Next Up - Maine Brown Bears

03.11.2024 17:00

DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - OCTOBER 27: Caleb Foster #1 of the Duke Blue Devils drives against Adam Miller #44 of the Arizona State Sun Devils during an exhibition game at Cameron Indoor Stadium on October 27, 2024 in Durham, North Carolina. | Photo by Lance King/Getty Images

As we welcome Cooper Flagg’s home state team to Cameron

Most people are going to look at the Duke-Maine matchup and think, well, the Black Bears? They got no chance. None.

But that’s not necessarily true.

Mikę Krzyzewsk always preached the importance of respecting your opponent and Duke almost always did that, with a few notable exceptions. One of them was Vermont in 2013.

Remember that?

If that doesn’t ring a bell, it should: the Catamounts came into Cameron and very nearly knocked off the Blue Devils, only losing when they couldn’t get a final shot off in time.

Know who was on that bench as an assistant?

Maine coach Chris Markwood.

Unlike most teams that come through Cameron in November or December, Markwood has been here before and his team came within a whisker of winning, falling 91-90.

He also coached with Earl Grant in his first season at BC and the Eagles gave the Devils a solid game before falling 72-61.

Markwood started his playing career at Notre Dame when they were a Big East team, before transferring to Maine to finish up his last two years and he’s done as good a job there as anyone has recently, going 13-17 in his first year and 15-17 last season.

His biggest recruit so far is a big deal: Ace Flagg, twin brother of Duke’s Cooper.

He won’t play Monday but obviously the current Maine team knows Ace and if they don’t know Cooper personally, they’re probably sick of hearing about him.

And we’re sure they do know him. There aren’t a lot of places to get high quality pickup games in Maine and Newport is just about a half-hour from Orono. The Flaggs drove to Boston for AAU stuff and that’s about a 3-hour trip. You know he played a lot of pickup at the U (or maybe not, judging from what the Maine players say in this article).

All that said, we can’t glean a whole lot about Maine’s team. They do have some size - four guys are over 6-10 and six other guys are between 6-5 and 6-7. Six guys are between 6-0 and 6-3.

it’s also an experienced team: one grad student, five seniors, five juniors, two sophomores and three freshmen.

Perhaps their best player is Kellen Tynes - he’s the grad student on the roster and a two-time America East Defensive Player of the Year. He was the second-leading scorer at 12.6 ppg. He also got 3.6 boards, 3.6 assists and 2.3 steals. His backcourt mate, Jayden Clayton, a 6-1 junior, is also back.

Beyond that, we don’t know who is going to start. AJ Lopez, a 6-5 senior, played a lot last season and he’ll probably start. Quion Burns, a 6-6 senior, is also back.

Beyond those guys, we just don’t know very much about Maine, so let’s switch back to Duke.

We’ve seen great signs from freshmen Flagg, Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach, all three of whom may be lottery picks next summer. We’ve seen some good moments from Darren Harris too while Isaiah Evans slim body may hold him back in the short term. Patrick Ngongba is still out with his foot injury so there’s not much to go on there.

Caleb Foster and Tyrese Proctor are known qualities; the questions there are about how much they have improved. Early signs are promising, particularly in terms of leadership and communication.

The transfers are all fitting in well; in fact, the theme that Jon Scheyer keeps returning to is how good the chemistry is with his group.

Mason Gillis was the sixth man of the year in the Big Ten so clearly he knows how to fit into a group. Syracuse transfer Maliq Brown adds huge value as a post defender, among other things. Sion James is a powerfully built guard who defends hard. Cameron Sheffield hasn’t played much but he seems to accept his role and that’s important too.

All in all, Duke is a big, talented team that can get after it on defense and is likely to be in transition a lot.

The Blue Devils are obviously going to be favored but as Vermont, and more recently Stephen F. Austin proved, it doesn’t always matter. And no matter how good you are or how much you know, by its nature you can’t really see an upset coming.

Still, we look forward to seeing the regular season open and we’ll start with a small prediction: Duke won’t blow Maine out as badly as it did Arizona State last weekend, if only because if the lead is big enough, Scheyer will spend time trying out different ideas, combinations and novelties.

Pay more attention to those things than to the margin of victory because this game is likely to be about getting into the lab and trying ideas as much as anything else.

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