More Thoughts On Duke’s Win Over Lincoln

It was an impressive night on many fronts

A few more thoughts on Duke’s exhibition win over Julius Hodge’s Lincoln Lions and let’s start with the coach.

We didn't know that Hodge was named for Julius Erving. It’s just an interesting nugget.

We were impressed with his team. He’s only been coach for a few months and there seems to have been a bit of turmoil. After his predecessor, Jason Armstrong, was said to have resigned, Lincoln appointed assistant Keyshawn McMahon interim coach.

Later they had to retract their statement about him resigning and admit that he had been fired, despite being the first Lions coach to take Lincoln to the CIAA Finals.

McMahon stayed on and is an assistant again.

It’s all a bit strange.

Anyway, Lincoln pushed Duke for a reasonable time in the first half before the Blue Devils pulled away.

We didn’t see a box score until quite a bit later.

Duke shot 37-71 overall and 15-37 from behind the line. Of those threes, 25 of the 37 were assisted. There were six blocks, four by Cooper Flagg and two by Khaman Maluach. There were 12 steals and three were by Maliq Brown.

The Blue Devils pulled down 47 rebounds and 19 were offensive.

The offensive stars were freshmen Flagg and Kon Knueppel. Flagg shot 8-16 for 22 points and Knueppel hit 6-11 for 17 including 5-9 on threes.

Tyrese Proctor shot a tidy 5-7 though for 19.

Individually impressions: Flagg made a huge impression with this block. Look how high he gets up! It may be the best block at Duke since Zion Williamson left.

That was when you got the idea that the hype was totally justified, but his all-around game is really good. His basketball IQ is really, really high. The guy knows how to play and he’s a complete player.

It’s even wilder when you realize he should be a high school senior.

As soon as we saw Kon Knueppel hit his first three, we knew who he reminded us of: a young Chris Mullin. He just needs a buzz cut and a fanatical commitment to fitness to make everyone see it.

Great shooters don’t use/touch the rim. Knueppel’s shots fall through like the rim is greased. That skill will take him a long way.

He’s also a smart and willing passer and that’s a great skill with this group. He also had five rebounds, including three offensive.

He just knows how to play. He's not at all like Flagg, but they could become great complements to each other. Knueppel’s IQ also appears to be quite high.

Khaman Maluach did not start and it was obvious once he got in that he’s still quite raw and not particularly strong. Time will cure those things.

He has two things that will work from Day One: his standing reach is 9-8 which means he’s an obstacle without jumping and he’s good about getting his hand up even if he doesn’t jump (which happened a lot Saturday). When he does jump, his hand is about 12 feet in the air, which means the shooter has to adjust considerably. And he also had 11 rebounds, six of them on offense. And he had those 11 in 20 minutes.

The next leading rebounder was Sion James, who started: he had six rebounds. He played well but unfortunately had four fouls.

Mason Gillis showed a lot of hustle but didn’t get that many touches. Darren Harris hit 2-3 on his threes, finishing with eight points. Isaiah Evans is currently down the rotation but showed a lot of heart despite his very thin frame. He needs to get stronger, but he plays with fire. Duke fans will like him.

Spencer Hubbard and Stanley Borden both got some minutes at the end and both scored, which drove the crowd wild.

As we said, Lincoln played fairly well, hitting 23-56, and showing impressive discipline despite the tough environment. However, they lost the boards (31/10) and had 18 turnovers.

As Jon Scheyer said, or perhaps his players mentioned we can’t remember, Duke is going to run more this season. With a collection of big, tall athletes including the likes of Flagg and Maluach who can get up and down the court, he’d be nuts not to.

One last note: Duke at times in this game had absolutely beautiful ball movement. That’s something else to be excited about.