Duke starts exhibition season Saturday against Northwest Missouri State and while you probably understand by now that Duke likes to schedule championship teams for exhibition games you may not realize this: in its last 105 games, Northwest (as they call it back home) is 100-5.
Aside from being inherently impressive, that also suggests that this team is highly used to winning, expects to win, and while they might be excited to be in Cameron, they aren’t about to come in with the idea that they can’t do it.
Their coach, Ben McCollum, is downplaying it - “I don’t know (how we’ll do without Joey Witthus) because we haven’t played a game yet,” McCollum told NorthwestMissourinews.com. “I think offensively we’re a work in progress. Defensively, it stays pretty consistent in what we do, so I don’t think there’ll be much change there. But we just need to find an offensive identity, and hopefully, we’ll do that here through this preseason.”
However he also admits to be insanely competitive and keep this in mind too: at 38, this guy has the resume of a rising star. If he at least does well at Duke, then he’ll continue to burnish his reputation.
If he strikes while the iron is hot, he could aim for a major job upgrade next year. If we’re new Wake Forest A.D. John Currie and we’re looking at potentially replacing Danny Manning soon, we’d make it a point to talk to him.
This could be a very interesting game. Duke should still win but these guys believe in themselves. No one wins like that without the confidence to expect to.