Game Thread [2022-23] Boston College

[SeanMayTriedToEatMe]

What are the chances Whitehead stays this terrible all season and the 9 decent players thing doesn’t actually materialize? Right now, it’s 8 decent players plus the idea of Whitehead. It must be extremely rare for guys who are projected top 10 picks and came in as top 10 recruits turning out to be unplayable, but I assume there have been a few examples.

 

[rome8180]

I thought he was fine in the last two games. Definitely improving, imo. He's forcing less, making better decisions. He had a really nice pass to Lively in the pick and roll that led to a Lively dunk. He went 3-5 from the field in only 16 minutes.

I also think his defense has been fine. Not a huge positive, but also not a sieve like AJ was post injury.

All that said, that fast break layup was indicative of his current limitations. He has to be able to dunk that. I'm sure he CAN still dunk it. But instead, he went for the layup and it nearly rimmed out. In high school he might have tomahawked that from 10 feet out.

 

[rome8180]

Granted, the three turnovers in 16 minutes isn't great either.

But it feels like it's slowly headed in the right direction.

 

[DukeNukem05]

Scheyer did explicitly mention Flip at the 5 in his postgame, fwiw. I thought that was interesting considering how briefly it happened today.

They read the boards!

 

[childress22]

Young only played 13 minutes today, and quality ones I thought; it's hard to imagine him becoming some ~5 min a game after-thought when he does play as decently as he does in his time on the court. Maybe that's his fate against the athleticism of the ACC's "top" teams, but I can also see a scenario where the team seems to be languishing during a game and he's brought in for instant energy.

One could argue based on whims or how a player was looking on any given night that we are not only nine deep, but have nine guys who seemingly deserve 20+ minutes a game each, which I can't ever remember feeling about a Duke team the last decade or two.

Even among our deeper teams (including 1998, 2008, 2009, etc), this one seems like might have more variance in the guys that hit double-figures each game once Lively and Whitehead really round into form.