DBR Bites #151 - Caleb Foster, Pat Ngongba Out For ACC Tournament

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2:02And right on cue. Hey, still got my hoodie? Nope. But I've got tonight's dinner paid for. Start selling on D-Pop. We're taste, recognizes taste. List now with no selling fees. Payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See you website for details. Hey there, Duke fans. Welcome to the latest edition of DBR Bites, the Duke basketball roundup. It is 10 p.m. on Tuesday. I will tell you that earlier I had no idea what day of the week it was. That's how busy Donald and I are at the moment. We don't even know what day of the week it is. I'm Jason. He's Donald. Did you watch any interesting basketball this evening? So I was watching the ACC tournament. I watched that all day. And then decided, oh, I should watch some NBA games. And I turned it on to the Miami Heat Wizards game where Bam out of bio eventually ended up with 83 points.

3:05He had 31 in the first quarter. He had 62 and a half time breaking the heat record for a game. And then said, you know what? And the funny thing is Jason, they were filing him. They're doing the Hackabam at the end. They were filing him and he was going to the free throw. And I think he hit like 36 free throws. On the other side, the heat were also filing like early in the shot clock because they wanted to get more possessions to get him past 81 points. They finally got him to 83. And he got pulled immediately after that. But yeah, a wild game to watch. Wilts 100 point game was never in danger though. Right? I mean, it was in the first quarter when he had 31 points. Slow down from there. Well, speaking of the NBA, I had a very interesting experience this evening. I was also watching basketball. I went to see my Atlanta Hawks play the Dallas Mavericks, a gentleman by the name of Cooper Flagg was playing for the Dallas Mavericks. I will tell you right away that Cooper had one

4:08of his worst games this season. My wife, I brought my wife with me to the game for folks who don't know. I have like awesome. I have season tickets to the Hawks. I share them with a few other guys. But I've got fifth row center court. All you can eat food and drink, like really great season tickets. This is one of the things I splurge on in life is my Hawks tickets. And so my wife doesn't come to many games with me. I'm usually buying favors with these tickets, you know? But she wanted to come to this game. She wanted to see Cooper flag play. And like midway through the second quarter, she's like, Cooper's not even the best player in his team, is he? And I was like, no, really, he is. He's just having a bad game. It was not a very good game. But I'll tell you some interesting things about it. Cooper almost got the kind of sort of reception from the visiting crowd that is reserved for like LeBron, James, and Steph Curry. Like there were fans who gathered by the visitors tunnel where the visitors come out. Like a lot of people were gathered there to get a high five from Cooper flag. Cooper, you know, high five to every one of them.

5:10During the national anthem, Donald, when they, oh, say can you see by the, you know, when they got to the word flag, there was a little section of the stadium that did what they do in the Duke games and went flag. Yeah, cracked up. It's like, oh my God, they still have from Duke. And then the number of flag jerseys, there were, there were probably more people wearing Cooper flag jerseys. And by the way, a lot of them Duke, Cooper flag. Like people haven't gotten the, the Mavericks one yet. There are a lot of Duke, a lot of Duke, Cooper flag. But there are probably more Cooper flag jerseys at this game than there were for any individual Hawks player. Now, there are more Hawks jerseys than, I mean, I'm, I'm not saying it was anything like that. But in terms of like individual jerseys, because the Hawks don't really have a superstar right now, you know, Jalen Johnson, Dyson Daniels, Hawks are working on it. So without the team having like one guy whose jersey you must have, it was, it was Cooper flag night at the Atlanta Hawks game. It was really interesting. And then he went out and had a kind of crappy game in the Hawks one. So anyway, so I got to enjoy my team winning. But it was a, it was a really fun evening.

6:11I mean, look, Atlanta's one of the hot beds for Duke Alums as well. So I'm sure there are some Duke Alums like you who were using it as an opportunity to say, oh, yes, let's go see the local team play. Am I got Cooper flag? And also, unfortunately, they didn't get to see the rest of, but did Marvin Bagley play? I know there's, oh yeah, I read for it. Yeah, yes, Marvin Bagley played, played pretty nicely. He's in the second unit there for them. But when he was in the floor, on the floor, he was very active, got a number of rebounds. It wasn't great, but, you know, considering what his role is, he did a nice job. Derek Lively was there on crutches. I didn't even see Kyrie. I'm not sure if Kyrie, the team are not. They've shut him down here. Kyrie doesn't travel because of his injury. So I think he's only at home games. Yeah, there you go. Well, but yeah, so I was hoping to see a lot of it. And I saw Quinn Snyder, of course, as well. Going really old school with my Duke connections there. Quinn and I lived in the same dorm freshman year. I need to chat with Quinn about being a guest in the podcast sometimes soon. We'll take care of that this summer, maybe.

