Duke Blue Devils National Signing Day: Offensive Skill Positions
Beginning at 7 a.m. on Wednesday, Duke fans can follow National Signing Day with live updates and video on GoDuke.com. GoDuke.com’s 2012 Signing Day Central will feature biographical sketches and video highlights of Duke’s signees. Tune in here to keep up-to-date with all the signings and get over to the Washington Duke from 5:30-7 for the Signing Day event with Coach David Cutcliffe!
With National Signing Day upon us, the Duke Football program has earned commitments from a number of quality athletes to keep the pool of talent on the roster filled. Unlike basketball, it’s unusual for freshmen to make a large impact in college football but last year a number of them made valuable contributions for the Blue Devils. Out of the 30 players listed as freshmen on Duke’s roster for 2011: Jamison Crowder, Blair Holliday, Britton Grier, David Helton, and Jonathan Woodruff all took some snaps.
During the 2012 season you will definitely see some new faces hitting the field as the players who took redshirts last season will step into roles left open by departing seniors. On the offensive side of the ball, departing seniors like Cooper Helfet (David Reeves will get more time), Jay Hollingsworth (Josh Snead, Dez Scott, etc.), Kyle Hill (Lucas Patrick, Cody Robinson, Marcus Aphramian), Donovan Varner(Holliday, Brandon Braxton), Alex King (Will Monday) leave big shoes to fill.
A look at Duke’s 18-man 2012 recruiting class shows a strategic effort to supplement the departing players with talented prospects from all over the country. Duke is still waiting to hear from North Carolina native Keilin Rayner tomorrow. He will make his decision known live at 11 AM Wednesday. Let’s get to know the members of this class, starting with the offensive skill position players.
Quarterback
- Thomas Sirk — Status: Committed/Signed LOI/ Enrolled
- Height 6’5″ | Weight 220 lbs
- Rankings — 3-Star #19 Pro-Style QB (Rivals) | 3-Star #62 QB (ESPN) | 2-Star #83 QB (Scout)
- 4.51 40 Speed, 4.5 GPA according to Rivals
- Just started playing QB in his senior year of high school
- Scouting Report from ESPN:
- Sirk is blessed with an ideal quarterback frame as well as very good straight line speed, he will have a chance as a senior to take the reins for the first time as a full time starter. Shows a good over the top release point that, combined with his height, is ideal for a pocket passer. Good feet, comes to balance quickly at the top of his drop. Does a poor job of stepping to his target when throwing to the left bringing up accuracy concerns. Shows good arm strength in his workout but just average on game tape. Tremendous upside from the standpoint of his physical tools, concerns arise given the fact that he has not been able to earn the starting job until his senior season. As a safety/wide receiver he’s not a sudden athlete but shows very good straight line speed for his size. Shows soft hands, lacks wiggle to make defenders miss in space. Could easily add the weight to develop into a tight end at the next level. Overall, Sirk will have a chance to prove himself at the quarterback position this season; he needs to show that his skill set he has can be displayed consistently in game situations through a full season.
- 209.4 Pass Yards/Game
- 68 Rush Yards/Game
- 127 QB Rating
- 26 Pass TD
Running Back
- Shaquille Powell — Status: Committed Read more
Project Defensive Scoresheet: Duke vs St. John’s
Editor’s note: Tommy D has been wonderful at getting these charts and interpretations over to me, but as you can tell, the work is very time-consuming. In an effort to bring you timely results on Duke’s defense, we’ve decided to post the most recent games as quickly as we can get them and post the previous games as they become more available. We will also be providing you with some cumulative stats as we get the data collected so all of us can start to get a better idea of how effective our individual players are on defense.
The Blue Devils, hoping to build on a solid all-around performance in a convincing road victory earlier in the week at Maryland, stepped out of conference for their annual tilt with the Red Storm of St. John’s. This series has been largely one-sided in recent years as St. John’s has struggled to recruit and to perform on the floor. But that all changed last year with the hiring of former UCLA coach Steve Lavin, who immediately injected energy and passion into the moribund program, and with his recruiting acumen, New York City hoops fans envision a return to prominence for the historic program. The high point of the Johnnies’ regular season last year was the 15 point thumping they administered to the Blue Devils in Madison Square Garden, where they essentially ran the Devils out of the building.
But this year has been a step back for St. John’s so far. For starters, Steve Lavin has missed much of the year, and may miss the rest of the season, with recurring problems related to his prostate cancer treatment. The entire rotation from last year’s team is gone. Lavin recruited an excellent nucleus to take its place, however, but still, they are freshmen. And two of them did not qualify academically, so the team is both young and thin.
