Duke

As you may have heard, Duke dropped out of the coaches' poll for the first time ever, and are out of the AP Top 25 for the first time in 200 weeks. The news certainly raised my eyebrows.

Don't get me wrong: I don't think the Devils are a top 25 team. I said as much when they struggled at the beginning of the year, and I've maintained that position. I wondered aloud this past weekend, in fact, what the Devils (and Alabama, for that matter) had to do to drop out of the polls.

But I never expected it to happen, because the Devils were safely in the mid-teens range. And -- while I do think that Duke being out of the top 25 is no great injustice -- I do think it's wrong that they fell that far based on the week's results. They played extremely well midweek before falling to a deeper, more talented North Carolina team, then rallied valiantly after a slow start before coming up short at Maryland on Sunday. February is too late in the season for such drastic swings to occur. The problem is not that Duke is out -- it's that they were as highly-ranked as they were heading into the game with Carolina.

Demarcus Nelson

First, a quick note on the fact that I haven't posted in a while. It's been a busy and confusing time for me and I don't know how often I will be able to post, or if I even like the format. So I'll be updating sporadically from here on out. If you can't be troubled to check back periodically, shoot me an email and I'll let you know when I post something new.

Tonight against Maryland was the second-straight game in which Duke's Demarcus Nelson didn't start (against North Carolina on Wednesday, fellow co-captain Josh McRoberts found himself on the pine as the ball went up as well). It's hard to pin down the exact motive for this relatively radical coaching move. It could be a motivational tactic. It could be an attempt to shake things up and find a combination of players that work, or to see if Nelson can excel as a sixth man, or to keep him fresh for the end of games and the rest of the season.

Whatever it is, it isn't working. On Sunday, Nelson entered the game, fouled Maryland's Greivis Vasquez on a layup, then committed another foul five seconds later. He picked up his third three minutes later, and other than two layups to start the second half, he was largely a non-factor.

Same story on Wednesday, when McRoberts was the one in foul trouble, and finished with just six points.

Getting into foul trouble is just one sign of a player who is out of synch. Not all of the other show up in the stat sheet, and if you didn't watch either game, you'll have to trust that in both cases, the benched starters never really found their rhythm in the game. It's a questionable move under any circumstances, but particularly so on Wednesday, when Coach K's young, thin squad was up against one of the higher-octane offenses in the country. The Devils needed to be hitting on all cylinders offensively, and sitting McRoberts and Nelson was too big of a risk to take. Those guys are too valuable to a team that has struggled putting the ball in the basket. I'll be very surprised if Nelson isn't back in the starting lineup Wednesday at Boston College.