Originally Posted by
Kedsy
... Here are the main questions I'll be focusing on this season:
(1) HEALTH!!!
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(2) Depth
... Coach K has announced he plans to go deeper into his bench this season than he generally has in the past. His usual rotation in close games after January 1 has tended to be around seven deep, with only a handful of teams during his Duke tenure that have even approached eight deep.
Will he go nine or ten deep this year? Who knows. If he does, it might simply mean the 9th and 10th guys play 5 mpg in big games instead of 0 mpg. But it will certainly be something to watch.
(2b) Rotation
A corollary to depth is who's going to be in the rotation. This season the top of the rotation seems fairly well set: Jabari Parker, Rodney Hood, Quinn Cook, Amile Jefferson, Rasheed Sulaimon, Andre Dawkins, and Tyler Thornton seem poised to play the lion's share of Duke's minutes. The pecking order beyond that is something to keep an eye on.
Josh Hairston is a senior who can defend inside and led the Duke team in charges taken last season. He'd seem to be in the best position for the 8th man/3rd big at this juncture. However, all four of our remaining players bring potentially intriguing things, and I could see all of them as 8th or 9th men at some point in the season.
Matt Jones has a reputation as an outstanding shooter and showed decent defensive chops at CTC. Marshall Plumlee is still coming back from multiple injuries but he looked pretty mobile at CTC and is our only player close to a 7-footer. Semi Ojeleye is built like a Sherman Tank and can jump out of the gym -- and according to Jay Williams, Semi wins every speed drill too. He looked pretty decent on the defensive end at CTC as well. And at one time Alex Murphy, our 2nd tallest player but with the mobility of a wing, appeared to be penciled in as a four-year starter. All should push for time, though this season at least I'd guess none of them has a ceiling higher than 8th man.
(3) Rebounding ...
(4) Interior Defense
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But like rebounding, Phase 0 won't provide us very much information on this front.
(5) Defensive Style
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What'll it be this season? Coach K has promised us pressure D, some full-court, some three-quarter court traps, some high-pressure halfcourt D. Assuming it happens, it'll be fun to watch. And I think the best guess about our defensive personality is we'll see fairly low defensive rebounding numbers combined with an excitingly high amount of forced turnovers, similar to the glory years of 1997 to 2004. How well we guard shooters and how often we send our opponents to the line remains to be seen. ...
Watching Duke play D this season could be an awful lot of fun.
(6) Tempo
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(7) Andre and Rasheed
... As a freshman, Rasheed looked like a rising star as well. His quickness, slashing ability, and top notch defensive acumen, combined with an unorthodox but fairly effective shot, had NBA scouts penning glowing reports. ...
(8) Any weakness on offense?... There has also been talk that free throw shooting might be Duke's kryptonite. ...
(9) Leadership and Chemistry...
(10) Let's go Duke ...