Kentucky vs. Duke: Scripts flipped for season-opening hoops battle
By Joe Cox
Published:
When No. 2 Kentucky and No. 4 Duke tip off their respective seasons later tonight, it would go to figure that fans will watch two incredibly talented squads full of McDonald’s All-Americans. As usual, Kentucky will attempt to mix a group of incredibly talented but untried one-and-done phenoms, while Duke will take the more cautious approach of blending a few new stars with several experienced returning players, including a gritty senior forward with an affinity for old episodes of Seinfeld.
Hang on, I’m being told that we’ve got that backward …
It’s Duke that has the nation’s top recruiting class, but very little actual experience playing college basketball. Star recruits like wings R.J. Barrett and Cam Reddish, point guard Tre Jones, and hefty big man Zion Williamson will carry this season’s Duke squad. The lack of experienced players didn’t seem to hurt the youngsters for Duke thus far. The four freshmen above joined underachieving junior center Marques Bolden and ripped through two exhibition wins 106-64 and 132-48.
Meanwhile, Kentucky is comparatively flying below the college basketball radar. The Wildcats will feature their own freshmen stars, including shooter supreme Tyler Herro, tenacious guards Ashton Hagans and Immanuel Quickley, athletic E.J. Montgomery, and do-everything forward Keldon Johnson. But those stars will share time with returning starters P.J. Washington, Quade Green and Nick Richards, as well as senior transfer Reid Travis, a Stanford veteran who seems to be the squad’s resident old-soul and throwback wily inside player.
While expectations were that No. 4 Duke might struggle early with a team whose top returning player scored 3.9 points per game last season, it’s Kentucky who has hit speed bumps in a pair of relatively underwhelming exhibition wins. The Wildcats outlasted Transylvania University 94-66 and then held off Indiana University-Pennsylvania by an 86-64 count.
Kentucky has made efforts to tighten up potential weaknesses, such as making only a single 3-pointer in its first exhibition game. The Wildcats followed that with 9 treys in their second game, including 5 from Herro, whose inside-outside skills have left UK fans struggling to figure out which exciting wing player he should be compared to (Rex Chapman seems to be an early favorite). The Wildcats are strong on the backboard, with Travis’ experience supplementing the size and athleticism of Richards, Montgomery, and Washington.
Point guard play has been inconsistent in Lexington, with Hagans and Quickley each trying to defer to a team-first approach in which they merely facilitate instead of actively running the offense. Last year’s sometimes point guard Quade Green is playing off the ball, so he likely won’t be any help. Meanwhile, Duke’s Jones had 17 assists in the Blue Devils’ two exhibition games, although he hasn’t broken double-figure scoring totals in either game.
Three-point shooting is a concern for the Big Blue Nation, as none of the young Wildcats aside from Herro has shown a consistent excellence from deep, although none of the team’s guards are exactly bad shooters. Meanwhile, Duke shot over 40% from 3-point range in both exhibitions, making 24 treys between the two games.
Duke’s ability to score and supreme talent have sometimes covered for a lack of experience or maybe interest in playing solid team defense. In their first exhibition, the Blue Devils gave up 15 offensive rebounds to Virginia Union and only won the game’s rebounding battle 40-32. Similarly, Ferris State managed 16 offensive rebounds even while losing by 84 points.
This game will be only the fourth matchup of two of the nation’s premier college hoops programs in the 21st century. UK leads the series 12-8, although Duke has won 7 of the past 9 games in the series since UK beat the Blue Devils in the 1978 NCAA championship game.
The most notable recent development of the rivalry between the programs has been Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski’s initial opposition to Calipari’s one-and-done heavy teams of star recruits, which turned into his gradual acceptance of a mixed team of veterans and one-and-done stars, and now, the script has entirely flipped. Kentucky has taken Duke’s playbook, and Duke has gone all in on a team of freshman stars, just like it did when it last one the title in 2015.
While plenty of things about Tueday’s matchup look familiar— the two teams feature the nation’s top two recruiting classes—the differences are what will be noticed. Whichever side emerges unhappy from Tuesday will fix its sights on the long game, with a possible rematch in Minneapolis in April.
Joe Cox is a columnist for Saturday Down South. He has also written or assisted in writing five books, and his most recent, Almost Perfect (a study of baseball pitchers’ near-miss attempts at perfect games), is available on Amazon or at many local bookstores.
