College basketball Week 2: 5 biggest takeaways
By Chris Stone
Week 2 of college hoops featured some high profile matchups. Here’s a look at what we learned.
Week 2 of college basketball has come and gone. Last Tuesday, the Champions Classic featured a pair of battles between blue bloods, as the Kentucky Wildcats handled the Michigan State Spartans and the Kansas Jayhawks required a late winner from senior Frank Mason to get past the Duke Blue Devils. Late in the week, the various Thanksgiving tournaments that will carry us into December got going as well. We’ve had a few chances now to watch the title contenders and the future Cinderellas, so what’d we learn in Week 2?
1. Duke isn’t healthy yet and that should scare everyone else
It took a late game winner for Kansas to get past the Blue Devils at the Champions Classic last Tuesday and Duke was without three of its four five-star freshmen. To put that in perspective: Duke was missing three projected lottery picks and still pushed one of the nation’s Final Four favorites to the bitter end. The Blue Devils followed up the narrow defeat by winning the Hall of Fame Tip-Off tournament over the weekend, including a victory over No. 21 Rhode Island.
This is, of course, why the Blue Devils were ranked atop our preseason top 25 and why they’re still the favorite to win a national title. It was never just the collection of talented freshmen that made everyone so confident in Duke. It was the combination of that talent and an excellent returning class featuring National Player of the Year favorite Grayson Allen, former five star guard Luke Kennard and defensive anchor Amile Jefferson.
Kennard, in particular, has broken out in his sophomore season as an extra scorer next to Allen. The 20-year-old is averaging 16.8 points per game and shooting better than 50 percent from the field as the Blue Devils have done an excellent job getting him the ball in spots he likes. Assuming Duke gets its three freshmen studs back healthy — and nothing suggests they won’t — they should be able to put together a dangerous two-way team ready to do battle deep into March.