What was not good with Duke

I spent spring break with a friend whose catch-phrase is "What's good, son?" He literally says it all the time-when he walks into a room, when he walks out or when he can't think of anything else to say.

It's the type of question that no one ever answers. It's rhetorical in a way. But by the end of break, I knew the answer.

What's good, son?

Not Duke Basketball.

And-I hate to say it-the Blue Devils were not even close to being good.

This year was supposed to be about learning and growing, getting better as the year went on. There would be rough patches, we all thought, but they would be smoothed out by the end of the year. Sure it was the youngest Duke team in a while, but they had six frickin' McDonald's All-Americans. Take that talent, stir in a little Coach K, and we'd have a winner.

I even insinuated in a column before the season-fine, I basically came out and said it-that this Blue Devil squad had the potential to get to the Final Four.

Instead, we have a team that lost eight of its last 12 games. We have a team that beat Georgetown, Gonzaga, Indiana, Davidson and Holy Cross (all NCAA Tournament teams) before the conference play started, but went 3-7 against ACC teams that would end up making the field of 64. We have a team that got worse as the season went on, not better.

But it's not exactly the first time the Blue Devils failed to improve as the season went on. Last year's team won 27 of its first 28 games before going just 5-3 down the stretch. The 2005 squad started 15-0, and then finished 12-6.

To me, this seems like a problem. Getting worse as the season goes on is not good.

Of course, "good" at Duke means something different than "good" just about anywhere else. Only a fool would say that making the Tournament isn't good, or that making nine straight Sweet 16 trips isn't good. Those are good things. By the standards of almost any other program in the nation, Duke was good this year.

But this isn't any other program. And maybe the expectations are unfair, but so is the number of good recruits the Blue Devils haul in every year. And, last I checked, every other program doesn't have an American Express-hawking coach hand-picked to lead the U.S. national team, and every other program doesn't broadcast itself to potential recruits 20-plus times per season on ESPN.

The Blue Devils have the type of advantages that should make every talented high schooler in the country dream of coming to Durham.

So the expectations should be higher.

And under those expectations, the Blue Devils failed this year. And unless Kyle Singler is the next Kevin Durant or Taylor King is the next Greg Oden, they're not one (or two or three or four) player away. Without changes, they may well fail again next year.

Duke has to play more players and play at a faster pace. It worked for Roy Williams at North Carolina, and you've got to bet that he tells every player he recruits that his system will make them (and their stats) look a whole lot better that Coach K's will.

Duke has to recruit more athletes. As good as Duke's players are, and as high as their basketball IQs are, they're not athletic. In fact, the Blue Devils were probably one of the least athletic teams in the ACC this season.

They had no one who could get to the basket like Virginia's Sean Singletary or UNC's Ty Lawson, and no one who could keep players like those two from getting to the basket. They had no one who could consistently erase shots from the weak side like Maryland's James Gist, and no one who could finish around the basket like Virginia Tech's Deron Washington.

Hopefully, Coach K will find the time to sit down in the offseason and think about this year. And hopefully, he'll make some changes. That way, next year when we ask "What's good, son?" we'll get a better answer.