Duke Was a legit National Championship Contender this season. They had tremendous individual talent across the board and had great size and strength across their lineup. But they were one on one players. They had great individual talent, enough to win the whole deal, but they did not play great team basketball. It was all about match-up exploitation on offense (an NBA approach). They were not the inspired defenders of Duke teams of days gone by.
I wonder what the future is of this one and done model being perpetrated most purely by Duke and Kentucky, but also Auburn, Arizona, et. al.?
On one hand, it seems to be the most efficient model to maintain and perpetuate recruiting success. Get the talent that would have been drafted anyway if it were not for the NBA one-and-done rule, then establish your program as the surest way to a high draft status (which was high anyway). For the player, it is the fun and safe way to spend a year before being draft eligible.
But the on the court results seem riddled with inconsistency from year to year. The one-and-done model seems to have demonstrated that it is a less efficient and consistent way to build a winning team as the players are immature and have their minds on their own draft status. There are lots of examples of the teams simply not meshing very well.
Do we continue to see the top programs trying to horde the one-and-dones and ride individual physical talent to a championship or do we see the likes of Duke and Kentucky back-off and try mix-in and balance the draftable talent with mature and team oriented players?
