Duke basketball: 5 questions the Blue Devils must answer in 2020-2021

4. Duke questions: What role will Patrick Tape play?

Duke has built its roster on star freshmen for the past few years but a route Krzyzewski pursues less often is accepting transfers. Krzyzewski made an exception this season when he opted to bring in former Columbia forward Patrick Tape as a grad transfer.

After playing a lesser role in the past two years with the Lions, Tape stepped up last season. Tape averaged 11.3 points per game and 5.9 rebounds a night for Columbia before entering his name into the transfer portal after the season.

Duke was in need of a big man after Carey opted to go pro so Tape made a ton of sense for them. Tape also adds some strong upperclassmen leadership to another very young roster of Blue Devils.

The question with Tape becomes how much of a role the Blue Devils want him to play this season. Tape handled just under 23 minutes a game with Columbia last year, so it is fair to wonder if he will be up to big minutes against stiffer competition.

The ideal goal here would be for Tape to become a starter that provides defense and rebounding to complement the scoring ability of the star freshmen. Even if Tape ends up as just a role player he still fills out a valuable need in the rotation.