7:13All right, so Donald, put the NBA aside, the Duke alumni aside, the 83 point scoring, bam at a bio aside. Let's talk a little bit about the blue devils and the injury situation because you and I were both on a news conference earlier today with John Shire. I think Duke scheduled this news conference just to give reporters a chance to talk to the team a little bit, talk to the coach a little bit, prior to the ACC tournament. But it was effectively Shire giving all of us an update on the injury status of both Patrick Gungba and Caleb Foster. I'm sure most of the people listening to my voice now already know this, but in case you don't, I will tell you what John Shire told all of us right off the top. He said neither one of these guys are going to play in the ACC tournament that they are intent on making sure that Patrick Gungba is ready to go for the NCAA tournament and they're not going to risk the sort of flare up that he's had in his foot on the ACC tournament. So he will sit out.

8:14I mean, I think Shire was very clear about that. We won't see Pat at all. As for Caleb, John just came out and said he had a fracture in his foot, which is something that has been widely reported even though Duke had not confirmed it until this moment. But he does have a broken bone of some sort in his foot. John did not specify exactly what it was. I've heard it's one of the meta-tarsals in his foot, which is a fairly common kind of foot injury that occurs. John said they are still holding out hope that Caleb will play in the NCAA tournament, but he said if that happens, it would probably be in the final four. So that's a pretty dim outlook in terms of Caleb Foster making it back for this team. And then yeah, go ahead. We should talk about what John said about the other guys and how they're going to make up for Caleb's absence. Well, before that, I think there's some details that we can add in here too. I think when he mentioned that Caleb would only be able

9:14to get back if we got to the final four, he didn't say if we got to the final four in what income's number one. He said that is like- That's the earliest possible. It's the earliest possible. And it's also not guaranteed that if we get to the final four that he would be ready, the same goes for Pat. He mentioned that first of all, it was not like an acute moment or injury, right? It wasn't something that sparked this flare up. It was just a gradual thing that kind of built up over the week he said he mentioned. Pat had said something to him during the NC State game that he'd started to feel it at that point. They tried to let him rehab. And even again, we're planning on playing him on Saturday, but he said that it was not feeling great and he decided, okay, you're not playing. So there's that, but even with him, he said it's also not like a timetable injury, like, hey, rest six days and you'll be fine. Their goal is to have him ready for the first round of the NCAA tournament, but again, we're gonna have to wait and see with him as well.

10:16So I think the idea here is people are gonna be impatient in a way and I get the desk going to be something that happens with some of these things. Okay, when the final four happens, if number one is not in the floor, then there was some sort of setback. Put that out of your mind right now. Right, that's not the case. These things are injuries that don't have a timetable with healing. In fact, it's even a stretch for, again, as you mentioned, for Caleb Foster for three weeks to be a timetable where he could come back and not just play but be effective. So we're not looking for a Willis Reed situation here where he comes out of locker room and scores a couple points and then sits out the rest game. We don't wanna do right, or we wanna do right by him. So again, we're gonna be without, he mentioned the word foreseeable. We're gonna be without Caleb for the foreseeable future and Pat for the ACC tournament and hopefully have him ready for the first round next week. Yeah, all right, so now let's get to the next question that was posed to John, which was, hey, so what do you do?

11:18And I wanna play a little bit of sound from the news conference, Jim Sumner, friend of the podcast and there's a few people out there who covered Duke as well as Jim Sumner does. Jim asked John about how much Caden Booser plays and are there other players who are maybe an option to help out with the point guard duties. Have a listen to what Jim asked John and how John responded to it. Hey, John, good morning. Good morning. Last Thursday, the press for before the current game, you talked about Cam Sheffield and Scott about how valuable they were in practice, how hard that they pushed your starters. Is there a scenario where either of us, these guys get some playing time with Caleb out, or are you comfortable with the seven player rotation? Right now, they're not in the plans to get minutes, although they have to be ready. And situational situations, the situational, that's I'm making a wards now, that's what I'm doing. Game situations, foul trouble.

