Duke is still favored to win three games in three days and take home the ACC Tournament Title after running away with the regular season crown. However, the top-ranked Blue Devils are heading to Charlotte far from full strength.
The biggest injury news is that starting point guard Caleb Foster may be out for the season after fracturing his right foot in the regular season finale against North Carolina. He’s not the only absence, though. Duke will also be without starting center Patrick Ngongba, who is recovering from right foot soreness.
Those injuries will test Duke’s depth in the postseason. In the backcourt, Cayden Boozer can step into the starting lineup while Darren Harris and Nikolas Khamenia can log additional minutes off the bench. A long-forgotten injury in the front court, though, leaves the Blue Devils without much of an answer beyond Maliq Brown, the ACC’s sixth-man and Defensive Player of the Year, who will be thrust into the starting lineup.
Ifeanyi Ufochukwu’s absence will be hard to ignore with Patrick Ngongba out
Rice transfer Ifeanyi Ufochukwu played in five games for the Blue Devils before suffering a season-ending non-contact knee injury in a December practice. The 6-foot-11 Nigerian senior center averaged just 4.4 minutes through those five games and was never expected to be a major factor for the Blue Devils this year. Still, beyond Ngongba and Brown, who is an undersized center in his own right, Ufochukwu was Scheyer’s only other true option at the five.
Duke has gone with a nine-man rotation for much of the season, but cut it down to eight for big-time matchups, like last month’s win over Michigan. With Foster and Ngongba out in the second half against UNC, Scheyer tightened it further to a seven-man rotation, with Cameron Sheffield and Jack Scott only coming off the bench for the final minutes of garbage time.
Sheffield and Scott are Scheyer’s other depth options who have seen time this season, but both are listed as guards, and Sheffield is the taller of the two at just 6-foot-8. Ufochukwu, at least, had legit size to help with rim protection and rebounding despite averaging just 3.3 minutes a game last season for Rice.
By next week in the NCAA Tournament, Ngongba will be back, and though Foster will be out, Scheyer should be fine to play a tight eight-man rotation. In the ACC Tournament, however, it will be difficult to win three games in three days with just seven players, especially with Brown and Cameron Boozer as the only true bigs.
Frankly, it might be in Duke’s best interest to punt on the ACC Tournament rather than putting a huge workload on the Boozers, Brown, Isaiah Evans, and Dame Sarr right before they’re going to be asked to carry the team to another Final Four. Scheyer is just running out of bodies, and he can’t afford to make it worse.