Why Duke basketball won’t let Foster, Ngongba injuries change postseason focus
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- Duke enters ACC Tournament without Foster and Ngongba, rotation at seven
- Cam Boozer and Maliq Brown will absorb minutes, lead defense and rebounding
- Team cites last year’s ACC Tournament comeback as blueprint for injuries
No excuses.
For top-ranked Duke, that will be its basketball mantra this week at the ACC Tournament in Charlotte.
The Blue Devils won 29 games in the regular season, including the last eight. They have the ACC player of the year in Cameron Boozer. They are No. 1 in the NCAA NET rankings and No. 1 in the KenPom ratings, a team that’s anchored, many observers say, by the best defense in the country.
Duke coach Jon Scheyer said Tuesday that the Devils will be playing this week without junior guard Caleb Foster, out with a fracture in his right foot, and sophomore center Patrick Ngongba, who is dealing with soreness in his right foot and will be held out his week.
That has trimmed the Duke rotation from nine players to seven. Cam Boozer, Maliq Brown, Dame Sarr and Isaiah Evans will have to play more minutes. Cayden Boozer, Nikolas Khamenia and Darren Harris must take on expanded roles.
“At the same time, you’re not going to see us making excuses, not going to see us flinch,” Scheyer said Tuesday. “For our guys, I think there’s still an incredible belief in what we can do, how we can play, how we can win.
“But unfortunately, I’ve been in this position before, last year in the ACC Tournament. ...”
Duke aims to win shorthanded again
The Devils went to Charlotte a year ago ranked No. 1, the ACC’s top seed, the tournament’s prohibitive favorite behind freshman Cooper Flagg, the ACC and soon-to-be national player of the year.
Things changed, quickly.
Brown left the first half of the quarterfinal game against Georgia Tech with a dislocated shoulder. Then, Flagg turned an ankle in the first half and was carried off for X-rays, which proved negative.
The Devils regrouped. With freshman Kon Knueppel being named the tournament MVP, Duke won three games in three days without Flagg and Brown and cut down the nets as ACC champions.
“I think this is part of what a team is all about, stepping up,” Scheyer said Tuesday. “If this creates more doubt or whatever it is, I think the belief in our locker room, if you saw the way our guys talk and how we act and how we practice, the belief is in there one hundred percent.
“We’re not going to make any excuses. We’ve got to have Caleb’s back. We’ve got to get Pat back healthy as quickly as possible. And we’ll be ready to roll.”
Cam Boozer: The center of it all for Duke
Cam Boozer again will be a defensive focus – 31 games and counting – and will take a lot of pounding in the paint in Charlotte. He’s used to it, thrives on it. He was edged out by Stanford’s Ebuka Okorie as the league’s top scorer – Okorie at 23.1 points per game, Boozer 22.7– but was the leading rebounder at 10.2.
If Duke wins and Boozer is the MVP, no one will be surprised. But could Duke have a stealth candidate for tournament MVP?
Don’t rule out Maliq Brown. He had to mostly watch last year. He doesn’t have the shooting touch of Knueppel, but he’s the ACC’s defensive player of the year while also winning the sixth man of the year award.
Boozer had 26 points and 15 rebounds Saturday in the 76-61 win over North Carolina at Cameron Indoor Stadium and was nigh unstoppable. UNC coach Hubert Davis said as much after the game but also added: “Maliq dominated the game.
“Obviously, Cameron is a gifted player, but I felt like Maliq’s presence disrupted us on both ends of the floor, whether it was his post defense, ball screen defense, steals and deflections, his screens, passing ability, being able to rim run, score around the basket,“ Davis said. “I thought he disrupted us on both ends.”
As ESPN analyst Jay Bilas put it during the telecast: “Maliq Brown is everywhere in this game.”
That comment came in the second when Brown seemingly was everywhere, forcing a turnover, getting hand on ball, crashing the boards for an offensive rebound, causing mayhem. He also packed the stat sheet: 15 points, 9 rebounds, five steals.
His defensive energy helped spur a 16-0 Duke run that became a 30-6 Duke run that put the game away in the second half. He also took time to knock down an open 3-pointer in front of the Duke bench, leading to a UNC timeout.
After the game, Brown pointed to Foster and Ngongba as his inspiration in the second half – both watching him work from the bench in walking boots as the Blue Devils blew it open. Foster had surgery Sunday for a foot fracture but could return at some point in the postseason, Scheyer said.
“Last year when I went down, those two were in my ear the whole time,” Brown said, “I wanted to pay that back, pay back that energy.”
And he still does, for three days In Charlotte.
This story was originally published March 11, 2026 at 5:15 AM.