12:23Both those guys have experience. They understand what we're trying to do defensively. They need, we need them to be ready. And they will be, and I want to be surprised to see him at the same time. I want to be surprised if it's the seven man rotation either. Okay, well, let me ask you, assuming that Booser doesn't play 40 minutes of game at point guard, I know there was some game. Don't assume that, it's it's it. But no, go ahead. I was gonna ask you about Nick. There was some games during the year, we had him playing point guard. Is he an option for some, you know, five minutes of game at point guard? Okay, for us, one, it's a little bit, what we've done, it's by committee. I think that's, it's not gonna be just one guy. And when, when cadence out of the game, one and if he's out of the game, I think the fact of us having multiple ball handlers

13:24that's where it's really gonna come in handy. You know, I mean, literally one through five can initiate offense and bring up the ball. And so that's something we're gonna work on today, frankly. All right, Donald, on a funny note, I love the fact that Jim was like, well, cadence is not gonna play 40 minutes and John Shire was like, are you sure? I don't know about that. I mean, look, cadence played all 20 in the second half against you and C, so. Sure, double that, that's 40, I know math. Right, but, but I think the interesting thing was, you know, to talk about Nick Humania, who is a guy who has a reputation as a dynamite passer and a very good ball handler for a dude of his size. I think that probably, like John kind of said, it's when, when cadence needs arrest, it's point guard by committee. It's a bunch of different guys stepping up and taking on new roles. And, you know, as I said on our podcast, I think Duke probably gets the ball into the hands of Cameron Booser as quickly as Anne Malik Brown, because those are like the two initiators

14:24as much as anybody. Get into their hands as quick as you damn well, can. But, but I think John was very forthcoming about saying, you know, hey, we're gonna look at some different things and we're gonna try some different things. And Nick Humania is a real option here. I think also bringing the ball up and running the offense can be two different people. And we might see that, right? You might see a Nick Humania bring the ball across half court and then hand the ball off to Can Booser or Malik Brown and all of a sudden the play starts from there, right? So you're gonna see kind of it even same with Caden, right? Caden's gonna bring the ball up. He may not be the guy that calls out the play and runs the play. It might be he gets the ball and unloads it to Can Booser pretty quickly so that they can start folding it off into round them. I also think there was another question there that we're not gonna play the audio for, but he mentioned people asked if Jack Scott or Cameron Sheffield are gonna be guys that factor into this. Now that it's really down to seven guys in the main rotation. John said for, he did outright dismiss it,

15:27but he all but dismissed that they would get additional minutes. He said obviously if there's foul trouble or God forbid something else happens with regards to player health, then sure you might see them. But it's not something that they are prepared to do. But obviously Jack and Kim Sheffield are gonna be ready to perform whenever their number is called if their number is called. Yeah, exactly. And at one point, I think it was very amusing. At one point during the interviews where everybody was asking questions, Kyle Serba, the Duke Sports Information, well, the guy who runs all the PR, all the press availability for the basketball team. Kyle said, is there anybody who has a non injury-related question and it happens, Donald, to be your turn to ask a question at that moment. Let's have a listen as you actually ask John something that's not related to the injuries. Thank you, Kyle. Good morning, Coach. I actually will break up the questions and ask you about, first of all, congratulations

16:28on winning Coach of the Year. I know you don't like to talk about yourself. So I'll ask you about your coaching staff and how they've kind of helped get you in there. I mean, the first coach to win, Duke Coach to win ACC on the men's side since 2000 is a tremendous achievement. But talk about your coaching staff and how they've helped this year and getting you to have your name on that award. Well, thank you. And at the same time, I don't want to diminish it either because I think it's, you know, I'm uncomfortable with an individual coaching award because there's no such thing as an individual coach. You don't coach your, you have to have the right players. You have to have the right staff around you. And that's where to your question, Donald. I'm incredibly grateful. We have an amazing staff. I think the diversity of background still has been an extreme force. You have the fact of, you have a Chris Kerwell right by my side who's been with me through it all and has the experience of everything we've seen at Duke together. But then you bring in Evan Brad's and Tyler Thornton

17:29and Tyler obviously has known Duke as a player, but their experience, you know, and what that's meant to us is totally different. You know, you know, a manual, you know, being with us the last few years and his attention in detail and his impact. So I can go down the line, you know, Rachel Baker, you know, and what she's meant to me and our staff the last few years. I think there's great cohesiveness. I think we have a great way of bouncing things off one another and they do a great job of checking my blind spots and calling me out when I don't see something. And I think that's the making of a great staff. Yeah, so it's just funny timing, right? I mean, there's a couple of people with their hands in the air and it's just a matter of who gets called on. It just will happen that he called on me. But I think the question about the coaching staff was one, again, you've probably all of you out there have heard John Shire talk and John Shire does not like talking about himself. He's very quick to defer, hit Ernie Ackley's that he may have to someone else.

