Originally Posted by
COYS
If I might dive into this a little bit, I think that Marshall and Amile's minutes will almost exclusively be determined by how much Mason (primarily) and Ryan (secondarily) can play. So far, Mason has been excellent at avoiding foul trouble while Ryan has had a little bit more trouble on this end. Josh is the primary backup to either of those guys and has generally played alongside Mason and (less often) Ryan when one of our two senior bigs is off the court. However, in the event that Ryan and Mason are in foul trouble in the same game OR that Josh is DQed with 5 fouls, we could see a bit more of Amile and Marshall.
Similarly, I think Alex and possibly Amile could also see time at the three if both Rasheed and Tyler are in foul trouble or, in the event that Seth has to take a game off, if one of those two are in foul trouble.
As has been stated before, though, it will be interesting to see whether conference play really does bring the same tightening of the rotation that we've seen in the past or if that tightening has already happened thanks to our difficult early schedule. Davidson and Santa Clara would probably be mid tier ACC teams. UK, VCU, and Minnesota would challenge Duke and probably be in a fight for second in the ACC. Obviously, Louisville and Ohio State would arguably be picked as 1b and 1c to Duke in the ACC. Meanwhile, Boston College and Wake Forest appear to be more comparable to some of our weaker non-conference opponents than to Davidson or VCU. Meanwhile, other ACC teams like Clemson and Virginia Tech, will probably be somewhere between Davidson and VCU in relative strength. This isn't to say the ACC schedule will be easy, but I wonder if the substitution patterns will really be all that different from what we've already seen.
If Duke is playing well, it seems Coach K has tried to get Amile and Marshall a minute or two in the first half along with the obvious substitutions of Tyler and Josh. If Duke breaks the game open, then Alex has gotten court time in the second half. With many of our conference opponents being comparable in strength to our non conference opponents, I would expect to see this trend hold. Barring foul trouble, Josh and Tyler will play the bulk of the minutes off the bench with Marshall and Amile making cameos in the first half if the game is generally going well for Duke. The second half will all be about how close the game is, as Amile, Marshall, and Alex will likely only see the court if K is either extremely unhappy with the starters or Duke has put the game away.