NCAA Basketball: Buy or Sell Duke, Kentucky, Purdue, Villanova, and UConn?

Duke Blue Devils

This wasn’t a great past week for Duke, though you could certainly make some excuses for him. Very few teams can win on the road at Arkansas in that hostile environment and this is still a fairly young Blue Devil squad overall. And going on the road in league play and losing your starting guard in the very first minute is incredibly unlucky.

All that being said, this roster was supposed to be able to overcome that. All five starters came back, including star big man, Kyle Filipowski. Yet he was outplayed by a freshman big man in Baye Ndongo, who only played three games in his NCAA Basketball career. Mark Mitchell had his moments of great play but was also bad, including a 4-point blunder caused by a technical where he pointed at a player after a play, something he should know better. And Ryan Young just gets 10 mpg per game without much impact at all.

And even without Proctor, Duke still has plenty of good guards. Jeremy Roach had 20 pts, while Caleb Foster had 12 pts off the bench. We still need to see more from Jared McCain and Jaylen Blakes but there’s potential for this group.

Who we also need to see more of is Coach Jon Scheyer, in his second full season. He gets a pass last year losing in the Round of 32 but that won’t be the case this year. I have the least amount of faith in him away from Cameron Indoor Stadium and unless some things change, I don’t believe this group will be a national contender.

Sell