Duke basketball probably has the most talented roster in the country. The program brought in the #1 recruiting class in the country with four five-star recruits and two more four-stars in the top 40 of the class. The Blue Devils also brought in three high impact transfers and kept its talented veteran guard duo of Caleb Foster and Tyrese Proctor.
Despite having the plethora of talent Duke has, it can be a challenge to figure out what rotations work best and who to play. Duke has anywhere between nine and eleven players that could legitimately start on a power conference level team.
The difficult part about Duke head coach Jon Scheyer's job is it can be really difficult to play that many guys. Having so much talent, especially young talent, can pose a challenge to determine the best lineups and rotations.
In Duke's three "buy games" so far this season, it has played double-digit guys in all three. Duke played ten guys against Army and thirteen against Maine and Wofford. Granted, when the Blue Devils are controlling the game the entire time, it makes it a lot easier to go deep in the rotation and get guys minutes who might not get any in big games.
We saw Scheyer shrink the rotation a good bit against #19 Kentucky, as Scheyer kept the rotation to eight.
The two main guys for Duke that didn't see the floor in Duke's loss against the Wildcats were freshmen Isaiah Evans (#13 ranked recruit at 247sports) and Darren Harris (#40 ranked recruit at 247sports). Both are elite shooters who have shown their talent in the Blue Devils' buy games.
Evans went for 14 points on 4-7 shooting from three against Wofford and Harris saw the floor for nine minutes. With so much talent on the roster though, it makes it difficult for these guys to see the floor in big games.
Scheyer was asked in his postgame press conference after the win versus Wofford what he plans to do with the rotation in big games versus games Duke should win fairly easily. He talked about how he doesn't plan to deepen the rotation in big games, at least right now.
"It's hard with our schedule to, six of our guys have never played college basketball before. And so there's an evolution of how they grow individually and also how our team grows at the same time..We have eleven good players..It's hard to play eleven guys. And so finding out what that balance is, how deep you can go, who can be ready, it really comes down to, a lot of it comes down to defense and rebounding."
It's a good issue for Scheyer to have, but with so much young talent, it can limit Duke's ability to have as deep of a rotation as possible.
In Duke's loss against Kentucky, the Wildcats definitely benefitted from its deep veteran roster that could switch in and out of each other at really any point. Kentucky only played nine guys for double digit minutes compared to Duke's eight, but it looked clear that Mark Pope had more confidence switching his experienced veterans in and out compared to Scheyer and his young pieces.
It will be a story to watch all season to see how these young pieces develop for Scheyer and who he can integrate into the lineup. Duke has a gauntlet of a two-game stretch coming up as the team will take on #9 Arizona on the road and then head to Las Vegas to play #1 Kansas.