Originally Posted by
jipops
To me, the player that has the chance to be the biggest surprise would be Mark Williams. It is very, very rare for a big man ranked outside of the top 10 to come in and make any sort of impact his freshman year at Duke. It's far more common that those players spend their freshman seasons as being largely ineffective and either start to make an impact in junior or senior seasons or not pan out at all. So if Mark Williams comes in and plays 10+ minutes while being a real factor defensively and on the boards then I will be very, very surprised. I'm not expecting it, but if it does happen then that will win my surprise award.
It's hard to say exactly where Mark Williams will end up in the final RSCI. Certainly not top 10, my guess is around #25. With that in mind, here's a list of Duke big men freshmen since the RSCI was invented, ranked between 11 and 40 (I've put both centers and power forwards in this list; if you don't want to look at PFs, just pretend they're not there):
Code:
Year Player Rank mpg Behind
2000 Casey Sanders #16 4.2 Carlos Boozer, Shane Battier, Matt Christensen
2003 Shavlik Randolph #14 13.5 Shelden Williams, Casey Sanders
2003 Michael Thompson #30 1.9 Shelden Williams, Casey Sanders, Shavlik Randolph, Nick Horvath
2006 Eric Boateng #39 1.4 Shelden Williams, Josh McRoberts
2007 Lance Thomas #20 14.9 Josh McRoberts
2007 Brian Zoubek #25 7.3 Josh McRoberts, Lance Thomas
2010 Mason Plumlee #18 14.1 Brian Zoubek, Lance Thomas, Miles Plumlee
2010 Ryan Kelly #14 5.7 Brian Zoubek, Lance Thomas, Miles Plumlee, Mason Plumlee
2011 Josh Hairston #32 4.5 Mason Plumlee, Ryan Kelly, Miles Plumlee
2013 Amile Jefferson #21 11.4 Mason Plumlee, Ryan Kelly
2016 Chase Jeter #14 7.0 Marshall Plumlee, Amile Jefferson (for 9 games and then Brandon Ingram played PF)
2017 Marques Bolden #11 4.3 Amile Jefferson, Harry Giles, Chase Jeter
2017 Javin DeLaurier #35 2.1 Amile Jefferson, Harry Giles, Chase Jeter, Marques Bolden
2020 Matthew Hurt #12 20.5 Vernon Carey
(note the mpg include DNP-CDs as a game with 0 minutes)
So, first of all, there aren't so many guys outside the top 10 but inside the top 40 (only 14) and 5 of 14 (35.7%) played double-digit minutes (and speaking for myself, I wouldn't consider more than one-third to be "very, very rare"). If you narrow it to those ranked 11 to 30, then it's 5 out of 11 (45.5%), which is pretty close to a coin flip. But the most important variable here is probably who played ahead of the freshman big. For example, last season there wasn't really anybody who played Matthew Hurt's PF position, so he played 20+ mpg. Opportunity similarly allowed Shav Randolph and Lance Thomas to play 13+ mpg as freshmen. On the other hand, we couldn't really expect a freshman Michael Thompson to play very much when we also had Shelden Williams, Shavlik Randolph, senior Casey Sanders, and senior Nick Horvath on the roster.
Next season, we'll have three freshman bigs (Mark Williams, Jaemyn Brakefield, and Henry Coleman) and based on recruiting ranking, Williams is the best of them. Other than those guys, the only center on the roster will be Patrick Tapé. Now it's possible Tapé grabs the center spot and plays 25 or 30 minutes, and it's possible we'll go small with Matthew Hurt or Jalen Johnson primarily guarding the other team's center. The latter scenario makes some sense (and, personally, what I think will probably happen), since we have so many perimeter players (Jeremy Roach, Jordan Goldwire, DJ Steward, Wendell Moore, Joey Baker), along with Hurt and Johnson, so if we end up with an 8-man rotation it would logically contain just one center, and that could be Tapé, in which case all three freshman bigs might be playing minimal minutes.
But if neither of the above scenarios play out (or even if one of them does but a freshman moves ahead of Tapé in the rotation), one of the freshmen bigs should play 15+ mpg. Again, based on ranking, Mark Williams should get the first shot at those minutes. And based on the roster and the relative recruiting rankings, that really shouldn't be such a huge surprise.