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Yes, that was the charge against McCallie. by BabaGhanouj

That, and to be fair, the amount of crucial injuries her teams had to overcome.

Is there factual evidence behind the “performance not equal to the talent” criticism?

I checked last season for the women who played greater than 20 minutes per game (with the exception of Miela Goodchild who is from Australia without any high school rating). Those five players I compared to Notre Dame’s five with greater than 20 minutes per game.

While ND had a slight advantage in average high school rating, this year I have developed a system that takes into account the amount of playing experience. I won’t bother to explain it at this time, but, accounting for experience, the five Duke players had a better 'talent' rating.

The calculated Efficiency for those players during the year averaged 11.1 for Duke and 12.6 for Notre Dame. So even with our horrible year, ND out played Duke (even though they beat us by 3 points at Durham). (Note: For comparison, Connecticut had an Efficiency rating of their starting 5 of 17.7 last year.)

Obviously we would need a lot more evidence, but I feel as you, that Duke never rose to their talent level.