Duke is using its depth to win. No, really. It’s happening.
Maybe, maybe, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is serious about making depth a positive factor for his Blue Devils this season.
No. 2 Duke played its third ACC game on Saturday night, a dominating 95-62 win at Miami, and showed it was the more athletic, tougher and deeper team.
We’re all accustomed to Duke being the first two of those things. The third item, involving Duke’s depth, has always been a folly.
Krzyzewski routinely starts every season with a stated plan to go nine or 10 players deep on his roster on a regular basis. Each season, by the time the calendar flips to the new year, the Blue Devils are down to a core seven or eight players who log all the minutes.
The Blue Devils have won plenty of games that way over the decades, of course.
But this season, they are actually using their depth while winning at their usually high clip.
When everyone is healthy, Duke (13-1, 3-0 ACC) uses 10 players this season. It’s become routine for Krzyzewski to use that many players in the first 10 minutes of games as part of a game plan, not simply waiting until late in a blowout win like Saturday night to clear the bench.
“We hardly ever have anyone play 30 minutes,” Krzyzewski said. “Our guys are all getting quality minutes. They’ve earned it and it provides us an opportunity to play different groups, which is good.”
The numbers tell the tale of how different things are for Duke.
Duke’s bench players have played 40.8 percent of the team’s minutes through 14 games this season. That’s the 15th highest bench usage rate in the country, according to Ken Pomeroy’s advance statistics.
Compare that to last season, when Duke’s reserves played only 28.1 percent of the minutes (No. 232 in the country). Or the 2017-18 season when that percentage was just 22.3 percent (No. 341 nationally).
Duke hasn’t been above 30 percent in bench usage since the 2011-12 season, when it came in at 30.4 (No. 175 in the country).
Against Miami, Krzyzewski said the depth he’s using made a huge difference.
“Our depth and we played really good defense,” Krzyzewski said. “I thought it wore them out a little bit.”
No Duke player was in the game for more than 27 minutes against Miami.
Compare that to earlier this season, when point guard Tre Jones played 36 or more minutes in seven of the Blue Devils’ first 10 games.
Since Jones missed two games with a sprained foot last month, he’s played 24 and 22 minutes in Duke’s last two games — both lopsided ACC wins.
The Blue Devils are playing as well as they have all season and its starters don’t have to play 35 minutes a night.
Against the Hurricanes, Jones picked up two fouls in the game’s first 10 minutes. Krzyzewski removed him from the game, inserting back-up guard Jordan Goldwire, with a plan to get Jones back in there despite the fouls.
But a funny thing happened. Duke led 23-20 when Jones left the game with 9:57 left in the first half. Instead of faltering without its floor leader, the Blue Devils pushed their lead to 50-36 at halftime with Jones never returning.
Goldwire, Wendell Moore and Cassius Stanley took care of the ball-handling so well Krzyzewski never felt the need to put Jones back out there with two fouls.
“I’d thought I’d bring him back with about five minutes to go and Jordan was doing such a good job that we were able not to do that,” Krzyzewski said. “Wendell’s (Moore) ball pressure was outstanding. Our guys played well.”
There are two months of basketball to be played before the NCAA tournament. There’s plenty of time for Krzyzewski to narrow down his player rotation for the season’s most important games.
But he shows no signs of doing that so far.
He’s using his bench at a significantly higher rate than he has in years and the Blue Devils keep winning.
It’s a different route to a familiar result.
This story was originally published January 5, 2020 at 8:00 AM.