18:31But as we mentioned on the last show, winning coach of the year is a big deal. Winning it in the fourth season is a very big deal. And but I also recognize that it was a coach's group that helped him get his name in the trophy. So for him to be able to spend a minute to talk about them, but also Jason is important in the context of this injury because these guys are going to have to figure out new ways to win without two guys who are very important to us. Sure, we still have important guys left, but it's still about getting those guys in positions for success. Download how do you keep teams from doubling and tripling Cameron Booser, right? How do we get Malik Brown free to get more points offensively? Like he did against UNC. How do we get guys on the wing open when there's no Caleb to kind of bring a defender away from the action? How do we get Domesar involved more? How do we get the plays executed? Those are all questions for the coaching staff. So again, it's a great thing that they won this award,

19:33that John Shire won this award to reflect his great coaching staff that he has built this year. And now they are like, OK, now we really have to get to work and show that we are the best coaching staff in America by trying to figure out how to navigate through these injuries, at least especially until the day that Pat Gongba is cleared and ready to play. Yeah, exactly. All right, hey, we're going to take a quick break. On the other side, we're going to give you a little bit of a preview of what to expect from Duke's opponents in the ACC tournament. The tournament is underway. ACC bubble teams, playing for their lives, all that, when we come back. The world moves fast. You work day, even faster, pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot is your AI assistant for work. Built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps you use, helping you quickly

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22:39Zippercrooter.com slash zip. All right, we're back from the break. We're going to give you a little bit of stuff now on the ACC tournament. And before we get to, so Duke, of course, is going to face either Florida State or Cal. And we'll get to Florida State and Cal in a moment. But I sort of wanted to start Donald's just very quickly with some other results from today. There were two teams, actually three teams playing today who were right around the bubble, I think. A couple who were just barely, maybe just barely off the bubble and one team that was inching way too close for it for comfort. The teams I'm talking about, Virginia Tech Stanford and SMU. I think SMU, SMU beat Syracuse by 17 today, 86 to 69. I think SMU's probably safely in the field now. Now, I'm not saying that they're going to be like a nine seed. I think they're probably like one of the last, at the moment, probably one of the last 10 seeds or one of the top 11 seeds.

23:40But I think that SMU's probably in the tournament. The other two, it's really unfortunate. Virginia Tech lost away Stanford, lost to Pittsburgh. Donald, I had all kinds of stuff prepared for our podcast, talking about what Virginia Tech and Stanford needed to do to make the tournament. The first thing I had for each one of them was win your first game and they both lost. And I think as a result, both those teams, I think, are probably, it's maybe the tournament will surprise us in some, I mean, the selection committee will surprise us in some way, but I feel like both those clubs are probably on the wrong side of the bubble at the moment. Well, first of all, there were three really good games that pit game, especially coming down to a buzzer beater by minor for pit to get them past Stanford. But you mentioned the first thing that both Stanford and Virginia Tech had to do, which was try with this game and then figure out how to win the next one. I know what their second thing is now is to hope and pray because there's still a lot of basketball left to be played for those teams, not necessarily for them,

24:41but for other teams, right? We've seen a lot of teams, even last weekend, a lot of teams that were considered on the bubble. I think Jerry Palm from CBS had mentioned there were nine teams he had on his bubble list and every one of them lost. There's still basketball left to be played and it may be one of these teams that are ahead of them can play themselves out. Hey, so I got a question for you. If we're considering Virginia Tech and Stanford, is it better to have good wins or no bad losses because their resumes, Virginia Tech and Stanford are like, they're really interesting in terms of like the opposite of each other. Virginia Tech is just two and 10 in quad one games, like they Virginia Tech just doesn't really beat good teams that much, just again, two and 10 in quad one games. Stanford is a fairly impressive five and, Stanford's five and six in quad one games. I mean, that's really good. Usually a team that's five and six in quad one games wouldn't even be on the bubble. You'd be looking at, you know, a team that's like a seven or an eight seed to be right around 500 in quad one games,

