The first must-see game of the 2015-16 college basketball season comes Tuesday night when Duke (2-0) and Kentucky (2-0) meet in the Champions Classic in Chicago. This is the fifth year of the four-team event, with Duke holding the best record among the participants at 3-1, which includes a 75-68 victory over Kentucky in 2012. That was the last time the Blue Devils and Wildcats clashed, and the hope was they would meet in the 2015 NCAA title game, but Kentucky’s loss to Wisconsin in the Final Four prevented that.
What will take the court at the United Center for each team will be vastly different from what would have been in the mix seven months ago. That’s because Duke and Kentucky lost a combined 11 key players to either graduation or the NBA draft, and each replaced those departures with top-notch recruiting classes.
Both Duke and Kentucky have bulldozed their first two opponents, Duke winning by an average of 28 points and Kentucky by 21.5. Each has gotten a strong mix of contributions from both newcomers and veterans, but Kentucky’s performance has looked more consistent to this point. Duke has been more reliant on its returners than originally expected, but in a game like this it will need to get help from its entire lineup to succeed.
We will break down each team’s backcourts, frontcourts, benches and make a decision of who comes away with a win.
Backcourt
Duke lost both of its point guards from last season in Quinn Cook and Tyus Jones, while Kentucky saw Andrew Harrison turn pro. Each team has added promising new players at this position in Derryck Thornton (Duke) and Isaiah Briscoe (Kentucky).
Briscoe missed Kentucky’s first game with a bruised knee, but he had 11 points and 12 rebounds in the win over NJIT on Saturday. Duke’s Thornton has averaged 4.5 points, 4.0 rebounds and 3.0 assists in two games—both times off the bench.
Each of these freshmen is still coming along, and as a result, neither has started. Briscoe had to play some of his minutes at the 2-guard because of how well sophomore Tyler Ulis has looked at the point, while Duke has turned to junior Matt Jones to handle the position at the outset and has also included sophomore Grayson Allen in the mix. Jones has been playing through a groin injury but has looked great, making six of his 10 three-pointers and shooting 11-of-17 overall.
Of the players who are getting used at the 1, Kentucky has done it so far with 1s who are more comfortable at the position as 1s who are in there to facilitate the offense. Duke is trying to get more of its scorers onto the court, and as a result, only 26 of 69 made field goals have been assisted so far.
There might be only a few games this season that will have as many pure shooters involved as this one, as both Duke and Kentucky feature numerous players who are lights-out from all over the court.
As mentioned before, Duke has been using Matt Jones at the 1 a lot to get his shooting acumen on the court, since playing him at the 2 would mean limiting what sophomore Grayson Allen could contribute. Allen, who came alive during last year’s Final Four for the Blue Devils, has averaged 27 points (including a career-high 28 against Bryant) on 51.6 percent shooting.
A lot of what Allen has done has been at the rim, and that’s opened things up for Duke’s other shooters outside. Jones has benefited from this, as has freshman Luke Kennard, who has made nine of 17 field goals in two games.
On Kentucky, the departure of Aaron Harrison and Devin Booker hasn’t been felt yet, since freshmen Isaiah Briscoe and Jamal Murray haven’t been shy about taking shots. Murray is only 3-of-15 from outside so far, but his shot should come with further repetitions.
The true SG (2) position is the closest matchup at any position on the court, and Duke’s experience gives it the edge.
Frontcourt
The frontcourts are different for both Duke and Kentucky this season compared to 2014-15. For Kentucky, it’s because of the sheer quantity of available players, while in Duke’s case, it’s a matter of quality.
The Wildcats lost Willie Cauley-Stein, Dakari Johnson, Trey Lyles and Karl-Anthony Towns, a quartet that combined to produce 34.3 points, 22.9 rebounds and 5.3 blocks per game as part of the platoon system that John Calipari had in place. They basically shared the 4 and 5 spots—interchangeable parts—but this year, the position is held almost exclusively by freshman Skal Labissiere.
