A Look At Duke’s Rotation This Coming Season But Some Questions Can’t Be Answered Yet

We didn’t see this article by David Cobb over at CBSSports about Duke’s potential starting lineup next season, but it’s something worth looking at.

His projected lineup is Jeremy Roach - no one would argue that - Jacob Grandison, Dariq Whitehead, Kyle Filipowski and Dereck Lively.

Seems about right, but the caveat here is that only is it a virtually new team, but we’ve only seen Scheyer coach in small bits and he’s never run his own program. Many of us would have a pretty good idea what to expect from Mike Krzyzewski, even if it would only be that he would surprise us. We really have no idea what to expect from Coach Scheyer.

For instance, Coach K didn’t run two big men all that often. He did at times - Alaa Abdelnaby and Christian Laettner did well; Cherokee Parks and Erik Meek less so.

Krzyzewski always put the emphasis on athleticism first, if possible.

From what little we’ve gleaned so far, it looks like Scheyer will be looking for versatility, passing and superior shooting.

With the roster that he has, with Mark Mitchell, Tyrese Proctor, Jaden Schutt and Jaylen Blakes all pushing for minutes, as well as experienced transfers Ryan Young. Kale Catchings and Max Johns, he’s going to have options.

One of the thing we always enjoyed about Coach K was when he would make a surprise mid-season shift. He had a knack for finding guys to fill roles and to do jobs that needed to be done for Duke to succeed.

We heard Coach K recently talk about how, as a young coach, he was with his mentor Bob Knight and also, if memory serves, Pete Newell and Hank Iba.

At one point, when Knight stepped out, the two older coaches told Krzyzewski that they thought he would be a fine coach but they advised him to find his own way (it’s tempting to think that, as much as they may have admired Knight’s brilliance, they didn't want Krzyzewski to emulate Knight’s profoundly self-destructive fits of rage).

We’re pretty sure he repeated this advice to his protegé - don’t try to be me. Do it your own way.

We have a lot of confidence in Scheyer, but until you see what his way actually is, we can’t make a lot of assumptions.