25:43but here's the rub. Virginia Tech has not lost a single game to teams in quad three or four. Stanford has three quad three losses, like Stanford has three ugly losses. So the fact that Stanford has the good wins does outweigh the fact that they have the bad losses, what's your opinion? Or does Virginia Tech get credit for not losing any games they shouldn't have lost? I think if you go based off of last year, right? And last year to this year is different. They went based on, did you play the good teams, right? Did you play? And if you had a decent record, that five and six record looks good. I think the real thing is this year with so many teams beefing up their schedule, they are going to start looking at bad losses a little bit more. I think that might hurt Stanford in the end. All right, so let's get a little bit to the teams that do because slated to play at least in their first game, which is, as we mentioned, either Florida State or Cal. I'm going to start really quick on Florida State. They've won six of seven, nine of their last 11.

26:44This is a team that was at one point one in six in the ACC and they finished 10 and eight. I mean, they went nine and two over their final stretch. Florida State is playing really, really good ball right now. Our first game against, and I want to remind folks of this. Our first game against Florida State was like the third worst game that Duke played all year. Like if you look according to all the advance metrics and all this other kind of stuff, this was Duke playing about as bad as they could. The only games we played worse than this were the games against Lipscomb and Georgia Tech. The 87 points we allowed to Florida State were far and away. The most Duke, think about this. Duke team, we allowed 87 points. Like maybe if the game goes to double or triple over time, I mean, usually like if you get 70 against Duke, you're jumping up and down to in cartwheels. We allowed 87. Florida State scored 1.25 points per possession.

27:45They hit 60% of their two-point field goals. 47% of their threes. I think you can put that game aside. That game is such an outlier. Duke is playing different defense today, precisely because our defense sucked against Florida State. In Vince coming out of that game, the John Shire was like, well, we ain't doing that anymore. Well, no, I don't think you put it aside because I think that's the point where our defense shifted. If you remember, you talked about, John Shire has said this, we're talking to Domesar. I think he said this on Game Day. He said talking to Domesar after that Florida State game, he had had some conversations about how shifting how he plays defense on this team and making him kind of the centerpiece of this tenacious perimeter defense. It started, we started it after the Texas Tech game, but he started implementing it after the Florida State game. And since then, there was like one other game where we kind of had a shaky affair. And then that's where the defense kind of kicked in. And again, after that, safe for the three-pointer by Seth Trimble, we ran the table. And so I'm looking at that game as a barometer of,

28:48hey, this is where our defense shifted. This is where our mindset shifted. And he always talked about figuring out what this team was made of in January. That was the start of that. So yeah, since we beat them, they're 10 and 6. They're 9 and 2 since January 24th. And they had, I mean, they were struggling, struggling to get out of the 15th spot. And they vaulted all the way up to eight in the last month. So they are playing some really good basketball. They're scoring at a high rate in a lot of these games. But yeah, it's going to be interesting if they get past Cal to meet our defense and see how their offenses changed since that game on January 3rd to where our defense has changed to January 3rd. Our defense is night and day, compared to that day. By the way, so we mentioned, you mentioned how much Florida State was struggling. At one point, they were 0 and 5 in the ACC. On January 18th, they were 0 and 5. And they were ranked 117th in Bart Torvich rankings. Since then, since that date, January 18th,

29:51they've been playing like almost a top 30 team in the land. And as a reminder, this Florida State team shoots a ton of threes, like just over 50% of their shots come from three-point land. They play really fast on offense. They run everything through Robert McPray. He was third team on ACC, 15 plus points per game, 6 plus assists per game for Robert McPray. And I think the wild card, if Duke places Florida State, is Chauncey Wiggins. They played Clemson. Florida State played Clemson a couple weeks ago. And Chauncey Wiggins had seven points, and only took six total shots. They played SMU the other day. He had 31 points. He had six out of eight three pointers. He's hitting almost 45% of his threes in ACC play. Chauncey Wiggins is the guy to me that determines is Florida State having a great day or Florida State having a bad day. So it'll be up to Duke to make Chauncey Wiggins have a bad day. Let's move on really quick to the other possible opponent, which is the Cal Bears. They've been eight and five since we last played them,