One team has its most promising freshman holding down the 3, while the other has already done some mixing and matching at the position, including giving a lot of minutes to a mostly forgotten upperclassman. Duke’s Brandon Ingram has been by far the best of the team’s first-year players, showing off the ability to play anywhere from the 1 to the 4 during exhibition play and in the first two regular-season games. His long and lean body hasn’t been tested on the inside, but when away from the basket, he’s been a deadly matchup that hasn’t been contained.
Much the same could be said about Kentucky’s most productive wing to this point, though it was nowhere near as expected. Derek Willis, a 6’9″ junior who had all of 44 points in mop-up duty in his first two seasons with the Wildcats, already has 25 points this year. He got his first career start on Saturday after scoring 14 points off the bench, and he’s 8-of-12 from the field, including 5-of-9 on three-pointers.
Charles Matthews, another freshman, played the 3 in the season opener, but Willis was more effective and might have played his way into the regular rotation. But matched up against Ingram, he’s apt to struggle.
Labissiere has responded with 35 points, 10 rebounds and six blocks in his two games, including a 26-point effort last time out against NJIT.
For Duke, Amile Jefferson began at the 4 and then eventually became a reserve once Justise Winslow slid from the 3 to the 4 with ease. Winslow is in the NBA now, so Jefferson has taken back that position for his senior year, though during the offseason, this didn’t seem to be the plan.
Freshman Chase Jeter was supposed to be the heir apparent at the 4, but he’s struggled so far and hasn’t seen much time on the court. He’ll improve as the season goes on, but Kentucky isn’t the opponent for him to learn against.
As a result, the Labissiere-Jefferson matchup could be the most lopsided of the game.
The center position has become obsolete with many programs, either because they don’t have a true back-to-the-basket player, or they are better served getting more athletic players on the court. Kentucky and Duke could go this route, but each has gone with a true center so far.
Duke has given senior Marshall Plumlee the start in both games this year, and though the 7-footer isn’t lighting up the scoreboard, his 24 minutes per game have been valuable. So much so that he is probably playing more than the Blue Devils would like, but with Jeter yet to do much at the 4 and Rice transfer Sean Obi almost nonexistent to this point, Plumlee is the main option.
For Kentucky, Marcus Lee is getting his chance to play on a regular basis after two seasons at the bottom of the rotation. He was part of the platoon in 2015-16 but was often the first one dropped out of the mix as the game moved on, though as a junior, he’s contributed 11 points and eight rebounds per game while shooting 60 percent.
The Wildcats have also given minutes to Australian freshman Isaac Humphries, though Lee is getting the bulk of the work and has been more of a factor to this point than Plumlee.
Bench
Because of the nature of the opponents they’ve faced, both Duke and Kentucky have been quite liberal with their substitutions to this point in the 2015-16 season. This should decrease as the season goes on, and in a game as big as Tuesday’s matchup, the likelihood of giving minutes to those far down the bench is minimal.
But each team needs to sub to keep its starters fresh and to help create mismatches when the opponent sits a player or two.
Kentucky isn’t as deep as in 2014-15 when it needed to platoon its top 10 players, but it’s pretty close, with at least eight players likely to get 10 or more minutes against Duke. For the Blue Devils, they figure to turn to the backups much more than last season (simply because they have more available players than a year ago), but the confidence Mike Krzyzewski has in those players isn’t as high as what Calipari has.
The emergence of Derek Willis for Kentucky has boosted his team’s reserves, while Duke hasn’t had major contributions from the bench to this point.
Outcome
As Kentucky’s Champions Classic game from 2014 showed us, even the most promising teams can fall
flat in big early matchups. The Wildcats won 72-40 against a highly ranked Kansas team that would go on to win its 11th consecutive Big 12 title later in the year.
Someone has to lose this game and thus fall to 2-1—after neither lost a game until January or later last year. The result won’t matter as much as how the winner builds off the game and how the team on the losing end responds to what went wrong.
In fact, both teams are likely to expose flaws in the other’s game plan, which will make how each fares next time out—Duke plays VCU on Friday in New York City, while Kentucky returns home the same day to face Wright State—more important than anything else.
The overall lack of experience on each roster puts this game in the hands of the freshmen, from whom Kentucky has gotten more out of to this point. That group should be the impetus for a victory over the Blue Devils, though I feel that the Duke freshmen will rise to the occasion. Duke slips by 75-72.
