Duke men's hoops gears up

Looking at the post options

Back when I was a spry young lad, i.e a long time ago, basketball teams played a center, two forwards and two guards. Doesn’t mean roles weren’t differentiated. When Steve Vacendak and Bob Verga started at guard for Duke in 1966, there wasn’t much question as to their respective responsibilities.

Gradually, those three positions morphed into five positions, with a nomenclature widely accepted today. The center is the 5, the power forward the 4 and you know how the rest goes.

Widely accepted but increasingly ignored. Duke has never really had “positionless” basketball. But Mike Krzyzewski was ahead of the curve in positional flexibility, when someone like Grant Hill could be starting at the 4 one day and then starting at the 1 when Bobby Hurley suffered a broken foot.

Anyway. We seem to increasingly be compressing to two positions, post and perimeter. Again, there’s some fluidity here. Was Kyle Singler a post player or a perimeter player at Duke? Yes.

We’re roughly midway through the end of last season and the beginning of next season, it looks like Duke’s roster is finalized, although never say never and all that. A good time to take a look at what Duke has and doesn’t have. I’m going to divide the roster along three positions, post, perimeter and point.

I’m going to start with the post, where Jon Scheyer has five players on his Bingo card.

Cameron Boozer is first among equals, of course.

He’s listed at 6-9, 250. He’ll shiver your timbers. He’ll be Duke’s best back-to-the-basket, ,low-post scorer since at least Vernon Carey. But he can step out and hit a 3. He’s a solid positional defender, not a rim protector but not someone other teams are going to exploit. He’s not a Cooper Flagg-level facilitator but he can initiate the offense from 15 feet out or so.

And he’s an insanely good outlet passer. Defensive rebound, outlet pass, layup. Rinse and repeat. If Duke doesn’t have perimeter players ready to run at the drop of the proverbial hat, they are not maximizing Cam Boozer’s talents.

In the modern era--shot clock and 3-point shot-Marvin Bagley is Duke’s only 20/10 player. He averaged 21.0 points and 11.1 rebounds per game in 2018. He remains the only Duke player to lead the ACC in scoring and rebounding in a season.

Mull that one over for awhile. Danny Ferry, Christian Laettner, Elton Brand, Shane Battier, Zion Williamson and Flagg all won national player of the year awards while playing the 4 and/or the 5 at Duke and none of them came close to averaging 20 and 10.

Cam Boozer can duplicate that or at least produce something in the 18 and nine range.

He’s that good. Good enough to join Jahlil Okafor (2015), Bagley, Williamson (2019) and Flagg as ACC players of the year as freshmen. Jabari Parker could have won it in 2014 and Paolo Banchero should have won it in 2022; pat yourself on the back if you even remember Alondes Williams.

First-team All-America, maybe national POY, top-three draft pick.