Another Look At Duke’s Saturday Scrimmage

The News & Observer’s Steve Wiseman has an article up on Duke’s scrimmage this past weekend and has some useful observations.

Tyrese Proctor, Jeremy Roach, Jacob Grandison, Kyle Filipowski and Dereck Lively all started.

He says that Proctor and Roach can “easily” switch point guard duties, which seems true. Duke did that with Jason Williams and Chris Duhon, of course, to great effect.

He also notes that Lively is an outstanding defender but still quite thin. No secret there.

The most salient point in this article is that Dariq Whitehead, who has been out with an injury, hopes to be back by November 7th. As we pointed out Tuesday, Whitehead, who is Duke’s best athlete, is now listed at 6-8 and 220, up about two inches and thirty pounds. We’re really looking forward to seeing what he brings to the court.

He says Duke has a rotation right now of about seven but we think he’s underestimating Young. He’s not a hugely athletic guy but he’s wicked smart. If you ever played much, you came across this guy at some point: he was slow and quite possibly fat, but when he got the ball, no one could stop him.

Young isn’t particularly fast and he’s wide, not fat. Same principle though: He uses that width and intelligence to get space, and then he just kills you.

We think he’s underestimating Young.

He was also impressed with Mark Mitchell and Jaden Schutt and thinks they’re in the rotation. Duke is also suddenly loaded with three point shooting, which augurs well for the season.