LOUISVILLE, Ky.—With a little more than six minutes remaining in the game and the Blue Devils looking to mount a late rally, freshman Jayson Tatum looked to feed the ball to classmate Harry Giles in the post.
But Tatum’s weak entry pass was snatched away by Louisville’s Anas Mahmoud—one of No. 7 Duke’s season-high 18 turnovers in a 78-69 loss to the 14th-ranked Cardinals.
After Tatum and Giles entered the season as the two top-ranked players in a Blue Devil freshman class that was touted as one of the best in program history, their late-game miscue was symbolic of the struggles Duke’s newcomers have had at times this year.
“Losing isn’t fun. We know what we’re capable of. We’re just right there, and right there isn’t good enough,” Tatum said. “We’ve just got to get over this hump.”
The hump to this point has been the inability of Duke’s freshmen to stay poised when the Blue Devils begin to struggle on road.
After Tatum made big plays down the stretch in a win against Boston College a few weeks ago, the St. Louis native has struggled mightily in Duke’s last two losses. Facing quicker and longer perimeter defenders, Tatum has been unable to create the space needed to knock down his jumper.
To make matters worse, the freshman spent the second half of Saturday’s loss in foul trouble. By the time Tatum returned, he was out of sync and his shooting struggles and complaints about officiating had left him a shell of himself—the freshman finished with just 11 points on 3-of-11 shooting.
But perhaps the Blue Devil who has struggled the most with getting in rhythm has been Tatum’s classmate Harry Giles.
Following his recovery from a series of knee injuries that kept him off the court for nearly a year and a half, Giles has shown flashes of the explosive skillset that made him one of the top high-school players in the country two years ago. The freshman set the tone early for Duke with a pair of early blocks and helped the Blue Devils hang around down the stretch with a few easy baskets set up by his effort on the glass.
Giles struggled down the stretch, though, missing three of four pivotal free throws as Duke could not take advantage of an opportunity to cut into the Cardinal lead.
“I’m just moving better, feeling better, getting better in my wind, but you know people just expect me to be back to the player I was in a game, or two, or three,” Giles said. “It takes time, especially with a knee. It’s a long process. It’s getting used to the physicality, the speed of the game.”
Throw in the ineffectiveness of guard Frank Jackson and big man Marques Bolden against the physicality of conference opponents, and it is clear that the Blue Devil freshman class has been far from what many expected entering the season.
On display against two of the ACC's best teams and without the services of co-captain Amile Jefferson, Duke’s freshmen have lacked continuity when playing together—in part due to the time each spent sidelined with injuries at the start the season.
“They’re still not up to speed,” interim head coach Jeff Capel said. “When you miss this much time, especially Harry, I’m not sure he’ll be up to speed for us this year and so it’s just trying to get him better each day. Same thing for Bolden. Bolden was out for a while and so look, we need those guys. We need everyone on our team to play their butts off every day.”
If there is one silver lining to the Blue Devils’ struggles early in conference play, it is that Duke has been forced to adjust and experiment with different groups on the court. The contest against Louisville gave Capel a chance to reinsert freshman Javin DeLaurier—who had not seen game action since Dec. 10 against UNLV—into the rotation.
Although DeLaurier’s latest line in the box score does not stand out, the freshman’s athleticism and toughness could help the Blue Devils on the glass moving forward with Jefferson's return still up in the air.
“There’s nothing quite like stepping into a hostile arena for the first time, but coaches did a great job of preparing everyone for the game and just letting me know that I’d probably have an opportunity to get some minutes today, so I was mentally prepared,” DeLaurier said.
But Duke is now working against the clock, even with the Big Dance almost two months away.
At 2-3 in the conference, the Blue Devils find themselves slipping with road tests against Notre Dame, Virginia and North Carolina still looming. As the team’s freshmen still work out the kinks in their respective games, Duke must find a way to collectively improve and look more like a team in "January-mode" as opposed to "October-mode," as head coach Mike Krzyzewski hinted at before his back surgery.
“We would hope we learn from winning and keep progressing from winning, but at the end of the day, nothing stings like a loss does,” junior Grayson Allen said. “If we don’t learn from it, it’s a mistake.”
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