Duke basketball captain on freshmen: 'No one's mad about anything'
When a top-shelf prep commits to the Duke basketball program, he must recognize that not all five-star talents immediately draw a starting nod or starring role in Durham.
This season, as has been the case so often in recent history, the Blue Devils brought in a slew of heralded rookies. First-year Duke basketball head coach Jon Scheyer and his staff welcomed so many that there are now six former composite five-star recruits on the roster, including junior point guard and lone captain Jeremy Roach.
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And there's seemingly no world, barring injury, where Roach would play poorly enough to have Scheyer resign him to the pine at the tipoff. In other words, logic says at least one of the five five-star freshmen must be a reserve so long as they all remain healthy.
The potential issue there, at least from an ego's standpoint, is all five have either shined or, in the case of Duke's two highest-ranked newcomers, 7-foot-1 center Dereck Lively II and electric small forward Dariq Whitehead, showed significant signs of promise recently after returning from injury.
However, following Tuesday night's 74-62 win over the unranked Iowa Hawkeyes (6-2, 0-0 Big Ten) at the Jimmy V Classic in Madison Square Garden, where Duke now boasts a 40-19 record all-time, Roach genuinely made it sound to the media as though all the young, five-star Blue Devils are focused on only one thing: winning.
"They've come in every day to work," said Roach, who started most games in his first two years at Duke but didn't appear to cement a permanent starting job for as long as he should remain a Blue Devil until March last season. "They're a sponge. They want to learn as much as they can.
"They don't have any egos. No one's mad about anything. So that's really the biggest thing about the freshmen, and then just them on the court growing. I mean, it's early for them...They've got to go through trials and tribulations, but I feel like they're right on."
Mark Mitchell, Duke's freshman starter at small forward who tallied 17 points and five rebounds on Tuesday night, credits the captain who's been there and done that.
"Yeah, he's our captain," Mitchell commented proudly. "He keeps us together. He's been here. A lot of us, you know, it's our first time playing in the Garden. He's played all these big-time events, so he keeps us together. He keeps us as one, and that's what a captain does."
Meanwhile, Whitehead has been the one left out of the starting five in the eight games that the entire primary nine-man rotation has been active for the No. 15 Blue Devils (9-2, 1-0 ACC).
That said, it's only fair to note that Whitehead is the most recent to return from injury. Furthermore, his setback, a fractured right foot in late August, understandably requires considerable extra time for an explosive playmaker like himself to regain complete confidence in planting and propelling, not to mention landing in traffic.
But against the Hawkeyes, Whitehead put together his most encouraging performance as a Blue Devil. Most notably, in the second half, the 6-foot-7, 220-pound product of prep powerhouse Montverde Academy (Fla.) displayed a few of his signature drives from high school, punctuated with his oh-so-dangerous hang time.
He finished with eight points, six rebounds, and three assists in his 21 minutes on the court; each of those stats marks a career-high for Whitehead across his eight games of action in college.
"I give [Whitehead] a lot of credit because it would have been easy just to wait and sit out," Scheyer pointed out in his postgame press conference. "He wanted to play. And he came back and played during our toughest stretch...He'll be better for it, going through this. But you can see tonight how he can impact winning any single given night."
So has it been enough for Dariq Whitehead to enter the starting lineup? Who would he replace?
After all, two freshman starters on the wing, Tyrese Proctor and Mark Mitchell, have been anything but disappointing as of late. On top of that, Scheyer seems happy with employing mostly two-big lineups, with Dereck Lively II and four-time ACC Rookie of the Week Kyle Filipowski as the starters down low.
Does it matter who starts? Again, only if egos get their say in the matter. Thus far, the evidence says they won't.
"Proud of the buy-in our guys have had," Scheyer said. "And I think we still have a lot of room to grow."
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