Duke basketball's leading man through 10 games this season
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As the lone captain, Duke basketball junior point guard Jeremy Roach is the leader of the No. 17 Blue Devils (8-2, 1-0 ACC), fresh off their 75-59 home win over the unranked Boston College Eagles (5-4, 0-1 ACC) on Saturday.
Ryan Young and Jacob Grandison lead off the bench. Jaylen Blakes is a leading energizer. Dereck Lively II and Dariq Whitehead led the seven-man 2022 recruiting class in the rankings. Mark Mitchell is the most recent leading scorer. And Tyrese Proctor leads in free throw percentage (min. 10 attempts) with his 19-for-20 clip.
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But among the Blue Devils in the primary nine-man rotation that first-year head coach Jon Scheyer has employed thus far, the "leading man" is evident.
That role belongs to 7-foot, 230-pound freshman Kyle Filipowski, who was the first recruit ever to announce a commitment to Scheyer as head coach and now wears the same jersey number (30) as Scheyer did when he shined in the Duke basketball backcourt for four years.
Kyle Filipowski is the most consistent scoring weapon, to the tune of being the only Blue Devil to reach double-digits in the points column every game this season.
His consistency is especially prevalent out of the gates. Consider that Filipowski has accounted for 27 of Duke's 55 points before the first TV timeout across the Blue Devils' past seven outings, although that's not to say he hasn't been a leading force down the stretch in close games.
Moreover, Filipowski, the winner of all three ACC Rookie of the Week honors to date, leads the nation's rookies and is tied for second overall with his five double-doubles, including his 13-point, 10-rebound performance against the Eagles in only 25 minutes on the floor. He's averaging a team-high 15.2 points and 9.3 rebounds per game.
Remarkably for a guy his size, he paces the Blue Devils in the steals department at 1.4 per game while trailing only Lively with his 0.9 blocks per game.
Meanwhile, he's behind only Roach in 3-point makes per game; however, Roach is barely on top in this regard, averaging 1.4 to Filipowski's 1.3, and Filipowski bests Roach in 3-point percentage, 36.1 to 31.1.
He's displayed the most NBA-ready moves, inside and outside the arc, and some mock drafts have taken notice by now projecting him as a 2023 first-rounder, in a few instances as a late lottery pick and ahead of Lively and Whitehead.
As for Scheyer's thoughts on what has made Filipowski so successful this early in his Duke basketball career, during his press conference after the Boston College game, he credited the big man's no-plays-off mentality.
"I just think [it is] his relentlessness on the court," Scheyer noted. "He just doesn't stop. On the offensive end, he can hurt you in a lot of different ways. He's physical. Teams are being physical with him. But he does a great job pursuing the ball.
"When I watched him in high school, that's one of the things I really loved about him. He would always pursue the ball."
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