Duke must develop depth if they want to defend title
By John Bauman
The Blue Devils lost three first rounders to the 2015 NBA Draft and sharpshooter Quinn Cook to graduation. For nearly any other team in the nation, losses of that magnitude would spell doom for the following season. But not at Duke.
Coach Mike Krzyzewski has reloaded, bringing in the first ranked recruiting class in the country, according to ESPN. The star of the class is Brandon Ingram, the best small forward recruit in the country and the only player with the potential to fill the large gap left by the departures of Jahlil Okafor and Justise Winslow. Ingram is already a projected lottery pick in the 2016 NBA Draft and will develop into a star under Coach K over the course of what will likely be his only season in Durham.
Derryck Thornton and Chase Jeter are two top 25 recruits who figure to play big roles within Duke’s offense immediately for Coach K. Thornton reclassified to the Class of 2015 to fill a need for the Blue Devils. He won’t have the same impact that Tyus Jones made as a freshman, but he will be a capable ball handler, with Duke running most of their crunch time offense through Ingram. Jeter, while not nearly as skilled as the third overall pick in the 2015 draft, will help Duke replace some of the back to the basket production that the team lost with Okafor’s departure. There are some questions about his strength and his ability to finish through contact, concerns that will only be magnified playing against some of the bigger bodies on better teams in the tough Atlantic Coast Conference.
Luke Kennard and Antonio Vrankovic round out the class of five. Kennard passed LeBron James on the Ohio High School Athletic Association career scoring list, no small feat considering that LeBron was one of the better high school basketball players to ever suit up. However, Kennard will probably play the reserve guard role that Grayson Allen occupied last season. Vrankovic is another depth-adder for Coach K. He was a late commit and has a stress fracture in his foot, so it is likely that he will play a limited role recovering from that injury at least until the calendar changes.
Even with a five freshman class, Duke’s roster is not deep. There is some returning talent in Durham; Amile Jefferson, Grayson Allen, Matt Jones and Marshall Plumlee all gained valuable experience in February and March as Duke made their march to the championship. However, all four of these players played very limited roles throughout much of last season. The best returnee of the bunch, Grayson Allen, played just 20.5 percent of his team’s minutes, per KenPom. Additionally, none of the trio of Jefferson, Allen and Jones are used to playing big roles within the offense — all three used less than 16.2 percent of their team’s possession on the court last season.
Players like Ingram, Allen and Jeter will be forced into big roles, and if they fail, there isn’t much of a Plan B to turn to. The safety net — senior players like Cook and Tyler Thornton — that Coach K has relied on with his freshman-led teams in the past is gone. And that group of Okafor, Winslow and Jones was a special freshman class. It will be nearly impossible for Duke’s current quintet of freshman, as talented as they are, to replicate the production that Duke’s 2014 freshman class had.
Everyone assumes that the Blue Devils will easily be able to rinse and repeat as championship contenders this season. But just ask John Calipari how easy it is to take a new group every year and mold them into a championship contender. This group will go through it’s growing pains and may not look like a juggernaut in the first few weeks of the season.
The question of whether Duke can develop into a championship contender again by the time conference plays rolls around will depend on the team’s depth. The four returning contributors all must take steps forward and be able to play bigger roles. And Ingram, Jeter and Thornton must be ready to step in right away and take the reigns of Coach K’s offense.
Last year, Duke relied on its stars — Okafor, Winslow, Jones and Allen — to win. But that was a different ballclub, one built on star power. Now, all that talent is gone. This year, the development of Duke’s depth will be the key to defending the team’s fifth national title.