The two top players on the squad are freshmen Moe Harkless and D’Angelo Harrison. Harkless is a 6’8″ slasher, and a major athlete, who can also step outside and shoot the 3. Kid has a pro looking game already. Harrison is a smooth 6’3″ perimeter player, thin, but very skilled. Both would cause problems for Duke’s defense all day.
The game did have one additional bit of intrigue. The Devils came in with a 93 game home winning streak against non-conference opponents, dating to 2000. The last non-conference foe to beat them? Why, it was St. John’s, in 2000, when Bootsy Thornton went for 22, including a number of shots that took the Cameron Crazies’ breath away late in an 83-82 thriller.
But that was then, this is now. So how did Duke perform defensively in this game? The numbers are below. For an explanation on what these terms mean, please reference the first post made on this subject here.
What does this tell us?
Well, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about Duke’s defense in general, and in particular about this game, especially in the second half. Duke’s defense after the first couple of possessions of the game and the last few of the first half, was actually pretty good for the first 20 minutes. Seth Curry, in particular, was excellent at cutting off penetration off the dribble, and Austin Rivers was effective in this regard as well. The bigs were helping pretty well when necessary. Duke enjoyed a comfortable lead. Read more
The Duck Shop Basketball Pick Em Games — Session Four
As I said in the earlier post, we had four players get the same amount of games incorrect (one). Once again, the tiebreaker came into play and James and Rob both had Quinn Cook’s assist total at four. Since he only played a minute and only had one assist, those two will fight it out in a trivie contest determine the tiebreaker. Make sure you get those tiebreakers in! One of them will walk away with a Duke Basketball Never Stops T-shirt once the trivia contest is over.
Check out your picks below on the spreadsheet. If I made an error, please let me know so I can fix it ASAP.
THE DUCK SHOP ACC BASKETBALL PICK EM CONTEST SPREADSHEET
On to the games/tiebreaker for Session Four. Life events delayed the posting of this one, but we have to keep moving so I’ll give you until Wednesday at 6:55 PM to get your picks in. As always, leave your picks in a comment down below this post, registering with your name and email address so I can get in touch with you if/when you win. As we continue ACC play, there are a ton more games to use and they should be more competitive.
Please only type who you think will be the winner on each line. If you see the spreadsheet, you’ll see it’s easier for me that way. Please also only use the name of the university like I posted below. The mascots make my job a little harder.
SESSION FOUR GAMES
- Georgia Tech @ Florida State 2/1 7PM EST
- Maryland @ Miami 2/1 8 PM
- Duke @ Virginia Tech 2/2
- Virginia @ Florida State 2/4
- Clemson @ Virginia Tech 2/4
- Marylan @ Clemson 2/7
- Duke @ UNC 2/8
- Virginia Tech @ Miami 2/9
- Maryland @ Duke 2/11
- Boston College @ Virginia Tech
- Tiebreaker: Total # of Rebounds in Duke/UNC 2/8
The Duck Shop Pick Em — Session Three Results
First, I want to apologize to all of the contestants who participated in this session of The Duck Shop‘s ACC Basketball Pick Em Contest. Sometimes, life gets in the way of my posting capabilities and this was one of those instances. As I was a week late posting the results, we obviously skipped a week of basketball games and the contest will have to be adjusted accordingly. Luckily for me, there was an extra week in the season where we can just move everything forward and not miss a beat. On to the results.
We had 25 entries in the third session of games and there were a lot of good entries. The Wake Forest/Virginia Tech game was one that every picker got wrong, so if you went with the Hokies, don’t fret.
THE DUCK SHOP ACC BASKETBALL PICK EM CONTEST SPREADSHEET
Check out sheet 3 for the results of this session if it doesn’t take you right to it.
There were four entries that only got that game wrong, so the picks went on to the tiebreaker of the # of Quinn Cook’s assists in the Florida State game. Due to illness and injury, Quinn was only able to contribute 1 minute of action and therefore had zero assists. Two pickers had four assists as their guess and they will be participating in a tiebreaker trivia contest tomorrow sometime to determine who won the Duke Basketball Never Stops T-Shirt pictured above. Good picking!
Stay tuned as I’ll be posting the games for the next session shortly. You will have until Wednesday evening to get your picks in for Session Four.
