Duke Men’s 2025-26 discussion

Kedsy said:
Yeah, those two have a good chance of being our best distributors. If, as you say, they adjust to the speed of the game, and they can play defense, it would bring the team a lot closer to its ceiling.

Here are the assists per game of our top ten guys during their senior years of high school (except where indicated):

Cayden Boozer: 7.2
Nik Khamenia: 4.0 (junior year stat; had 5.7 assists per 40 in U19s, in 15.2 mpg)
Caleb Foster: 3.9
Isaiah Evans: 3.2
Cameron Boozer: 3.2
Darren Harris: 3.1
Maliq Brown: 2.2
Sebastian Wilkins: 1.1 (soph year stats)
Pat Ngongba: 1.0 (soph year stats)
Dame Sarr: n/a (2.9 assists per 40 in the EuroLeague, in 8.6 mpg)

FWIW, Cooper Flagg had 3.9 apg in his senior year of high school and Kon Knueppel had 5.3 apg in his. Sion James had 5.3 apg in his junior year of high school. Tyrese Proctor had 3.3 apg in his last year in the Australian NBL.
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And just for the sake of comparison, the per 40 and actual assists per game for last year's squad were as follows:

Flagg 5.5 (4.2)
James 4.6 (2.9)
Foster 4.1 (1.4)
Brown 3.9 (1.5)
Kon 3.6 (2.7)
Proctor 3.0 (2.2)
Ngonba 2.9 (0.8)
Gillis 2.2 (0.8)
Harris 2.2 (0.3)
Evans 1.5 (0.5)
Maluach 1.0 (0.5)

Not to be a broken record on this point, but I expect to see a lot of offense run through Maliq and Big Pat from the high post this season
 
I know this is highly unlikely, but maybe the only way to really get ten players well more than ten minutes per game would be to use a platoon system. Start five guys, and then, after maybe 7 or 8 minutes of play, sub in a whole new team.

K even did it for a few games one season. I remember that the coach at Tulane did it for an entire season one year; that team was actually pretty good, ending the season in the top 25 and getting a tournament bid.

I (and I may be alone in this view) would love to see it.
 
rsvman said:
I know this is highly unlikely, but maybe the only way to really get ten players well more than ten minutes per game would be to use a platoon system. Start five guys, and then, after maybe 7 or 8 minutes of play, sub in a whole new team.

K even did it for a few games one season. I remember that the coach at Tulane did it for an entire season one year; that team was actually pretty good, ending the season in the top 25 and getting a tournament bid.

I (and I may be alone in this view) would love to see it.
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I’m pretty sure Calipari did it one season. It didn’t go well, at least in my memory.
 
luvdahops said:
I think what is at least slightly different now is that the extent of roster turnover creates a bit more uncertainty around roles and hierarchies heading into a season. Whether by design or necessity, Jon has shown more willingness than (late career) K to experiment with different combinations and give more guys a shot at meaningful PT early in a given season, and to move players up or down in the rotation and tweak PT for particular opponent matchups over the course of the season. I don't think we'll see 10 guys average 10+ mpg over the course of the season (with DNPs included), but it would not shock me if all of our 10 "rotation quality" guys did see at least 10 mpg in one or more competitive games.
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Looking just at what Jon has done in his three seasons, here are the total minutes for the 9th and 10th guys in the Scheyer era:

'22-'23421Blakes
'22-'2396Schutt
'23-'24275Stewart
'23'-'24181Power
'24-'25410Brown
'24-'25316Ngongba

Last year was the only of the three that the 10th guy got 300+ minutes (an arbitrary cutoff that amounts to about 9 mpg, including DNP-CDs, in a 35-game season). In the first two Scheyer years, the 9th guy was at or near 300+ minutes, and the 10th guy was substantially less.

Staying away from the loaded term "rotation", one could say Scheyer has had 9 guys play a bunch of minutes in two out of three seasons, and 10 guys play a bunch of minutes last year.

So it's not crazy to think that this year Scheyer will have either 9 guys or 10 guys play a bunch of minutes, meaning around 300 or more. Indeed, it would be an outlier if anything else happened.
 
Kedsy said:
I don't think anybody's doing that.

I also think the word "meaningful" is somewhat ambiguous in this context. There are those who think all minutes are equal, and thus playing in the last ten minutes of a 30-point blowout would be considered as meaningful as playing in the first ten minutes of a tight game, and an average of 10mpg would have equal meaning no matter the context. Others think minutes played while a game is competitive have more meaning. Both views seem to me to be valid interpretations of "meaningful," so long as the holders of such views agree that they're talking about different things.

Putting that aside, it shouldn't be controversial that when the rubber hits the road, Coach is likely to give 10+ minutes to only his top seven guys in close, late-season games. Who those seven guys are in any particular game might vary, based on injuries, etc., which is one reason you need more than seven guys on your roster. Duke should obviously have a solid ten to choose from next season. I'm not sure why pointing out that only seven (maybe eight) of them are likely to play 10+ minutes in a close game offends some people.

