Khaman Maluach Is Coming Along Nicely

The young big man is quickly adjusting to college basketball

This article looks at Khaman Maluach’s progress at Duke.

Thing is, we’ve really just scratched the surface with him. The things he can do easily - change shots, block shots, clog up the middle - he’s doing very well - and while he’s scoring well off of lobs, notably from Kon Knueppel lately - we’ve barely seen his offense. Observers have said that he can shoot and he did hit a surprising three at Arizona, but most of his shots have come around the basket obviously.

What’s intriguing to us is his fouls. He got three against Maine in his collegiate opener - no big deal. He got three against Kentucky, Arizona, Seattle and George Mason. Think about this though: have you ever felt like fouls were a problem for him? Can you recall a point where you thought...uh-oh?

That’s pretty impressive for a guy who is just 18 and 7-2.

And this is no big surprise, given that most of his baskets are on lobs, but Maluach is shooting 79.2 percent on the season.

He’s making a lot of progress, but you’ll know things have changed when he picks up a rebound and dunks it in someone’s face. To date, he hasn’t seemed strong or confident enough to do that, but he’s learning fast and sooner or later, he’ll go from simply being tall enough to impose himself to being aggressive enough to do that.

And if that happens by March, everything changes for Duke.