Duke Basketball: Inevitable death lineups could immortalize Blue Devils

A Duke basketball big man’s MCL sprain should trigger a combination of death lineups that could breathe new life into the team’s title hopes.

Despite recent evidence suggesting otherwise, UNC does not hold the exclusive right to profit from Duke basketball injuries. Better yet, potentially all the way through the Big Dance’s last dance on April 8, the Blue Devils possess a blessing-in-disguise opportunity to be the sole profiters from an injury to their starting center.

Beginning with Thursday’s nightcap at the ACC Tournament in Charlotte against the winner of Wednesday’s meeting between Syracuse and the winner of Tuesday’s Pitt-Boston College game, Duke (26-5; 14-4 in ACC) has every right to fully capitalize on its recent ding to its personnel.

In fact, the Blue Devils’ inadvertent gain from the latest injury may prove inevitable.

Spelling it out — at the risk of being insensitive to the injured player — the Blue Devils stand to benefit from using smaller lineups that are now essentially unavoidable as a result of Marques Bolden’s cover-your-eyes crash landing into the basket stanchion prior to the first TV timeout during the 79-70 road loss to UNC on Saturday night. The junior center, a 21-game starter this season averaging 5.8 points and 4.7 rebounds, is out indefinitely with a sprained MCL (depending on the severity, which is not public knowledge at the time of this article’s publishing, he could be done for the season regardless of how far Duke advances in the NCAA Tournament).

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This means no other reasonable choice exists but for the Blue Devils to regularly rely on lineups consisting of no true big man (commonly referred to as “death lineups” due to their typical fastbreak prowess and the matchup problems they create, leaving opponents’ bigs begging for breathers).

Duke big man Javin DeLaurier, who finished with an impressive eight points, 10 boards, and four blocks Saturday and represents the lone healthy Blue Devil in the regular rotation standing taller than 6-foot-8, will never likely play close to 40 minutes in any game. Even if coach Mike Krzyzewski wanted to keep the junior co-captain on the floor for more than 30 minutes, his infamous penchant for fouling — averaging a career 7.1 fouls per 40 minutes — wouldn’t often allow it.

And it’s highly unlikely Krzyzewski will opt to fill any portion of the void from Bolden’s absence with senior center Antonio Vrankovic, who averages 1.4 points and played a whopping 26 total minutes in conference play this season.

Of course, in order for the death lineups to function properly, freshman Zion Williamson must no longer reside on the “out with injury” list. His presence anywhere on the court obviously provides a boost, but his menacing presence in the paint (2.6 blocks per 40 minutes) allows the Blue Devils to go small without worrying about the opposing big men having a field day around the basket.

Ignoring understandable tweets from fans who won’t believe it until they see it, all indications are that Williamson is almost certain to play this week, needing only to put the finishing touches on his rehab — i.e., getting into game shape — from a mild right knee sprain that he suffered Feb. 20 on the Blue Devils’ first possession of their first loss to the Tar Heels. Including that game, Duke has a 3-3 record without him.

And based on his huffing and puffing in street clothes on his way back to the locker room inside the Dean Dome on Saturday night — his body language screamed that he desired nothing more than to single-handedly bury alive every UNC player, coach, and fan — the 6-foot-7, 280-pound potential GOAT appears ready to become the maddest March Madness participant in history.

Duke fans should expect his ferocity to spread to his fellow freshmen starters — Tre Jones, R.J. Barrett, and Cam Reddish — along with the rest of his teammates, specifically the other potential death-lineup participants: sophomore guards Alex O’Connell and Jordan Goldwire and junior forward Jack White.

Jones, Barrett, Reddish, Williamson, O’Connell, Goldwire, White.

Whenever DeLaurier is on the bench — he will likely start in place of Bolden, unless it quickly becomes obvious a smaller lineup is a superior choice to begin games — and assuming Coach K sticks with his recent unwillingness to play freshman Joey Baker, varying five-man combinations of the above seven will comprise the death lineups for the Blue Devils.

Steals on the perimeter should come in bunches (up until Williamson’s injury, the team was on pace to slightly edge out the 2000-01 team’s program record of 10.5 steals per game). When Jones and Goldwire, both tremendous ball-hawkers, have been on the floor together this season — an occurrence that will likely happen more often in Bolden’s absence — they have scared the bejeezus out of opposing guards while delaying or preventing possessions from playing out according to plan.

But when other teams do penetrate the defense without turning the ball over, Williamson and White serve as ideal trash collectors at the rim — no other bigs necessary.

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During Duke’s possessions in a halfcourt setting — this should be relatively rare due to the aforementioned steals igniting a slew of dunks in transition — ball-handlers will be in abundance. Drives to the basket should be relentless. And when defenses clog lanes to deny those drives, the Blue Devils will have a sufficient selection of adequate spot-up shooters hanging out on the perimeter (Goldwire, who is 1-for-20 from deep this season, is the only one of the seven who has no business attempting 3-pointers).

So while it will naturally be disappointing to see Bolden sitting out — and certainly OK to pray for his speedy recovery — his injury may not be as unfortunate to the team as many are making it out to be.

Yes, the injury depletes the Blue Devils’ depth. Yes, the injury seems like a cruel joke from the basketball gods (listing all the Duke injuries in recent years would require an article unto itself).

But Bolden’s injury could go down as the catalyst to the Blue Devils discovering that their biggest advantage comes from their smallest lineups — the center-less lineups have only appeared in spurts, few and far between, thus far this season.

Finally, without a big on the floor, Duke optimizes its speed per player. And team speed often kills this time of year.

So even if Bolden doesn’t return at all, he can still watch with glee (hopefully) as his shorter teammates put to death all other teams’ chances to experience raining confetti on the court in Minneapolis on April 8.