That dreaded (to some) and wonderful (to others) time has arrived. With Javin and Marques having made their decisions, the roster is set, and it's time to discuss what people expect the rotation and minutes distribution to look like for next season in men's basketball.
Let's try to put all the rotation / minutes discussion into this thread so we don't hijack other threads. As always on DBR, some amount of hijack is going to occur regardless.
Looking back, this seems to be the latest this thread has ever started, likely due to Javin and Marques doing their due diligence in working out for NBA teams.
2014-15 Rotation / Minutes thread was started on March 31st
2015-16 Rotation / Minutes thread was started on April 27th
2016-17 Rotation / Minutes thread was started on May 19th
2017-18 Rotation / Minutes thread was started on May 15th
2018-19 Rotation / Minutes thread was started on April 16th
I dunno about minutes (yet) but I am very excited for the practice battles we will see on a team that is clearly 2 deep at every position:
C- Carey, DeLaurier
PF- Hurt, White
SF- Moore, Baker
SG- O'Connell, Stanley
PG- Jones, Goldwire
And if someone is a little banged up, super sub JRob can fill in and we can move dudes around to make it work. Some awesome practice development will be happening for this squad!
-Jason "Duke has no positions, I know, but you know what I mean" Evans
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Only one logical assumption: Coach K embraces his twilight years by playing Michael Savarino 40 minutes/g.
Looks like ten players may achieve "meaningful minutes" -- I am eschewing the quasi-religious term, "rotation."
Here are returning players and minutes for the past season --
DeLaurier - 618
Jack White - 715
Alex O'C. - 505
Tre - 1,230
Goldwire - 301
There are very few uninjured Duke players playing on a highly ranked team one year whose have declined the next. (Who besides Paulus?) Goldwire has the fewest on this list, but he is one of only two point guards on the roster and probably will be Tre's primary backup.
Of course, would-be red shirt Joey Baker played only 18 minutes. I thought he "looked good" on the court and had good shooting form, but, aren't his playing prospects in 2020 a big question mark? And, why wouldn't he compete for minutes?
Most everyone assumes all the recruits are likely to play:
Vernon Carey - C
Matthew Hurt - PF
Wendell Moore - SF
Cassius Stanley - SG
Looks like ten players with good arguments to spend a lot of time on the court.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
I wanted to try to get one in before my opinion is influenced by the Kedsy model's projection.
Also, I'm not saying this is how I would do it. (I would probably start Matthew or Jack at the 4). But I think Javin's going to be such a great leader / communicator for this team that Coach K is going to try this. Also, obviously Javin's foul rate will need to continue to decline, as it has over the course of his career, for this big lineup to be feasible.
Starters Rotation in blowouts 36 So TreJones 4 Jr Goldwire 32 Fr Moore Fr Stanley 32 Fr Hurt 16 So Baker {Jr O'Connell} 30 Sr DeLaurier 20 Sr White Sr Robinson 30 Fr Carey
I think the starting 5 will be Carey/Hurt/Jones/Moore plus either O'Connell or Baker. I don't see Hurt playing SF at all. Javin and Jack will be the first 2 guys off the bench.
Last edited by kAzE; 05-28-2019 at 02:48 PM.
That's a reasonable (and should be popular) prediction. For me, I just think Coach K's going to want to start one of his senior captains. I think Javin, but it could be Jack.
That's certainly very reasonable. He would have to displace someone from my predicted rotation, though, because Coach K isn't going beyond 7.5 guys.
“Those two kids, they’re champions,” Krzyzewski said of his senior leaders. “They’re trying to teach the other kids how to become that, and it’s a long road to become that.”
Dan Meagher*, David Henderson*, John Smith, Carmen Wallace, Greg Newton, Ricky Price, Taymon Domzalski, Shav Randolph*, Casey Sanders, Nick Horvath, Marty Pocius, Dave McClure, Andre Dawkins, Josh Hairston, Rasheed Sulaimon. Off the top of my head. (I expect there are others.)
* - Meagher, D Henderson, & Randolph didn't decline by a whole bunch, but they did decline
I'll take a pre-Kedsy shot as well. Here goes...
