First Up – Texas In Charlotte

Can the Devils stick it to the Longhorns?

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What is the story about?

Duke opens the season on Tuesday with Texas in Charlotte and that’s an interesting way to get things started.

Texas has been on a bit of a walkabout lately.

They fired Rodney Terry after last season and he wasn’t an awful coach. He just wasn’t able to deliver on Texas-size expectations.

Terry was hired after UT fired Chris Beard, who was delivering on Texas-size expectations after freaking out the entire city of Lubbock when he dumped Texas Tech for Austin and the Longhorns.

Texas of course had no choice

but to fire the highly successful Beard after he got into an ugly fight with his then-fiancée, Randi Trew, who said “[he] choked me, bit me, bruises all over my leg, throwing me around, and going nuts.”

Trew later basically blamed it all on herself and said she didn’t want the case to go forward and the Travis County D.A. dropped the case, saying he didn’t think he could get a conviction.

Beard was hired a few months later by Ole Miss where he’s made that program quite dangerous. You can’t overlook what happened obviously, but strictly between the lines, he’s a gifted coach.

And while we’re talking about him, keep this in mind: if Hubert Davis gets fired after this season, don’t be shocked if UNC is talking to Beard. It’ll be a hard sell in Chapel Hill, but he would win there, and win big, and as we learned not too long ago during a series of scandals, that’s the primary value for UNC. You’ve been warned.

Texas moved to the SEC last season and the changes were compounded when Terry was fired and replaced by Sean Miller.

Miller was a successful coach at Arizona, but his legacy there was shaded by the Adidas/FBI scandal. His assistant, Book Richardson, was sentenced to three months in prison. Miller was later fired himself, but the U said it was due to his poor performance.

He went back to Xavier for a three year rehab stint, but he wasn’t as successful as he had been the first time.

He moves to Texas as the Longhorns are settling into the SEC and starting over (again) with a new coach. What does he have to work with?

Well, he’s got Terry’s backcourt back, for one. Chendall Weaver is a 6-3 senior and an outstanding defender who likes to get to the basket. Tramon Mark is a 6-5 grad student transfer from Arkansas who played well for the ‘Horns last season. He had shoulder surgery in the off-season and we don’t know where he stands on that, but presumably he’ll play.

Dailyn Swain could be a huge help. He came over from Xavier with Miller and he can help teach Miller’s system to his new teammates. He’s an athletic 6-8 junior.

Matas Vokietaitis is a 7-0, 250 lb. transfer from FAU. Miller is very impressed with him, but he sat out the secret scrimmage against SMU with an injury. So did 6-9 grad student Lassina Traore. Both big men are expected to play against Duke.

Traore, by the way, is 25 years old.

There is a somewhat familiar name on the roster: Simeon Wilcher.

He originally committed to Hubert Davis and UNC before bailing to play for Rick Pitino at St. John’s, where last season, he averaged 8 ppg, 1.9 boards, 1.4 assists and shot 40.7% overall. As a freshman, he shot 41.7% on threes, but last year, for whatever reason, that declined to 29.7%).

He’s 6-4 and had to play hard under Pitino, so he should be fine.

Camden Heide started off at Purdue and started a few games there, so he should help as well. He’s a 6-7 junior.

The injuries and the relatively late arrival of Declan Duru and Lewis Obiorah, both Euro imports, combined with learning a new system, complicates what Texas has to do to compete early. However, don’t underestimate Miller. He’s a lifer and he knows the game.

His teams like to run and they get a certain amount of freedom. With a guard-heavy team, or at least an experienced backcourt, expect this team to get up and down the court.

The big guys may be a concern for Miller but as noted, both are expected to play.

Miller has coached against Duke five times. He lost to the Blue Devils at Xaver in 2004 (66-63) and 2008 (82-64). At Arizona, he beat Duke twice, in 2011 (93-77) and 2013 (72-66).

In his second pass through Xavier, Miller’s Musketeers lost to Duke in 2022 (71-64).

Over the years we’ve joked about Miller’s resemblance to Ralph Kramden, aka Jackie Gleason, but at the end of the day, the guy is, as noted, a lifer. His father was a highly successful high school coach in Pennsylvania. His brother, Archie, is the coach at Rhode Island.

Miller’s ball handling skills were so impressive that he was invited to demonstrate them on the Johnny Carson when he was 14. His skills got him a role in the movie “The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh.”

Basketball is who he is and what he does, so we expect Texas will give Duke a tough game.

As for the Blue Devils, we’ve seen tremendous growth in the two exhibition games. Both teams pushed Duke around to an extent. Johnny Dawkins has a very physical team at UCF, and a very mature team. We knew Tennessee would be rough, and they were.

In both games, Duke took a half to really settle down before pulling away after the break. We saw brilliance and leadership out of freshman Cameron Boozer, who looks like a smaller version of Tim Duncan, but with a less stoic public personality. He just gets things done.

We also saw a tremendous improvement from Pat Ngongba, who showed real fire in Knoxville. Isaiah Evans was also willing to drive and to not rely solely on his brilliant shooting.

We saw lots of good things from Nik Khamenia, who is currently a skinny hard-ass, which means right now he’s a pain. When he gets stronger, he’s going to be a problem. You can see the spirit is willing even if he’s not strong enough to impose himself on the inside consistently. We should see more of his perimeter skills soon too and those are very, very good.

Caleb Foster has shown us a lot of maturity and Cayden Boozer has shown flashes. He works well in an uptempo game so he might have a good night here.

We finally got to see Dame Sarr and that guy might thrive against Texas too.

Darren Harris didn’t shoot well at Tennessee but he may be the best pure shooter on the team. He’ll be fine.

Finally, we also got to see Sebastian Wilkins for a few minutes in Knoxville, and while he’s not fully incorporated into the rotation, you can see his potential. He runs well and he’s strong. You can’t teach those things.

We don’t know yet if Maliq Brown will be ready, but he’s a huge asset whenever he gets back from his (relatively minor) knee issue. Ngongba had three first-half fouls against the Vols, which was not good. Brown makes everything better for Duke when he’s back.

It’s been fun so far to see how this team has developed. Win or lose, the good news is they’re going to keep improving and with Boozer at the heart of it all, the ceiling for this team is quite high.

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