Duke is no superteam, but they could be better than last season

Using the word “fascinating” to describe a college basketball season that ended in the second round of the NCAA tournament typically means that the subject in question is a low major team that pulled off a monumental upset in round one. That’s not an accurate description of Mike Krzyzewski’s most recent Duke squad, but the 2016-17 Blue Devils still produced one of the more memorable and bizarre campaigns in recent memory.

It began with talk of being college basketball’s next “superteam.” Duke returned veteran standouts like Grayson Allen, Amile Jefferson, and Luke Kennard, and also brought in the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class. The combination resulted in talk of not just a national title, but of being one of the sport’s most dominant squads of the modern era. That talk died down quickly, as injuries to three members of that freshman class aided in a start that saw the Devils lose a game before the calendar flipped to December, and drop three of their first five tilts in ACC play.

Injuries weren’t the only distraction. There was also Grayson Allen, most people’s preseason pick for national Player of the Year, becoming one of the most well-known basketball players in the world because of his increasingly bizarre behavior and not his play on the court. There was also Krzyzewski missing almost all of January while recovering from an emergency surgery to repair a herniated disc in his lower back.

In spite of all these setbacks and distractions, Duke still seemed poised to finish the season where most had projected them to all the way back in November. The Blue Devils became the first team ever to win the ACC tournament title by defeating four teams in four days. Three of those four teams were ranked in the top 25, including No. 10 Louisville and No. 6 North Carolina. When the NCAA tournament field was revealed on Selection Sunday, the powers that be in Las Vegas dubbed Duke as the favorites to win it all, despite the Blue Devils’ status as a No. 2 seed.

The roller coaster came to its final resting place on the NCAA tournament’s opening Sunday. Despite being a 9-point favorite coming into the game, Duke was handled from start to finish by a seventh-seeded South Carolina team that hadn’t shown the offensive firepower seemingly necessary to keep up the star-studded Blue Devils at any point in the season prior to that evening. An 88-81 defeat ended a season that finished with 28 victories, nine losses, and about a thousand backstories.

While Coach K’s absence and Allen’s strange refusal to stop tripping opponents were the sexy story lines that captured the country’s attention, the issue nearest to the center of most Duke problems last season was much simpler and far less attractive. The 2016-17 Blue Devils were an assembly of highly skilled players who either didn’t understand, didn’t fit, or were unwilling to accept the roles they needed to in order for the team to realize its potential.

For starters, there was no true point guard on last season’s Duke team. In hindsight, that’s a pretty significant issue that should have resulted in more preseason caution from all of us. The Blue Devils had a trio of elite scorers in Allen, Kennard, and Jayson Tatum. All three of those players are at their best when the ball is in their hands and the only thing on their mind is putting it in the basket. None of them are at their best when setting up someone else is their primary duty. It’s cheeky to describe that as “a good problem to have,” but it’s still a problem in need of a solution when a championship is the ultimate goal.

Duke never found that solution in 2016-17. Allen was the only player of the three who seemed willing to at least try and assume the role of facilitator, and it didn’t always go swimmingly for himself or those around him.

There were other problems, of course. Harry Giles never came close to finding the form that had, at one time, made him the No. 1 high school player in America. Marques Bolden, like Giles, began the season on the bench because of an injury and never looked comfortable when he was healthy enough to see the court. Both players were forced to accept a lesser front-court role behind the veteran Jefferson.

Coach K will return just one primary contributor from last season’s team. Seven of the top eight scorers on the 2016-17 Blue Devil squad either graduated, transferred, or chose to keep their names in the NBA draft. Allen, one of the most recognizable faces in recent college basketball history, will be the only overly familiar one in Durham next fall.

Ordinarily this would all be bad news, but there’s a real likelihood that Duke will be better off with a team that’s lower on star power and bigger on understood roles.

It’s also a huge help that the team will include a true point guard. That fact was guaranteed earlier this week when five-star floor general Trevon Duval committed to play his college ball for Coach K.

If Duval can live up to his prep hype, his presence should allow Allen to re-adopt the off-the-ball, slash-and-score mentality that made him a third-team AP All-American as a sophomore. Fellow top-10 guard Gary Trent Jr. should also help replace the scoring load that Kennard carried last season, and five-star power forward Wendell Carter — the highest-rated player in the Blue Devil class — should be able to shoulder much of the front-court production that Jefferson’s graduation left behind.

College basketball is a sport that comes with no guarantees. If they weren’t aware of it before, everyone associated with Duke found that out first-hand in 2016-17.

There will be no talk this summer of the “super” Blue Devil team that’s coming to take the county by storm in the winter. There will also be few preseason predictions of the national title coming back to Durham. There should, however, be a return of stability to Duke basketball. Ultimately, that might be enough to produce a more steady and successful campaign than the bipolar one the program just experienced.