Starters Rotation In Blowouts 34 Jones 10 Goldwire 20 O'Connell 7 Stanley 28 Moore 17 White 4 Baker 25 DeLaurier 27 Hurt 28 Carey
- Chillin
ETA - Man, visualizing it like this, you can clearly see the hole in the lineup without Boogie, if AOC, Baker, and Stanley can't step into a consistent role. Not to say that Boogie definitively would have stepped in himself, but 4 is better than 3 and 2 of those 4 have struggled to date to step up even when sorely needed.
It’s a little confusing to me that many have Wendell Moore penciled in as a starter, but Joey baker glued to the bench. IIRC, wasn’t Joey ranked ahead of Wendell in the original 2019 class rankings? I believe he was around #15 prior to reclassifying, which puts him not far behind Matthew Hurt.
He also has an additional advantage having been here for a year, practicing against 3 2019 lottery picks on a daily basis.
I expect Joey will surprise a lot of people.
Last edited by kAzE; 05-28-2019 at 04:39 PM.
Yeah, most of us get that (I presume). But we have real college data points on Joey at this point. And they weren't particularly gleaming, despite our likely accepting anything north of palatable from a shooting perspective last year.
I certainly hope Joey will surprise everyone next year. But it's hard to look at original 2019 class rankings as a predictor after we've had actual 2019 minutes to watch Joey's skills in action at this level.
Wendell looks like the real deal to me at a position where we don't have particularly great depth and playmaking ability. Sames goes for SG. I suspect the wing spots will be up for grabs and Wendell just seems (probably to most of us) like the highest floor option at this stage. I concede that there is a not insignificant chance that Wendell ends up on the benchside of the equation in favor of two other wing starters - it's just hard to point to those two starters with any degree of confidence at this stage.
- Chillin
“There are very few uninjured Duke players playing on a highly ranked team one year whose [minutes] have declined the next. Who besides Paulus?)”
FWIW, Greg Paulus has the distinction of having his minutes decline every single year he played for Duke. From 1163 as a freshman to 1068 to 843 to 578. It’s the big drop in his senior year that I remember. No one else saw that big a decline.
Hey, good list of names and some good memories. I am listing those who were “playing on a highly ranked team” at their peak minutes. Year listed in the year before the decline.
Shav Randolph*, 03-04, 709 to 548. He missed four weeks of the season from mid-December to mid-January. Per game minutes were virtually the same.
Casey Sanders, 00-01, 373 to 242. The question here is how he got on the court in 2001 – it was the “It’s over” event when Boozer broke his foot.
Nick Horvath, 02-03, 405 to 218. Nick’s an outlier in every discussion, isn’t he? Wasn’t he a double major in physics and English?
Andre Dawkins, 10-11, 778 to 760. Not significant. He skipped a year and then played only 453 as a senior.
Josh Hairston, 12-13, 444 to 284. Never played that much – but I suppose Jabari took up some of his minutes in 2013.
Rasheed Sulaimon, 12-13, 1050 to 871. No, we don’t count the decline in 2015 when he got kicked off the team.
I suppose "highly ranked team" is debatable, but I didn't count 1995-1996, 1986-1987 (#17) or 2003-2004 (#14) as highly ranked
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
He played 18 minutes... I’m not sure how anyone can draw meaningful conclusions from that. But even so, I thought he looked pretty good. He looked like one of the better scorers on the team in the Canada games. He plays hard, and he’s pretty athletic. I’m not sure what you were expecting to see from a kid who was supposed to be in high school last year, especially being thrust into ACC games after sitting out most of the year.
Joey reclassified May 2, 2018. The April 22, 2018 internet archive of 247's composite rankings (their version of RSCI) for the class of 2019 had Carey as #2, Hurt as #4, Stanley as #14, Baker as #21, and Moore as #23.
So Baker and Moore were essentially tied. And if we're going to play that game, then Stanley should start over Baker since he was #14.
I don't think it makes sense to just disregard Joey's RSCI rank of #37 in the 2018 class. I think he was probably going to drop some in the 2019 class rankings anyway, and the people who do these rankings factored that in when ranking him in 2018.
The reason people like me are high on Wendell to start is because he started on every USA team he played on (u16, u17, Hoop Summit), he is projected as a first-round pick by ESPN / Draft Express and by The Athletic / Sam Vecenie, and Coach K thinks Wendell is OAD (although I suuppose that could just be a recruiting pitch).