30:52playing really great on defense lately. Over the past couple of months, they've had like a top 35 defense in all of college basketball. They've done a really good job of guarding the three-point line. Teams only hit 30% of their threes against Cal. Cal also, we've talked about this. Freaky stat alert. Cal has the number one free throw defense in all of college basketball. I don't know how that's accomplished. I think free throw defense is random, but somehow Cal only allows teams to hit 65.9% from the free throw line. And the crazy thing is Donald, Cal fouls a lot. They have the 17th worst free throw rate on defense of any team in the ACC. 17, 18 teams in ACC. Cal is the second worst in terms of the number times they send teams to the free throw line, but then no one hits them against Cal. It's kind of crazy. The Cal fouls a lot and then no one hits their free throws. And as a result, it makes their defense a lot better.

31:54And last thing I wanted to note about Cal, the best player, the guy you need to look out for is Day Day Ames. He also was third team on ACC. Average is almost 17 points per game, really good outside shooter. And also be on the lookout for Scottie Pippen's son Justin Pippen. Justin Pippen was terrible when we played Cal. He just shot two of 11 from the field, but he's come on lately. He's averaging more than 14 points per game. And he is sort of their primary creator. Like they put the ball in his hands and they let him create further guys. He's are leading a cis guy at 4.4 assists per game. So those are the two players to watch on this Cal team. So there's an interesting note about how they kind of have come on in the last month. If you look at the last month, they are five and four, since the Cal returned to February. But I just want you to hear the teams that they have played. They beat Georgia Tech. They then lost to Clemson and Syracuse. They beat Boston College, Stanford, SMU, one, three in a row,

32:57and then in the last week-ish of the season, they lost to Pittsburgh, one at Georgia Tech, and then lost away to Wake Forest. Why is that significant? Clemson is the only team that hasn't played yet or wasn't in the tournament, right? Like the other teams that I mentioned played tonight because they're in the bottom five, or in the case of Georgia Tech and Boston College did not make tournament at all. So this will be a big test for them to even play for the state. Again, a team in the top half of the conference, they haven't seen that outside of Clemson in well over a month. So I'm interested to see how Cal responds to playing a better team, right? A team that is also fighting for their lives. Like just because for a state in Cal or eight in nine in the ACC doesn't mean that a birth in the NCAA tournament is a given. They're gonna look at everything. So I think, especially for Cal, if they're five and four over the last nine games,

33:59and they're playing teams that either played on the first day of the tournament or didn't play at all, the NCAA tournament committee is gonna kind of disregard that if they lose to Florida State. So this is a big test for them. And then if they get past Florida State, as you mentioned, I think some of those guys that we saw that didn't play as well, when we went there are playing a little bit better. And I think those are the guys, especially Data Ames, he's the guy that is the engine. And I remember being able to just kind of put him and check and throw everything into disruption. And again, this is that West Coast trip was kind of the showcase of our defense going, hey, it's new and improved. Check it out. So yeah, this will be, again, an interesting battle between Cal and Florida State to see who plays us. Yeah, and I don't think either Cal or Florida State are, they're not like, they're not on the bubble at this point. Winning this game probably puts them close to the bubble. And then I think the winner of that game will look at their game against Duke as, this is our game to show that we belong.

34:59I don't know if it gets them in, but probably, depending on how other teams do on the bubble, depending on how big the bubble is, things like that. If, whichever one wins the game, that they play against each other, they're gonna look at that Duke game as their chance to play their way into the tournament, a major extra incentive for those guys against Duke. And I think the other thing is, we remember obviously last year where, you know, everything went wrong in the first game for us, health wise. We still ended up coming back to win the tournament, but we also remember what happened the year before that, where the very first night that we were in in the ACC quarterfinals, we lost to an upstart NC State team, and we weren't ready to play. And this is an opportunity, again, with seven guys, we have to be ready to play whoever it is that ends up being on the other side. So, sure, seven guys, and I think the one thing that's great, right, is that nobody is treating the injury bug that has hit us very suddenly as an excuse.

