By any rational standard Duke’s 2023-’24 men’s basketball team is loaded. Kyle Filipowski, Tyrese Proctor, Jeremy Roach and Mark Mitchell turned down the NBA to return to Duke. Four other lettermen return. Duke is bringing in four freshmen, all ranked in the top 21 of the RSCI Hoops consensus rankings.
But I do check in on assorted Duke message boards periodically, to check the lay of the land and maybe come up with an article idea.
And there does seem to be one area of concern, some wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning the center position. Is Duke a doughnut team, a team with a hole in the middle.
Now, Duke released their official roster this week, the one with updated heights and weights. The roster shows Duke with eight players at least 6 feet 9 or taller.
How can a team with that much size have a question mark in the middle?
Duke did bring some of this on themselves. Derek Lively II was Duke’s only post loss from last season. We’re talking about a player who averaged 21 minutes and 5.2 points per game last season.
But that’s not the whole story. Lively is an elite defender and rebounder, a defensive unicorn who can both protect the rim and guard in space, a fancy way of saying he can defend at a high level pretty much any place in the half court. Good enough to be selected 12th in the 2023 NBA draft.
Duke kicked the tires on a bunch of transfer-portal bigs to fill that void. Duke’s ask was pretty specific; a big who could rebound and block shots but not really command more than 15 or so minutes per game and wouldn’t need to have plays called for him.
I can’t say for certain that Duke didn’t pursue Hunter Dickinson (Michigan to Kansas), Jesse Edwards (Syracuse to West Virginia) or Grant Nelson (North Dakota State to Alabama). But if they did, it didn’t go very far. Maybe it was NIL or maybe they didn’t check the boxes Duke needed checking.
Ernest Udeh, Jr. was the only transfer candidate to receive a scholarship offer and the only one to make an official visit. He played last season at Kansas and showed promise doing the things that Duke wanted. But he also played only eight minutes per game and didn’t present the possibility of disrupting team chemistry.
Everything went well and it looked like all that was left was dotting I’s and crossing T’s.
Unfortunately those I’s and T’s included getting his credits transferred from Kansas to Duke and that didn’t happen.
Udeh ended up at TCU.
A swing and a miss. But surely Duke wouldn’t have pursued Udeh if they didn’t perceive a need. Or maybe not a need but insurance.
I can’t state with absolute certainty that something won’t come over the transom, a late-deciding grad-student transfer or a re-class. But I don’t expect that. I think the roster is set.
The one with eight players 6-9 or taller.
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