Duke basketball: 20 serious concerns about 2020-21 Blue Devils

Question No. 16 for the 2020-21 Duke basketball team…

Will the Blue Devils take pride in becoming a cohesive group of staunch defenders?

It’s known that most of the necessary components to a great defense are present in Durham this season: size, length, depth, and athleticism. Individually, it’s also known the program returns two significant weapons on this end of the floor in Wendell Moore and Jordan Goldwire, each a real candidate to credit Duke with another ACC Defensive Player of the Year trophy.

Then again, the Blue Devils will be without the conference’s most recent DPOY in Tre Jones, who was the unquestionable director of the Duke D and is therefore not at all easily replaceable. Though Moore and Goldwire chipped in as key communicators on defense last season, it was abundantly clear that Jones was the voice and the example to demand defensive excellence.

The loss of Jones aside, harking back to the first paragraph here, this Duke squad should enjoy an advantage over its predecessor when it comes to having the complete set of pieces necessary to create a shutdown, get-out-and-run, prototypical Blue Devil defense.

As examined throughout this article, the primary such advantage is in the post, thanks to a stronger version of Matthew Hurt, a 7-foot Mark Williams, a 22-year-old Patrick Tapé, a gritty Henry Coleman, and an all-purpose Jalen Johnson.

Now, it’s all about ensuring all the pertinent young wings and guards endorse the strategy of winning games via the defensive end.