36:01But execution still needs to be key, and they're gonna have to play through tired legs. This is where I say blowouts are fun, because, you know, if we can get Jack and Cam in there and get some time and get a couple of those guys a little bit of extra rest on these days, that's great. But make no mistake, nobody, including myself, should be expecting a blowout in any of these games. These are gonna be tight games, these are gonna be games that probably will have a few possessions in the balance. Hopefully, we're running away with them, that'd be great. But do not expect that based on what I've seen, when we have these kind of games, just get your toms ready. This is the ACC tournament, everyone here is much improved. Everyone's obviously gonna be coming for us, and it's our job to stop them. With seven players, we can do it, but it's gonna take everybody on that team to be ready to go. Hey, really quick, I just wanna talk about a couple other things about the ACC tournament. First of all, even though I knew it was coming, I'm a little bit bummed that Miami's

37:01on the other side of the bracket from Duke. I wanted to play Miami, so we could face everyone in the ACC this year. I don't think anyone's saying, oh, Miami should be the, you know, you got to avoid, you know, nothing like that. But it's still, I think, it's nice to play everyone in the conference at some point, and the fact that we're missing Miami this year, we could face them in the ACC finals, and it's not at all outrageous to think that Duke and Miami will make the ACC finals against each other, but I'm a little bit bummed that Miami's on the other side. I am not at all bummed that Louisville is on the other side, though, because I hate the idea of beating a team three times in one year. We've taken out Louisville twice, but they've been, yeah, reasonably competitive games. This Louisville team is, the advanced metric folks will tell you, even though Louisville's seed is six, Louisville's the second best team in the ACC. That's what Ken Pomeroy thinks. So I'm perfectly happy that Louisville's on the other side of the bracket. It is worth noting, though, we think about Duke's injuries and how tough they are, but Michael Brown Jr.

38:03of Louisville, they say that he will not play in the entire ACC tournament. I'm trying to get him back for the NCAA tournament. His season has been so messed up by injuries. We're talking about a high lottery pick here, who's just been in and out of the Louisville lineup left and right. We already know that Caleb Wilson was missing the entire ACC tournament and the NCAA, his season's done for Carolina. I mean, can you imagine if instead of Caleb Foster getting injured, it was Cameron Booser? I mean, because that's what it feels like. I'm sure for the Carolina folks. And I just, I'm fascinated to see how these ACC games play out, it seems to feel like, you know, does SMU feel like they need one more win? Probably not, they're probably okay. NC State, I mean, NC State, they could be looking, I don't think they're in danger of falling out of the tournament, but if they lose their first round game, NC State could be like an 11. They could be in, you know, functionally the play in games. There's some really, really interesting games that happen here still in the ACC. I think the best part about the post season tournaments at large,

39:06right, is mainly in the power of five, because everyone else is kind of a winner, winner or bust. But in these tournaments, you have a way to play yourself into the tournament, right, by just advancing. NC State doesn't have to win the whole thing, but if they get to the semi-final, that, like, they get past Pitt, and then they get past Virginia, yeah, that's two more wins they can add some of their resumes, so they can show the committee. See, we can beat any team you put in front of us, that sort of thing. And this is where, you know, March Madness can become mad, in that all of these teams have this understanding that if they just keep winning, they have a chance. Everyone in this tournament has a chance to win it all, except for the teams that lost today, obviously. So this is a great opportunity for them. Excuses are gonna be thrown out the window. Everyone's legs and mental toughness are gonna be tested, and Duke has no exception to that. So there is one of these teams is gonna win the ACC tournament and get that outright bid, but everyone else has a chance to play their way

40:08into the tournament by their performance. So all this stuff to do is play the games. All right, that works for me, man. With that, we're gonna wrap it up here on the latest edition of the Duke Basketball Roundup. Thanks for being with us. Don't forget, send us your headlines, send us your comments, your emails, whatever it may be. D, B, R, podcast at gmail.com. This is the time of year to make sure that you have liked and subscribed to our podcast because they're gonna be coming fast people. We got games on back to back to back days, hopefully, and we are gonna ping every one of them for you. He is Donald. I am Jason, the ACC Tournament's happening in Charlotte, and here's the Duke Band playing us out and taking us to the turning. Two teams, one cup. The prime time stage is set for the TGL presented by SoFi Finals, Los Angeles Golf Club versus Tigers Jupiter Links.

41:08Keep up, it's playoffs. Tune in Monday, March 23rd, 9 p.m. Eastern on ESPN 2 and Tuesday, March 24th, 7 p.m. Eastern on ESPN and on the ESPN app. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day, on the couch, in the crowd, or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in. With a full lineup of non-alcoholic beer styles, you can enjoy bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stuck the fridge for tip off with a variety of non-alcoholic craft styles available at your local grocery store or online at AthleticBrewing.com. Near beer, fit for all times.