss to Virginia Tech on Saturday, you certainly noticed the play of Greg Paulus. Paulus turned the ball over three times on Duke’s first four possessions and finished with six TOs in just 18 minutes of play. And that doesn’t even count the last possession when he took a Josh McRoberts pass off of his face and then had his last-second three-point attempt swatted into the stunned crowd. Put simply, Paulus was awful. And that’s a huge part of why Duke lost.
Ken Pomeroy wrote up a nice (well, unless you’re in the Paulus family) piece looking at Paulus’ performance this year and pointing out that he’s actually not playing much worse than last year. That last part really surprised me. I thought Paulus was a bit overrated last season, but I would have guessed that he’s been WAY worse this year. Nope. His turnover rate was pretty damn putrid last season as well.
BTW, while I’m bashing Duke I’ll go ahead and voice a thought I had while watching that game. This year’s team reminds me of the infamous 1995 team that fell to the ACC cellar. Both teams have a pretty decent array of players but lack on-court leadership and don’t play well together. It’s a rare Mike Krzyzewski team that is less than the sum of its parts, but that’s the case right now for this group. Fortunately for the Blue Devils (who also lost their first home ACC contest to a football school in 1995), I don’t think Coach K is going to check into Duke Hospital and hand the reins over to an unprepared assistant this time around (coincidently, current assistants Chris Collins and Steve Wojelvjioahvoihashski were prominently featured on that ’95 squad). There’s time to right the ship, but they need to get better point guard play.