Nothing about Caleb Foster’s performance against St. John’s was normal.
This would be true even without the circumstances surrounding his return to the Duke lineup. Foster scored Duke’s next seven points after the Blue Devils fell behind 10 points to the Red Storm with 15 minutes to go. He shook off an airballed three that would have tied the game minutes later, keying the Blue Devil victory with four straight Duke points in the closing stretch. Foster was scoreless in 7 first half minutes in which
Duke was -6 with him on the floor; he scored 11 points in nearly 12 second half minutes in which Duke was +7 with him on the floor. That’s an incredible March turnaround in a game in which the Blue Devils needed every one of those second half buckets to win.
Authoring that performance less than three weeks after surgery on a broken foot? There may not be a sufficient descriptor. It was miraculous. Superhuman. Legendary.
Lest we forget, Foster’s season was for all intents and purposes over following his foot injury against North Carolina. He had surgery the following day, on March 8. Days later, Jon Scheyer would announce that Foster might be able to return if Duke made the Final Four, but that even that would be a stretch.
In the era of the transfer portal and NIL, many in Foster’s shoes would have simply shut it down. Why risk returning, reaggravating the injury, and jeopardizing what would likely be his final big collegiate payday as a senior? We now know Caleb Foster isn’t your average collegiate athlete. He remained engaged with his teammates, attacked his recovery with unrivaled fervor, and returned to the court not even three full weeks after the injury.
That story in and of itself would be the stuff of legend—a story of perseverance, will, and putting the team over oneself. A victory with five minutes of Foster on the floor, simply to give Cayden Boozer a breather, would be the stuff of Blue Devil lore. Foster willing Duke to a March victory, without a full 5-on-5 practice under his belt, is arguably unparalleled in Blue Devil history.
Three games stand between this Duke team the immortality represented by a sixth National Championship banner in Cameron. But regardless of what happens over the next 10 days, Caleb Foster has earned himself immortality as a young man who has shown time and again his love of Duke trumps his own ego—something exceedingly rare in the modern college basketball landscape. He stuck with the program following and up and down (and injury addled) freshman season.
He did so again after essentially being benched as a sophomore, working to regain a key bench role in March. He chose the hard path of earning his role at Duke over greener pastures in the transfer portal as a junior, became an indispensable cog in a historic regular season, and then authored a minor medical miracle in returning to the lineup Friday night.
Caleb Foster is a Duke Legend.
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