The Duke Blue Devils basketball team heads towards March Madness as one of the best handful of teams in the country. The Jon Scheyer-led team is 21-5 overall, 12-3 and in first place in the ACC (despite the blowout loss on the North Carolina Tar Heels), and currently a No. 3 seed in the NCAA college basketball tournament, according to ESPN’s Bracketology. All this means they have a real chance to win it all this year, but Duke does have one fatal flaw that could ruin the Blue Devils' Final Four hopes.
Duke’s fatal flaw is not having a go-to guy
In 1991 and 1992, when Mike Krzyzewski won his back-to-back championships, his teams knew exactly where to go with the ball when the going got tough. You don’t need to look any further than any March Madness highlight reel ever to find out who that player was.
While Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill were incredible players, when the chips were down, the ball went to Christian Laettner.
In 2001, the roster was even more loaded with future NBA players. Shane Battier, Mike Dunleavy, and Chris Duhon all took the floor in for Duke in the Final Four against loaded Maryland and Arizona teams, but it was the point guard, Jay Williams, who the offense ran through in the big moments (although Duke didn’t have many difficult moments that tournament, winning every game by at least nine points).
During the 2010 run that ended in a nail-biter against Butler, Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith gave way to Kyle Singler — for better or worse — at the end of games. And in 2015, the team took home a title on the back of big man Jahlil Okafor.
Even the Duke squads that made the Final Four and lost had THAT guy.
In 1994 Grant Hill ascended to that role, while 1999 had Elton Brand, 2004 had JJ Redick, and 2022 had Paolo Banchero.
The point is, the Duke teams that have had the most success in the tournament have had a clear hierarchy of scorers and a go-to guy who the team could depend on to get the big bucket or make the big play during crunch time.
The 2023-24 Duke Blue Devils basketball team simply doesn’t have that.
One of the big reasons these Dukies are so good is that they are deep and balanced up and down the roster, both in terms of scoring and experience. All five starters this season are averaging double-digit points per game. Senior Jeremy Roach (14.1 ppg), sophomores Kyle Filipowski (16.9 ppg), Mark Mitchell (13.0 ppg), and Tyrese Proctor (10.1 ppg), and freshman Jared McCain (13.5 ppg) take turns being the big man on campus for Jon Scheyer, but that can become a problem in March.
In college football, they say that when you have two starting quarterbacks, you really have none. Well, in college basketball, when you have five go-to players — any of whom can step up on a given night — do you really have any at all?
If Scheyer had to draw up a game-tying or winning play right now in a vacuum, with no information about who the hot hand in the first 39 minutes and 50 seconds of the game has been, who would he get the ball to?
Would it go to Roach because he’s the Senior? To Filipowski because he’s the leading scorer and best big? Or to McCain, the most talented overall shooter and scorer on the squad despite being a true freshman?
This is the Duke fatal flaw that could stop them from getting to the Final Four in March Madness.
When a coach goes to a player in end-of-game scenarios, there is a certain percentage chance that he makes the play. Whatever that number is, you can divide that by five, as Scheyer seemingly has a 20% chance of picking the right player to give the ball to, and then they have to make the play.
This may not be an exact mathematical formula, but you get the idea.
By comparison, when you look at some of the other top teams in college basketball right now, Arizona has Caleb Love, Purdue has Zach Edey, Houston has LJ Cryer, and UNC has RJ Davis.
The 2023-24 Duke basketball starting five is arguably better top to bottom than all those championship teams. For all the Laettners, Williams, Singlers, and Okafors, those teams also had Bill McCaffrey, Brian Davis, Nate James, Lance Thomas, and Amile Jefferson starting games. But without the tip of the spear at the top of the lineup, this team could be hard-pressed to reach the levels that those now-immortal Mike Krzyzewski-coached Duke teams did in March madness.