The primary goal for any team in the preseason—even more important than evaluating players—is staying healthy and avoiding injuries that could cripple the season.
The Blue Devils cannot say they have accomplished that as their exhibition slate comes to a close.
Already down one captain and presumed starter in Matt Jones, Duke lost a second key player early in Wednesday’s 119-54 blowout against Livingstone. Less than five minutes into the contest, senior Amile Jefferson—another one of the team’s tri-captains—hit the deck hard, grabbing his left leg after converting a put-back layup off the offensive glass.
The play by Jefferson—fighting for a miss by freshman Chase Jeter and stealing two easy points—was a vintage sequence for the Philadelphia native, but the crowd’s excitement quickly dissipated when it saw him writhing on the ground in discomfort. Jefferson was quickly helped off the floor by his teammates, managing to limp a bit on his own but moving gingerly as he did so.
The 6-foot-9 forward did not see another minute of action against the Blue Bears, and the initial prognosis after the game was a sprained left ankle. Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski was not optimistic that Jefferson would recover in time for the season opener Nov. 13 against Siena.
“We have two guys where…if we had a game tomorrow, they wouldn’t be able to play,” Krzyzewski said. “Thank goodness we don’t have a game tomorrow, we have a game next week Friday. The fluoroscope of Amile’s ankle didn’t show anything except it’s a sprained ankle. But he’ll get X-rayed in the morning, and we’ll go from there.”
Krzyzewski did sound confident that Jones—who suffered a groin injury in last Friday’s exhibition against Florida Southern that kept him out of practice this week—would be ready to go in nine days against the Saints, even though the DeSoto, Texas, native did not take off his warm-up for Wednesday’s tilt.
Last season, the Blue Devils completed their national championship run with a rotation of just eight players, leaving them dangerously vulnerable to even a minor injury. With the exception of a few bruised ribs for Justise Winslow in January, that Duke squad managed to survive the season without the injury bug that appears to have just bitten this year’s team.
With four highly regarded freshmen in Brandon Ingram, Luke Kennard, Derryck Thornton and Chase Jeter—plus now-eligible 6-foot-9 forward Sean Obi—and the returning quartet of Jones, Jefferson, Marshall Plumlee and Grayson Allen, Krzyzewski appears to have a little more depth at his disposal than he did last year. But Obi has looked shaky in limited action, Jeter does not quite have the frame to take a beating down low and Plumlee has yet to take on a prominent role in his career, making the potential loss of Jefferson in the frontcourt all the more devastating.
Even in the backcourt, having Jones sidelined could force Krzyzewski to go with an extremely inexperienced rotation of ball-handlers. Allen becomes the de-facto veteran of the group as a sophomore despite the fact that the shooting guard did not start a single game during his freshman campaign.
Kennard, Ingram and Thornton have all displayed flashes of excellence thus far, but the trio of rookies has yet to go up against a Division I opponent. Krzyzewski commented on this team’s extreme youth, calling it his youngest squad since Johnny Dawkins’ freshman year in 1982.
“We’re not deep. When we get injuries like that, wow,” Krzyzewski said. “It’s like ‘Okay…. There’s nobody there [to come in].’ It’s not a good feeling.”
Amid the shock of losing two of their three captains, the Blue Devils kept their focus on the court and did not let their level of play drop against the Blue Bears. Jeter came in to give Duke a two-center look alongside Plumlee, and the team rattled off a 27-5 run immediately following Jefferson’s departure.
Plumlee—the lone healthy captain remaining—kept the defense rotating smoothly even as Krzyzewski switched up the schemes repeatedly. Although not the flashiest scorers, Jones and Jefferson are crucial in-game communicators and two of the Blue Devils’ best defenders.
The absence of Jones and Jefferson created more minutes for the freshmen to get their feet wet as they adjust to the college game and prepare themselves to take on bigger roles. All four played at least 25 minutes and reached double-digits in scoring.
“I think our young guys showed a lot of maturity today [after the injury] with how they played and the discipline with which they played,” Plumlee said. “There were definitely lapses, but that’s going to happen to any team, but we’re going to come together and watch the film and see what we could’ve done better to prevent that.”
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