Also, I don't think discussing the above disqualifies anybody from anything. What I suppose matters most is how the players themselves feel about it, but obviously we have no way to know that.
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Sitting in my outbox for a couple of days.🙂

Uhhh.... match-ups? It's not just injuries, esp. with Jon who is much freer in varying players than K. (Then there was Bill Foster who wanted only 6-7 capable players, so he didn't have to bench players.)

And, in 20-30 point blowouts with lots of players, that was likely valuable time on the court. And, someone had to build that 20-pt lead.

I'm my own echo machine, but virtually all Duke minutes are valuable playing time is building experience for the player and as part of the Duke team. Anything beyond 300 minutes is a clear opportunity to contribute and build valuable experience. 400 mins is even better.
 
sagegrouse said:
Sitting in my outbox for a couple of days.🙂

Uhhh.... match-ups? It's not just injuries, esp. with Jon who is much freer in varying players than K. (Then there was Bill Foster who wanted only 6-7 capable players, so he didn't have to bench players.)

And, in 20-30 point blowouts with lots of players, that was likely valuable time on the court. And, someone had to build that 20-pt lead.

I'm my own echo machine, but virtually all Duke minutes are valuable playing time is building experience for the player and as part of the Duke team. Anything beyond 300 minutes is a clear opportunity to contribute and build valuable experience. 400 mins is even better.
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Foster clearly had his 6-7 players, but he also deployed a “Blue Team” where 5 subs would check in all at once for a few minutes.
 
rsvman said:
I know this is highly unlikely, but maybe the only way to really get ten players well more than ten minutes per game would be to use a platoon system. Start five guys, and then, after maybe 7 or 8 minutes of play, sub in a whole new team.

K even did it for a few games one season. I remember that the coach at Tulane did it for an entire season one year; that team was actually pretty good, ending the season in the top 25 and getting a tournament bid.

I (and I may be alone in this view) would love to see it.
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Makes sense for Ngonba and Brown. I dont think it makes sense for anyone else.

When the Phoenix Suns drafted Maluach and traded for Mark Williams, the reaction was why do you need both? I think Scheyer proved that rotating at center every 4 minute timeout makes a lot of sense.
 
Kedsy said:
Yeah, they lost one whole game that season.
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Yup. And their 1996 title team under Pitino used a modified platoon system as well. No one on that squad averaged more than 27 mpg.

Hindsight is 20/20 but Calipari erred in 2015 by only playing KAT, by far his best and most efficient player, 21mpg, and to a lesser extent by playing the Harrison twins more than Devin Booker and Tyler Ulis.
 
Kedsy said:
What excites me and what questions I have regarding all ten of Duke's top 2025-26 players:
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....
Kedsy said:
(3) Maliq Brown

Exciting: One of (if not the) best defensive centers in the country; what little offense we saw from him was very efficient; good screener and passer.

Questions: Can he stay healthy? Can he participate more in the offense?
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I'm very curious to see Maliq this season. He wasn't asked to do much on offense last year - we had an embarrassment of options. He focused on defense and excelled.

I think he has the potential to develop into a first round pick and I'm excited to see how Scheyer uses his skill set.
 
luvdahops said:
Hindsight is 20/20 but Calipari erred in 2015 by only playing KAT, by far his best and most efficient player, 21mpg, and to a lesser extent by playing the Harrison twins more than Devin Booker and Tyler Ulis.
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While I agree that both those things seem like errors, In the one game they lost, he played KAT 31 minutes. And while the Harrison twins played more than Booker and Ulis in that game, the production/efficiency of each pair was similar. It's hard to argue with his coaching decisions in Kentucky's other 38 games, because they won them all.
 
CDu said:
I don't think anyone is saying anything certainly will or will not happen. Especially since it has actually happened: in 2020 (not even requiring a caveat of of "in games they played" or "because of a significant injury"). So of course it is possible. People are just saying that, historically speaking, it's MUCH more likely to be that we don't see 10 guys averaging 10 mpg. Even in years in which we've seen significant injuries, we haven't typically had 10 guys average 10 mpg.



I feel like this statement comes up in the offseason many years. It feels like an almost annual occurrence that someone asks "will this be the year the coach plays a deeper bench?" And then almost every year we wind up seeing only ~8 guys average 10 mpg.
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Just last year, it was 10. I predict that it will be at least 9 and perhaps 10 again this year. It could be 11, hut that is Iffy.
 
sagegrouse said:
I'm my own echo machine, but virtually all Duke minutes are valuable playing time is building experience for the player and as part of the Duke team. Anything beyond 300 minutes is a clear opportunity to contribute and build valuable experience. 400 mins is even better.
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Both Coach K and Coach Scheyer have consistently utilized different substitution patterns when they're confident they're going to win a game than when they're not. Most other coaches do the same thing. To me, that's evidence enough that all minutes are not created equal.

So, sure, playing 300 (or 400) minutes in a season gives a player valuable experience and an opportunity to contribute, in some way. But that has nothing to do with which players are playing the more important minutes, and it doesn't make considering which players are going to play the more important minutes next season less worthy of discussion. We've had this debate for years, and it's clear to me that we're talking about completely different things.
 
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