D uke will face Belmont Thursday, and things could get interesting.
The teams have played twice before, once in the 2008 NCAA Tournament, and once inf 2011, when the Maui Invitational had the Bruins visit Cameron.
Total margin of victory? Two points.
In 2008, Duke won 71-70, and in 2011, it was 77-76. So there's some interesting history there.
And now, former Duke assistant Evan Bradds is the new head coach, and his team seems to be taking this exhibition game very seriously.
Belmont's Jabez Jenkins said this: "To us, we're going to play it like it's the national championship game. We're going to play it like they're Duke and we're Belmont; we are the team that we've been working on all summer, and we're going to go in there ready to play."
As they should. But what are they bringing to the table?
Well, start with Bradds. He has coached with Brad Stevens, the Utah Jazz, and Jon Scheyer, not to mention his own college coach, Rick Byrd, who was absolutely brilliant.
Bradds is just 32, by the way, and he's immensely promising.
Before we get into the players, a caveat: it's getting really difficult to know who is back and who transferred in. So this may not be totally accurate.
Belmont returns Jenkins (6-4 junior), Cooper Haynes (6-2 junior), Eoin Dillon (6-9 junior), Graydon Lemke (6-10 junior), Jack Smiley (6-2 sophomore), and Isaiah West (6-2 senior).
The transfers are Kayden Fish, a 6-6 senior from Ball State, Matthew Zobrist, a 6-5 sophomore from Bradley, Aleksa Ristic, a 6-3 sophomore from Indiana, and Vincent Neugebauer, a 7-1/24o lb. from FAU.
The freshmen are Eli Brown, (6-2), Cooper Knowles, (6-10), and Charlie Gersmehl (6-8).
Since Bradds is a first-year coach with seven new players, it's really hard to know what to expect. However, some things seem reasonable to anticipate.
Belmont will move the ball well and get good shots. They'll have good spacing. The ball may not touch the floor all that much. They're going to be physical, will try to impose strong ball pressure, and will deny passing lanes as much as possible.
As brilliant as Byrd was, his gifts were primarily offensive. Bradds will probably be pretty good on defense.
Good enough to keep the one-point tradition alive?
We'll have to see about that, but keep this in mind: Bradds spent a year inside Duke's locker room and film sessions. He's a very smart coach who will know how to get inside the seams of Jon Scheyer's system.
Whether he has enough insight and talent to pull off an insane win in Cameron is something we can't know until Thursday, but he's bound to be prepared.
So what are Duke's weaknesses?
Some of that is to be determined obviously, but there are always concerns. If we were attacking this Duke team, with Belmont transfer Drew Scharnowski sitting out with a knee issue, we'd try very hard to get Pat Ngongba in foul trouble. Why?
Because so far, it looks like the second-best inside player is the currently recovering Scharnowski. Freshman Cameron Williams is 7-0, but he only weighs 215. JoJo Boumtje Boumtje is 7-2 and 250, but he's also a freshman, and may be tentative.
Finally, there's Maxime Meyer. Also a freshman, he could probably be effective defensively, but on offense?
That's less certain.
Since we've only seen limited, curated views of Duke, plus one Blue-White scrimmage, and know nothing to speak of about Belmont, it's really hard to get much of a sense of this one. Duke is obviously going to be favored, but obviously, the Blue Devils were heavily favored against Siena last spring and struggled before winning, 71-65.
One hopes that after that, everyone remembered or was reminded of one of the foundational lesson of Wagner: respect your opponent, no matter who they are.
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