Project Defensive Score Sheet: Duke vs Temple
By Tommy D – Coming off consecutive post-holiday blowouts of Western Michigan and Penn, the Blue Devils headed to Philly for a test of an entirely different dimension: the Temple Owls. Though not officially a home game for Temple, due to its being played in the Wells Fargo Center, in all other respects it was home. It was Philly, and it was rocking. It was only the second hostile environment the Devils had faced up to this point in the season. The first, in Columbus, resulted in a 22 point drubbing at the hands of the Buckeyes.
Duke played hard, but played from behind almost the entire game, never able to get over the hump. Temple took the lead at the 13:49 mark of the first half, and never relinquished it. The size and physicality of the Owls posed a major problem, particularly in the backcourt, where Duke often is small, employing 6’2″ Seth Curry, 6’0″ Quinn Cook, and 6’1″ Tyler Thornton (if those listed heights are even accurate, which I doubt) for major minutes at the guard positions, and 6’4″ Andre Dawkins seeing significant minutes as a swing 3. Temple’s frontcourt is athletic and aggressive, backing down to nobody. Defensively, as is the tradition at Temple, the Owls play smart, and they play aggressively, and cleanly. Anybody who expected this to be an easy game was sadly mistaken, and was quickly disabused of that notion within minutes of tipoff.
With the raucous crowd behind them the whole way, Temple never let up, and the longer they maintained the lead, the more confident they became that they could do this. And they did. Their game plan was excellent as well, as Fran Dunphy recognized the physical advantages that his squad enjoyed, and maximized them.
Duke did not play its best game, but nor did it play its worst. On this day, Temple was the better team and deserved to win. Below is the defensive chart for the Temple game. For an explanation of the metrics used, refer to the first post on this study here.
So what does this show us about Duke’s defensive effort and performance? Of the bigs, Miles Plumlee was extremely effective, as we got stops on 81% of the plays in which he was involved. That’s extraordinary. Mason also graded out very highly in this metric. This is in large part due to the excellent help defense that both Plums provided all day long.
One of the mysteries coming out of the game was why Miles got so few minutes. Most observers were puzzled by this because of Miles’ success at the offensive end, as he scored a season-high 17 points on 8 of 11 shooting, but it was even more of a head scratcher considering how well he played defensively. He and Mason tied for the team lead in DRating, a full 9 points below the team’s total. The fact that Mason was involved in a higher percentage of plays when he was on the floor, and played a lot more minutes than Miles, could cause some to reasonably believe that Mason’s overall defensive performance was actually better than Miles’s. But they were both rocks. Read more
Decison Could Be Coming Soon From Duke Target Amile Jefferson
By Taylor Ostrick — With a committment from Tony Parker looking less and less likely and the spring signing period drawing closer, Duke is still looking to make some final key additions to a 2012 class that at the moment only has one committment. Amile Jefferson, a talented 6’8 foward from Philidelphia is the latest 2012 player to earn an offer from the Blue Devils. Although Duke is jumping in late on this one (they contacted Jefferson earlier in January and offered him shortly after), Mike Krzyzewski and the staff have made up ground fast, not to mention Duke and Jefferson are far from strangers. The Blue Devils recruited Jefferson for a period in his sophomore year, he has already visited Duke’s campus and has a strong relationship with the Duke coaches.
“They got in touch with me and my father,” Jefferson told NBE of Duke. “They had been looking [at me during my] . . . sophomore year . . . The school speaks for itself.”
“He’s been to visit Duke a few times,” Musgrove said. “He’s been there as a freshman, he went there his junior year. He’s been on the campus a ton of times with AAU. He knows a little bit about the school.”
It is no secret Jefferson and his parents love Duke, from both a basketball and an academic perspective. Academics is very important to Jefferson, and it will likely be a large factor in his decision. Jefferson and his fater have recently said that his recruitment is winding down, and that he would like to make a decision soon, which could be as early as the end of January or the beginning of February.
“At the end of the week we’ll have a conversation and I think he could wrap this up in the next few weeks,” Malcolm Musgrove (father) said by phone. “I’m thinking by the end of January he will know.” Read more
Duke vs. St. John’s: By The Numbers
By Chad Lykins — The Duke Blue Devils (17-3 5-1) will step out of conference play in the ACC to meet the St. John’s Red Storm (9-11 3-6 Big East) of the Big East conference on Saturday. The Blue Devils come into Saturday’s contest ranked #6 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll and #8 in the AP Poll. Duke and St. John’s met last season, which saw the Red Storm hand the Blue Devils a lopsided loss of sorts. That St. John’s team was led by a veteran squad and first year coach, Steve Lavin. This season, however, the Red Storm brings a crop of very young, but talented players that are going through the rigors of NCAA Division I play. Out of the last 8 meetings between Duke and St. John’s, Duke has won 7 of the 8 games played. Duke University is honoring the All-American Athletic Association on Saturday. This is their 40th year as ushers in Cameron, and since 1972, they have raised over $450,000 for local charities. Saturday’s game will be televised live on ESPN with the tipoff set for 12:03 PM ET.
