Star-studded Duke awaits Kansas

Injuries figure to keep two former high school All-Americans — Jayson Tatum and Marques Bolden — on the Duke bench Tuesday night, as well as fellow freshman Harry Giles.

Tough break for No. 1 Duke, sure, but there are enough accomplished Blue Devils healthy and raring to go against No. 7 Kansas.

“They still have good players. You’ve got McDonald’s All-Americans playing where those other guys would be playing, which goes to show you how deep they are,” KU coach Bill Self said.

On the floor for Duke with high school All-American honors are national player of the year candidate Grayson Allen, Chase Jeter, Luke Kennard, Matt Jones, Frank Jackson and Amile Jefferson.

KU has four high school All-Americans: Josh Jackson, Carlton Bragg, Udoka Azubuike and Malik Newman, who is sitting out the season in accordance with NCAA transfer rules.

“They still are going to have plenty of guys that are capable of playing very well,” Self added.

Allen is a 6-5 junior combo guard who averaged 20.5 points in opening wins over Marist and Grand Canyon after averaging 21.4 a year ago. He finished his sophomore season on a streak of 25 straight games with double-figure points. His 779 points accounted for the second-highest scoring season by a sophomore in Duke history, trailing only Jason Williams (841) in 2001.

“I’ve watched him play a lot. They play on TV a lot. He’s a great player, a good kid,” KU senior guard Frank Mason said. “He’s always driving the ball downhill, stays in attack mode, knows how to draw fouls. He’s just a smart player. He does a lot of different things.”

The Blue Devils as a team have made 19 of 51 threes for 37.3 percent after making 328 of 851 for 38.5 percent last season.

“The thing that impresses me most,” Self said, “is just how aggressive they are especially whether it be freedom offensively to shoot the ball, but (also) to drive it and put pressure on you. They are about as good a shooting team as we’ll play all year. We may play the best two shooting teams that we’ll play all year in the first two games. Certainly we didn’t do a good job defending Indiana (15 of 31 from three). We have to be a lot better getting the three-point shooters against Duke.”

KU is 1-4 in the history of the Champions Classic, which has been renewed another three years.

“Although the stage was big in Hawaii, this is a bigger stage without question,” Self said. “The number of media that will be at this will be 50 times more than what was in Hawaii, maybe 100 times more than what was in Hawaii. This will be a big stage for our guys and one I think we need for preparation.”

This story was originally published November 14, 2016 at 7:42 PM with the headline "Star-studded Duke awaits Kansas."