Duke‘s basketball schedule next season is absolutely ridiculous, something I continue to give kudos to Jon Scheyer for.
Instead of ducking competition, trying to get some free wins, scheduling a ton of buy games, and doing what we’ve seen a lot of other programs do, Scheyer believes that playing against big-time competition early in the year is going to be a big reason why his team finds the success that it is expected to.
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Duke will take on Michigan State, Illinois, UConn, Florida, Texas Tech, Gonzaga, and some others in its non-conference slate. While I fully expect Duke to have a very good season, it isn’t crazy to suggest that it could lose some of those games. In fact, the only right way to look at this is that Duke will probably lose a game or two, as that’s just the harsh reality of college basketball and playing top teams like that day in and day out to start a year.
That’s also part of the reason why one ESPN writer recently predicted that Duke would have a slow start to next season.
“Duke won’t hit its stride before ACC play. The Blue Devils seem to have every asset to succeed in Jon Scheyer’s fifth season at the helm. They have veterans on the roster, including Wisconsin transfer John Blackwell and returnees Patrick Ngongba II and Caleb Foster. They know how to win games, and are coming off back-to-back seasons of being led by the best player in college basketball. But they also have new parts Scheyer will have to blend together. Don’t be surprised if they hit a few rough patches on their way to title contention,” Myron Medcalf wrote.
I’m unsure if I agree that Duke is going to have a slow start for the reasons that Medcalf listed here.
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I understand what he’s saying, as there are some questions about who is going to be the primary offensive engine for this team, and Scheyer has to figure that out, but everything he’s done over the past few years suggests he can put any roster out there and win games at a very high level. If anything,
Duke simply might lose games because some other teams it is playing just happen to be very good as well.
