Duke basketball missing point guard Tyrese Proctor to injury. Will he return this season?
Tyrese Proctor’s knee injury put a scare into Duke’s basketball team on Tuesday night but imaging reports show he will be back this season.
Duke coach Jon Scheyer said Wednesday night that Proctor has a bone bruise and there’s no damage to any other tissue in Proctor’s knee.
“Basically, it’s about his pain tolerance and it’s about his movement and strengthening,” Scheyer said on his radio show. “We’ll be very cautious with that and smart. I don’t want to give an exact time table, because it depends on how we can get him moving over the next days or weeks or however long it takes. But we’re gonna get him back, which is the most important thing.”
Proctor’s injury does mean that, for first time since November, Duke appears on the brink of changing its ultra-successful starting lineup if it prevents him from starting when the Blue Devils play Florida State at 7 p.m. Saturday at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
The 6-5 Proctor has started all 28 games for the No. 2 Blue Devils (25-3, 16-1 ACC) this season. In addition to being Duke’s top on-ball defender, he’s averaging 11.8 points and 2.3 assists per game while making 40.8% of his 3-pointers. He surpassed the 1,000-point mark for his career during the Miami game.
Scheyer has used the same starting five — Proctor, Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel, Khaman Maluach and Sion James — for 21 consecutive games. Duke is 20-1 over that stretch, which dates back to an 84-68 home win over Auburn on Dec. 4.
But, after not playing in the second half at Miami, Proctor used crutches while leaving the Watsco Center to board Duke’s team bus to head to the airport for the team’s chartered flight home. The Blue Devils had a scheduled day off from practice on Wednesday but Proctor had imaging done to determine the extent of damage to his left knee.
The Auburn game was the first time Scheyer gave James, a 6-6 graduate student transfer from Tulane, a starting assignment. Caleb Foster, a 6-5 sophomore guard, had started Duke’s first seven games along with Flagg, Knueppel, Proctor and Maluach. That last game that group started was a 70-48 win over Seattle on Nov. 29.
Duke is also playing without 6-9 junior forward Maliq Brown, a top reserve who has missed the last two games with a dislocated shoulder he suffered during an 80-62 win at Virginia on Feb. 17.
After Proctor injured his left knee and limped off the court with 36 seconds remaining in the first half at Miami, freshman Isaiah Evans joined the starting five for the second half. Evans had already scored 16 points and made five 3-pointers, continuing a hot shooting streak for the 6-6 guard. He’s made 13 of 19 3-pointers over Duke’s last three games, averaging 16.7 points.
Duke enters March, and its final three regular-season games, close to locking down the ACC regular-season championship, something the Blue Devils last won in 2022 during Mike Krzyzewski’s final season as head coach. Only Louisville (22-6, 15-2 ACC) and Clemson (23-5, 15-2 ACC) can catch Duke.
If the Blue Devils win their last two home games, Saturday against Florida State (16-12, 7-10 ACC) and Monday night against Wake Forest (19-8, 11-5 ACC), they’ll clinch at least a share of the title. If Duke sweeps its last three games, including a March 8 game at North Carolina, it will win the title outright regardless of what Louisville and Clemson do in their final games.
Duke is already assured of a top-four finish and a double-bye in the ACC Tournament to the quarterfinals beginning March 13 at Charlotte’s Spectrum Center. Who the Blue Devils will have available for those games remains uncertain given the injuries to Brown and Proctor.
This story was originally published February 26, 2025 at 6:27 PM.