Next Up - Georgia Tech In The House - Duke Basketball Report

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Date 1/12 || Time 5:00 || Venue || Cameron Indoor Stadium || Video ACCN

In December, Duke went to Georgia Tech and lost Tyrese Proctor in the first minute of the game. In that game, Ryan Young got the start, Jared McCain shot 3-10, missing all of his three point attempts and Mark Mitchell came off the bench.

Georgia Tech was 4-2 after the upset but since then they’ve gone 4-5 including four straight losses. Three of those losses were in conference - the other was to Nevada - but the ACC losses were not to elite teams. The Yellow Jackets have fallen from 8-3 to 8-7.

You can’t say the wheels have fallen off, certainly not this early in Damon Stoudamire’s first season, but there is cause for concern. And that’s more so since Duke has hit another gear lately.

Proctor is healthy and contributing again. In his absence, Caleb Foster has gotten valuable minutes at the point and Duke has actually improved while the starting point guard was out. McCain has started to really come on, as has Mitchell. Roles have been more sharply defined and this game is at Cameron.

That’s not to discount Tech.

Stoudamire is just getting started and we really don’t know a whole lot about his style yet. We do know that he played for Lute Olson who was a masterful coach and he surely learned a lot there. And working for Brad Stevens, who is having a profound effect on the ACC as three former assistants (Stoudamire, Notre Dame’s Micah Shrewsberry and Duke’s Kara Lawson), was if anything finishing school. And don’t forget that he spent 13 years in the NBA where he excelled and also had chances to learn a great deal.

It’s his first year, but Stoudamire has put together a pretty solid group in a lot of ways.

He’s got an athletic perimeter in Miles Kelly, a 6-6 junior, Kowacie Reeves, a a 6-7 junior. Naithan George, a 6-3 freshman and Deebo Coleman, a 6-6 junior.

And he has a powerful emerging star in 6-9 freshman Baye Ndongo.

Some talent he inherited from predecessor Josh Pastner, but they weren’t playing for him like they play for Stoudamire.

The sense we always got from Pastner was that he was a competent defensive coach but he choked the life out of his team on offense. They were nearly always tentative and uncertain.

Tech has lost four straight, but that’s not to say this is a train wreck. The offense is vastly more fluid now than it was last season for one thing and Stoudamire has athletic players who are certainly capable of defending well.

We don’t know what exactly to expect Saturday, but it’s not the same two teams we saw in December and Georgia Tech presents some real challenges for Duke.

For one, as noted, the Yellow Jackets are athletic. And for another, they’re bigger, generally speaking, than Duke is. Reeves and Tyzhaun Claude are 6-7, Kelly, Coleman and Ibrahima Sacko are 6-6. Duke starts 6-3 McCain, 6-5 Foster or 6-5 Proctor and 6-2 Jeremy Roach. Kyle Filipowski is bigger than Ndongo, but as Ndongo proved in the first game, he’s highly athletic.

In Atlanta, Jon Scheyer started Ryan Young to try to get more size. Didn’t really work.

Nothing has changed in that part of the equation but so much else has. Roach is playing at a very high level. McCain has become a key part of the offense. Mitchell, who made a key error at Georgia Tech when he drew a late T after a dunk for taunting, has shown his potential in two of the last three games. Foster has gotten a lot of very useful experience lately. And of course Proctor missed 39 minutes of the first game and he’s going to play in this one.

And the rotation and roles have been fleshed out. We’ve gotten this far - again - and not talked about Jaylen Blakes.

If you watch basketball for the dunks, you’ll never fully appreciate that guy. He comes off the bench and just hits the game like a tsunami. Whenever he comes in, things change immediately. He pops the ball loose, runs someone down and throws the opponents into chaos.

In our opinion, he’s one of the most underrated players in the ACC. As we said earlier, roles have been sorted out and he has a beautiful one. Duke has had a few guys who could do this on defense over the years, notably Shane Battier and Zion Williamson, who could just instantly change the game on the defensive end.

We’re not comparing him to them, to be clear. But he is part of that tradition. Blakes is unbelievably disruptive.

Duke is clearly going to be favored in this one but Tech’s athleticism presents a real challenge. The Blue Devils, however, are playing with a lot of confidence and a swagger they didn’t have in December.

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