Duke-St. John’s Series
• Duke and St. John’s have met 20 times heading into Saturday’s game with the first meeting between the two schools coming on Feb. 4, 1938.
• The Blue Devils lead the all-time series 14-6, including a 5-1 mark at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
• Duke fell to St. John’s a year ago, but has won seven of the last eight contests in the series.
• Mike Krzyzewski is 14-3 at Duke against the Red Storm, including a 5-1 record in Durham.
• Duke has won five straight in the series at Cameron Indoor Stadium. The Blue Devils have a +23.0 scoring margin in that span.
• The Blue Devils have won 93 straight non-conference home games since falling to St. John’s, 83-82, on Feb. 26, 2000.
• Duke’s last two victories in the series have been by 10 points or less. The Blue Devils’ previous seven wins over St. John’s were all by double figures. Read more
Duke’s Defense Key To Continued Success
By Ray Horn — Coming off a devastating loss at home to Florida State the Duke Blue Devils showed resolve and toughness in defeating the Maryland Terrapins in College Park on the night the court was named after Gary Williams. The Devils still had their maddening moments of turnovers or defensive breakdowns, but steadied the ship and won by a 13 point margin. Defense has been the team’s achilles heel so far this season and it looked more of the same over the first 10 or so minutes as Maryland sliced and diced the defense for 22 points in the games first nine minutes. However, in the game’s final 31 minutes the Blue Devils held the Terps to 39 points on 16-44 (36%) shooting. I am in no way saying the defense looked completely fixed, but there are improvements here. Since the Georgia Tech game the Devils have played some good stretches on the defensive side of the ball. The Blue Devils held Virginia to 10-34 (29%) in the second half. At Clemson, the Blue Devils held the Tigers to 19-54 (35%) shooting in the game’s final 31 minutes. The Blue Devils fell into the trap of playing down to your competition against Wake Forest and allowed them way too much. Against Florida State, the Blue Devils held the Seminoles to 8-22 (36%) shooting in the first half before Michael Snaer’s three point prayer dropped. My point is that Duke has proven they are capable of playing good defense. The problem is you can’t play 20-30 minutes of good defense. It has to be 40 minutes. In my opinion one of the biggest issues with the defense is intensity and focus. Too many times it takes a timeout or halftime speech for the team to lockdown on the defensive side of the ball. Going forward this team needs to focus on each and every possession defensively, stop reaching in order to foul less, and rebound better; there have been way too many offensive rebounds for the opposition.
The next test for the Blue Devils is the St. John’s Red Storm. St. John’s brings a bad memory for Duke fans as the Red Storm blew out the Blue Devils 93-78, shooting over 58% from the floor. Make no doubt about the Blue Devils wanting revenge for that loss, but they are going to have to do it against a brand new team. Only 1 scholarpship player returns from that team and in total the Red Storm only has 7 scholarship players. St. John’s head coach Steve Lavin has taken a leave of absence this season due to his battle with cancer and Mike Dunlap is leading the squad without him. They are incredibly young with 6 of their 7 scholarship players being in their first year. This has lead to inconsistency and a record of 9-11 and 3-6 inconference play. The Red Storm have been fairly competitive, using their quickness and athleticism to slash and get to the rim and foul line. Other than D’angelo Harrison, no one else is much of a threat to hit a jumpshot. You would think that with all of this athleticism that the Johnnies play great defense, but their mistakes keep them from that. They do however force some turnovers and get some blocks. Offensively they are going to spread you out and attack the basket, it’s not a real complex offense. St. John’s is going to have to be firing on all cylinders to be able to hang with the Blue Devils.
Team Scouting Report
PG-#1 Phil Greene Fr.- Greene is a really nice lead guard in terms of playing solid defense and running the team. His biggest issue is that he isn’t much of a scorer: he doesn’t get to the rim and his jumper isn’t good. The starting point guard is shooting 34 percent from the field and under 20 percent from the three point line. All in all Greene is a solid lead guard that you can trust, but more of a backup type player, so look for Seth Curry to hopefully get back on track against Greene.
