Duke basketball will return familiar faces for next season
Has Jon Scheyer changed the narrative?
I’ve been thinking a lot about 2013 lately, specifically the Duke men’s basketball team of 2013.
Duke had the kind of season that most programs dream of but somehow didn’t quite live up to its early promise.
Duke won its first 15 games and spent four weeks atop the AP poll. Then senior forward Ryan Kelly injured his right foot in a win over Clemson. Kelly missed 13 games, four of which Duke lost. Kelly returned with an epic 34-point performance against Miami but couldn’t sustain it. Duke lost its only game in the ACC Tournament and ended its season in the Elite Eight with a loss to a Louisville team that ended up cutting down the nets only to have the title vacated for behavior so reprehensible even the NCAA couldn’t ignore it.
Kelly ended up averaging 12.9 points and 5.3 rebounds per game, third and second-best respectively for Duke.
But he wasn’t the only senior mainstay. Fifth-year senior Seth Curry led Duke with 17.5 points per game. He was selected second-team All-ACC and made several All-America teams.
The team’s best player was Mason Plumlee, another senior. Plumlee averaged 17.1 points and 10.0 rebounds per game, while shooting 60% from the field. He was first-team All-ACC, second-team AP All-America and won the Pete Newell Award as the nation’s best big man.
Yes, 10 years ago Duke went to the Elite Eight with three seniors leading the team in scoring.
It didn’t seem like it at the time but that season now looks like the end of an era. Duke hasn’t had a single senior selected first-team All-ACC since that season. Quinn Cook was second-team in 2015, Grayson Allen third-team in 2018.
Since 2013 eight freshmen and three sophomores have led Duke in scoring over the season. Not a single upperclassman. Allen averaged 15.5 points per game in 2018. Since then no Duke senior has averaged more than the 5.8 points per game Jordan Goldwire averaged in 2021.
You probably see where I’m going with this. But there’s one more factoid I’d like to toss your way.
That 2013 team was the last Duke team not to have a freshman leave early for the NBA. In fact, no one on that team left early for the NBA.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to JimSumnerSports to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.