Duke looks to improve during exhibition after missing open shots in scrimmage at Houston
Shorthanded due to injuries to a pair of top freshmen and seeking consistent shooting, Duke’s lone exhibition game prior to Monday’s season opener offers a chance for needed answers.
The No. 7 Blue Devils traveled to Houston last weekend and took part in a scrimmage with another highly-regarded team in the No. 3-ranked Cougars.
NCAA rules keep a lid on such scrimmages by not allowing media to attend. But a box score of one part of the scrimmage, circulated on social media, showed Duke hit only 2 of 17 3-pointers against Houston. No information is available on other parts of the teams’ joint work, like situational plays or scrimmage work involving deeper use of players up and down the roster.
Duke freshman guard Tyrese Proctor cautioned against overreacting to so many missed shots, saying the offense worked by getting the open shots.
“Not a concern at all,” Proctor said Tuesday. “We got open looks. They just weren’t falling. Everyone’s just trusting the shooters. They are going to fall throughout the season.”
Still, such a performance isn’t what the Blue Devils wanted to display as they prep for Monday’s game with Jacksonville at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Before playing that game, Duke’s first regular-season game with Jon Scheyer as its head coach, the Blue Devils face Division II Fayetteville State on Wednesday night.
Duke faced Houston without 7-1 center Dereck Lively and 6-6 forward Dariq Whitehead and is expected to do the same against Fayetteville State. Both players are projected to be lottery picks in next summer’s NBA draft.
Lively, the No. 1 player in the 2022 recruiting class, is recovering from a strained calf muscle. Whitehead fractured his right foot on Aug. 29 and had surgery the following day to repair the injury.
Both players accompanied their teammates to Houston for last Saturday’s scrimmage even though neither played. Thus, graduate transfer center Ryan Young started along with 6-8 freshman forward Mark Mitchell. Junior guard Jeremy Roach, freshman forward Kyle Filipowski and Proctor filled out the starting lineup.
Scheyer has indicated that Lively is closer to returning than Whitehead so there’s hope the 7-1 center will be available for the Jacksonville game. Both players are expected to be key contributors, if not the team’s top scorers, this season. Duke has not officially said they won’t play Wednesday but there’s no indication they will.
That leaves other players, like Young and Mitchell, to make the most of their expanded roles.
“There’s a lot of minutes, time in games and roles that are up for grabs still,” Young said. “It adds competitiveness to our practices, which is awesome. We are one unit and we’re one team but early in the year, there’s a lot of uncertainty and that’s exciting for our guys to be competing and playing their best, their hardest to carve out time and roles.”
Knocking down open shots
Houston won the main part of last week’s scrimmage, 61-50, as the Blue Devils hit 15 of 41 shots (38.6%) from the field.
Young played well in Lively’s absence, producing 14 points while making all three of his shots from the field and 8 of 10 from the free throw line. He committed just one foul in 28 minutes of play. Mitchell was also adept at getting to the free throw line, where he hit 5 of 6 while scoring 12 points. He played 28 minutes without being called for a foul.
Roach hit only 3 of 13 shots, including 1 of 5 3-pointers, against Houston’s veteran backcourt of senior Marcus Sasser and junior Jamal Shead. Roach fouled out with 10 points.
That’s a contrast to Roach’s play in Duke’s Blue-White scrimmage at Countdown to Craziness, when he hit all three of his 3-pointers in 16 minutes of play.
At Houston, Proctor led the team with three turnovers while hitting just 1 of 5 shots from the field, including missing all three of his 3-point attempts.
The 6-2 Sasser scored 17 points for Houston before fouling out. He was the lone double-figure scorer for the Cougars, a program that made the Final Four in 2021. Though an injury ended Sasser’s season early last December, the Cougars still advanced to the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight round last spring before losing to Villanova.
The talent level Duke faces against Fayetteville State Wednesday, then against Jacksonville on Monday and South Carolina-Upstate on Nov. 11, won’t be as strong.
But Duke still needs to see players knock down those open shots, no matter the opponent.
This story was originally published November 2, 2022 at 5:10 AM with the headline "Duke looks to improve during exhibition after missing open shots in scrimmage at Houston."