Duke played Marquette tonight. Marquette was a good test for Duke and their first real competition. Duke was up nine at the half and ended up winning 82-77. They were up a bit more than that, but Seth Curry, Kyrie Irving and Nolan Smith all missed the front end of one-and-ones while Marquette fouled late in the game. Given how well those three shoot, it was really surprising they all missed.
There were two big stories in the game. One was the 19 turnovers Duke gave up. A lot of them were unforced and came from sloppiness in the new fast-paced offense. It got pretty frustrating, to be honest, but they pulled it out anyway.
The other story, the one that helped mitigate the other one, was Mason Plumlee, who put on a show tonight with 25 points, 12 rebounds and 5 blocks. The fact that this came against a pretty decent (if unranked) team gives me some faith that it’s not a fluke. If indeed it’s not and Mason is able to keep his numbers up at half that click, Duke’s going to be really hard to beat this season.
Oh, the answer yesterday’s question about Carolina’s ranking is 25. I’m slightly impressed.
Milly and I took a walk to the grocery store this morning. She was pretty subdued for most of the morning, opting to sit in her stroller and drink a sippy cup of milk while watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for a while. She pepped up after a little bit though, and was pretty energetic.
Milly wanted to eat a lot today. I picked up some grapes for her this morning and she liked them, but she only wanted them if they were cut in half. In fact, there were a lot of grape skin husks left over this morning. I think later on she started eating the skins, too though. She also kept wanting hamburger buns.
Work was pretty hectic today. Scott’s on vacation this week, so not only was I doing my own usual stuff, but a little bit of his as well, not that it was anything major. I don’t expect tomorrow or the next day will be too crazy, given that it’s Thanksgiving week.
Amanda got home a little later than usual and Milly didn’t nap as late as usual. She spent some time sitting on my lap while I tried to finish up work and, to her credit, she didn’t try to mess with the laptop all that much.
After Amanda got home I wanted to play some Assassin’s Creed, but Milly wanted to hang out in the office and I was constantly afraid that she was going to knock over the Xbox, so I didn’t get to play much.
She was very sweet tonight. She gave me and Amanda a group hug, which she’s only just started doing. She’s also starting to try stringing together multiple words and can sort of repeat sentences now. Short ones, of course.
I watched part of the Duke game upstairs because we had multiple shows recording tonight. I watched How I Met Your Mother with Amanda at halftime then we watched The Walking Dead together after it. I’m so sad that there are only two episodes left in the season.
Zach Dotsey