SG- #11 D’Angelo Harrison Fr.-Harrison is the one true perimeter shooting threat on the squad. Harrison also gets into the lane to score and draw fouls. I like Harrison going forward as a future 20 point per game type player as an upperclassmen. He isn’t a terrible defender but he definitely isn’t known for his defense. This is an important game for Rivers to be able to score against Harrison at will and stop a pretty good scorer at the same time. Read more
Project Defensive Score Sheet: Western Michigan
By Tommy D — There is a growing movement among college basketball analysts to try to tackle an issue which has traditionally been very difficult to quantify and synthesize: defense. Much as sabermetrics has influenced the way baseball is analyzed and changed the nature and types of statistics that many baseball observers believe are relevant, so too is the goal here in college basketball. The idea is to use actual data to evaluate defensive performance, rather than relying solely on the eyeball test.
Have defensive statistics been kept for decades? Of course. But the reality is that defense involves much more than an individual player’s steals and blocked shots. How often is a player beaten for a basket? How many shots does he defend well and force a miss? How many turnovers does he force, including taking charges? How many defensive rebounds does he grab? For what is the point of a good defensive play forcing a tough shot if someone on the defensive team doesn’t snare the rebound? What about the overall performance of the team defensively? How much impact does each player have on the team’s defensive performance? Don’t all those questions sound more interesting than simply, “how many steals did he get?”
So the idea is to really assess what is happening on each defensive possession, and to give “credit” and assess “blame” for each play — missed shots, made shots, turnovers forced, missed and made free throws. That takes time to review each game in detail, but the result is a much more complete and much more fulfilling understanding of a player, a team, and a basketball game. All of the data for each player, and for the team, is synthesized into a “Defensive Rating” for each game.
One of the pioneers in the field has been Dean Oliver, who wrote a book called Basketball on Paper, in which he devised a number of formulas that aid in coming up with various measures of defensive efficiency for both teams and individual players. Another has been a gentleman named David Hess, who writes a blog called The Audacity of Hoops: Thoughts on Recalculating an American Game and is a full-time contributor at TeamRankings.com
Others interested in the topic have begun to drill down into this area with emphasis on a particular team. We here thought it was time use these methods to look at the Blue Devils and see what we could learn, especially given the concerns that many Duke fans have expressed about the defense being played by this year’s squad.
So what does this “charting” look like? Check it out. A chart of the first game I analyzed, which was Duke vs. Western Michigan, is below. Then below the chart, I’m going to copy and paste David Hess’s explanation of the abbreviations used in the charting system that is becoming a standard in the field. Then I’ll analyze what the chart is showing. More Duke games to follow.
OK so here’s what a chart looks like:
Duke Can Exploit Height Advantage Against Maryland
By Ray Horn — It can be demoralizing anytime you lose on a buzzer beater, and especially gut wrenching when the loss snaps a 45 game home winning streak. Florida State was able to accomplish just that and have now defeated both North Carolina and Duke. I am not going to lie, for me personally as a fan this loss hurt. I felt like Duke played well enough to win and deserved to win, which wasn’t the case against Ohio State or Temple. Let’s be honest though, the way Florida State is playing right now they are capable of beating anyone in the country. Do I think that Florida State is going to keep this up all season? Probably not. The fact is that a very mature and talented group came to play and won a game that could have went either way. You have to love how hard the team took the loss. Don’t get me wrong any loss is tough, but against Ohio State and Temple they didn’t play like they deserved to win while against Florida State they left everything on the court and had their hearts ripped out. These types of losses stay with you and in my opinion make you stronger and tougher. As far as how guys played, I thought that our top 6 is starting to dial it in. I love the way Austin and Dre have played the last couple of games and I think Seth has played really well too, but is just in a shooting slump. The bigs struggled against Florida State, but have been the most consistent part of the team throughout the season so far. Florida State was a step up in competition I am willing to give them a pass for one game. Now, the team is forced to come into a raucous environment against Maryland on the night they honor Gary Williams.
