Duke basketball: Tre Jones sidelined with foot injury

An injury will once again keep a Duke basketball starter off the floor entirely for a game.

Tre Jones will likely be in street clothes when the Duke basketball team (9-1, 1-0 ACC) hosts Wofford (7-4, 0-0 Southern) on Thursday at 7 p.m. (ESPN2).

According to a tweet from Stadium’s Jeff Goodman, Jones will sit out the contest as a result of a “minor foot injury” — no word on when or how the injury occurred — and junior Jordan Goldwire is now the probable starting point guard for the Blue Devils, who rose to No. 4 in the latest AP Poll but haven’t played since a 77-63 win at Virginia Tech on Dec. 6.

Suspicion emerged among fans on Tuesday after the official Duke basketball Twitter account put out a picture of the players, minus Jones, from their visit to the Duke Children’s Hospital this week.

Jones is averaging 15.6 points, 7.1 assists, and 2.1 steals across 34.5 minutes per game this season. Undoubtedly the team’s most important piece, the sophomore co-captain has been on the court for all but eight total minutes across the past five games.

Looking at the “minor” tag to his injury and the fact that Duke does not play again after the Wofford game until Brown travels to Durham on Dec. 28, one could be optimistic that the issue with the foot won’t cost Jones multiple games.

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Goldwire, meanwhile, is averaging 3.3 points, 1.7 assists, and 1.5 steals across 15.4 minutes per game. Though the defensive specialist has drawn one career start — this season’s opening win against Kansas in Madison Square Garden on Nov. 5 — the start against the Terriers would be his first without Jones by his side and also his first in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Assuming Goldwire does have the luxury to receive a breather or two against a Wofford team that is coming off a 68-64 win at UNC on Sunday, the top candidate to fill in at point for those minutes seems to be freshman small forward Wendell Moore, who has initiated the offense several times this season.

The Jones injury marks the second resulting in a missed game by a Duke basketball starter this season, as freshman shooting guard Cassius Stanley sat out the victory at Michigan State on Dec. 3 with a hamstring strain (he returned to the lineup against the Hokies three nights later but logged only seven minutes).

Stay tuned to Ball Durham for more updates, analyses, opinions, and predictions regarding the 2019-20 Duke basketball season.