Having strong, experienced role players will be a major boon for Duke this coming season
Over at CBS Sports, Isaac Trotter takes a look at Duke’s transfers and the roles they might play on this year’s team. Obviously Cooper Flagg is expected to be the star and dominant force, so the new players are going to be put in place around him and how they perform will be key.
Trotter talks about Maliq Brown, Sion James and Mason Gillis, all upperclassmen and how they can be keys for Duke. All of them should add a lot defensively and athletically and Gillis is a deadeye shooter from three point range, having hit 46 percent.
All three of them are also physically imposing players as well. Still, as useful as those qualities are, all of them (including Cameron Sheffield, who is not expected to play much) add something that’s hard to put a value on and that’s simply experience.
Duke is bringing in a tremendous freshman class and it’s not just Flagg. All of the freshmen are promising. But none of them have played in front of 25,000 people under immense pressure, nor have any of them spent a couple of years building up good practice habits and working through stations. And finally, none of them are fully physically mature.
Cooper, remember, should be a high school senior. Khaman Maluach is 7-1 and joined NBA Academy Africa in 2021 . He likely hasn't yet done a much of the extensive work with weights or the sort of high-end physiological training that is now common for elite athletes in the US and Europe. Patrick Ngongba is quite large at 6-11 and also 250 like Maluach, but his challenge has been to get off extra weight and refine his physique after a year not playing.
Of the other four freshmen, including Cooper, no one weighs more than 217. That’s Kon Knueppel. Flagg is 6-9 and 205 (eventually he’ll be closer to 230). Darren Harris is 6-6 and 203. Isaiah Evans has a brilliant future but right now he weighs 175 and that’s potentially a real problem for him.
Time will tell for all of them, including Flagg, but when Duke needs someone to set a tough screen or to inbounds a ball during a critical moment, having physically mature upperclassmen/grad students who can do it will make a huge difference. And of course they’re capable of doing much more.