The Maryland Terrapins come into this matchup with a record of 12-6 and 2-2 inconference play. The Terps received mid season boosts in the return of Pe’Shon Howard from injury and big man Alex Len becoming eligible. The Terps had won 9 of 10 before dropping their last two against Florida State and Temple. They have struggled to find an identity one way or another, but first year head coach Mark Turgeon seems to be leading this team in the right direction. Turgeon has had good success at Wichita State and Texas A&M prior to becoming the Maryland coach and has two impressive recruits for next year already. Maryland’s style of play is to attack you on offense and corral you on defense. They like to push the ball and attack; getting to line and not taking a ton of threes. On defense, Maryland doesn’t put their opponent on the line and erases, or alters, a lot of shots around the basket. By employing a similar defensive approach as Virginia, the Terrapins are able to protect the basket and three point line, while not extending a ton of pressure. The only issue is that teams do tend to have size and strength advantages on them.
Team Scouting Report
PG- #21 Pe’Shon Howard So.- The Terps are running a lot smoother with Howard back on the floor. His presence allows Stoglin to go off the ball and allows for much more ball movement. Howard is a real nice player that shows good leadership qualities along with solid defense. The Oak Hill Academy alumnus isn’t really a scorer, but he does have the ability to drop double figures if he needs to. This will be a Curry vs. Howard matchup and quite frankly one that Curry needs to win to prove that he can handle the point guard position.
SG- #12 Terrell Stoglin So.- Stoglin is the Terps’ best player. The ball is in Stoglin’s hands for most of the game and he takes a lot of shots, almost 16 a game in about 30 minutes. Stoglin will shoot, drive, pull up, you name it he does and has a ton of freedom. This will be Duke’s key matchup and someone they can’t allow to have a huge game. The issue is, who guards him? I think Coach K will use a lot of Tyler Thornton, but in order to have the Curry, Rivers, Dawkins lineup one of them will have to check Stoglin. My guess is Austin Rivers, who has done pretty well guarding the ball and struggled off the ball so far this season.
SF- #14 Sean Mosley Sr.- Mosely is the elder statesman of the team and just a real solid all around player. He isn’t going to wow you with any part of his game, but has been around the block and put up good numbers as a senior. This like the Curry vs. Howard matchup and is one that Andre Dawkins has to win. Dawkins, like Curry, is more talented than his Maryland counterpart and it is time to show that every single game.
PF- #35 James Padgett Jr.- Padgett is an undersized athletic four man who really uses his quickness and leaping ability to make up for his lack of size. Padgett isn’t really the type of player who is going to put it on the floor or shoot a jumper though. Miles Plumlee should be able to handle Padgett, but he has to make sure to keep him off the offensive glass and to not lose him on drive and dishes.
C- #25 Alex Len Fr.- Len is a really talented young big man who has good length but isn’t all that strong. The 7-footer from Ukraine is supremely skilled though and can dribble, shoot and block shots. This is a matchup where Mason Plumlee needs to be physical and use his strength advantage because he won’t have the height or length. Plumlee has been off and on with his physical play and Duke needs Plumlee to be physical night in and night out. Len’s health is an issue as he has a sprained ankle so Mason should be able to exploit this weakness.
Bench
G- #5 Nick Faust Fr.- Faust is super athletic and super skilled, but is having a tough freshmen year. His shooting numbers are dismal, but don’t let that fool you. Faust has a ton of game and is the type of guy that has hurt the Devils this season.
F- #30 Ashton Pankey Fr.- Pankey is a lot like Padgett in that he is an undersized four. He isn’t quite as skilled or the athlete that Padgett is, but they play a very similar style.
G/F- #11 Mychal Parker So.- Parker is an athletic wing that can slash and defend. Parker may have to play some big minutes depending on how Austin Rivers is playing.
C- #10 Berend Weijs Sr.- Weijs is very long but not very strong. Weijs is basically just in there to give Len a break at times and alter some shots around the basket, he will have a limited impact on offense.
Final Thoughts and Prediction
This is the biggest game of the season for Duke so far and I really mean that. Maryland is starting to play well with their full squad healthy and is a viable contender for an NCAA tournament bid. The Comcast Center is one of the most raucous environments in college basketball when Duke comes to town and like I said they are honoring Gary Williams at the game. The main reason this is Duke’s biggest game is that we will see truly what this team is made of, coming off a home loss in a tough environment, against a pretty good team. If the Devils want to win an ACC championship and go deep in March, this is a big test to see whether that will happen or not. I am looking at the five starters and Ryan Kelly to be tough and consistent every single night and be able to beat teams they are more talented than. Duke is going to have to slow Stoglin down and the other key is for Mason Plumlee to win the battle with Alex Len. If Duke accomplishes those two things they should win, if not, then it’s going to come down to the final minutes.
DUKE: 79 MARYLAND: 70
