Central Missouri Mules To Play Blue Devils In Exhibition Saturday

The Mules continue Duke's tradition of scheduling the defending D-II champs.

Mules is not a common nickname; interestingly Harry Truman grew up about 20 minutes from where the campus is now and his father dealt with mules for a time.

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Central Missouri brings back a lot of veterans: four seniors, five juniors, one sophomore and one freshman (redshirt).

Where they're at a real disadvantage is size: there's only one player over 6-6.

Basically it's like this:

• Garrett Sandbothe, 6-7
• Brennen Hughes, 6-6
• Donte Adams, 6-5
• Brad Woodson, 6-5

After that it's really small.

Still, anyone who ever saw Charles Barkley or Sam Clancy play knows you can't dismiss people just because of size, and it's not like most of us have any working knowledge of the Mules.

What we do know is that after winning the title, Kim Anderson was offered the job at his alma mater, Mizzou, so Central Missouri is breaking in a new coach, which makes it even hard to prep for the Mules.

Doug Karleskint moves over (up) from Arkansas Tech, where he coached a team with one of the greatest nicknames in the history of sports, the Wonder Boys.

In case you're interested, the women are the Golden Suns.

For Duke, it's a chance to build on what we saw in the first exhibition game - the promising defense, the power of Jahlil Okafor and Justise Winslow inside, the three point shooting of Matt Jones, Grayson Allen, Quinn Cook and others who didn't necessarily shoot it as well against Livingstone but who can also fill it up.

Most of all, we're curious to see if the defense and the passing we saw hints of against Livingstone are going to be repeated, because some of it was absolutely gorgeous.