Throughout the preseason and in the early stages of the regular season, many Duke basketball fans had debated who should be the team’s point guard, Cayden Boozer or Caleb Foster, but now, five games into the season, the process of answering that question might have been completely wrong.
The Blue Devils used both Foster and Boozer for this final seven minutes of it 78-66 victory over Kansas in the Champions Classic on Tuesday night and never missed a beat.
The two combined for 14 points in the victory and show that Jon Scheyer doesn’t have to be limited to only having one of them on the court at the same time.
For Foster, he hasn’t done anything that would put him up in jeopardy of losing his starting role as the team’s point guard. However, Boozer has continued to make steady progress and shown levels of maturation that he could be ready for an expanded role going forward.
“They were picking up their pressure, should have some more ball handling in there. Both of those guys together are great,” Scheyer explained after the game. “I think the beauty of this team is so often you can get somebody pitting against each other or the fact that we’re supposed to have this all figured out in the beginning of the season as a coaching staff, as players.”
Historically Duke had some of their best teams with two point guard systems. In 2010, they had Nolan Smith and Scheyer and in 2015 they had Quinn Cook and Tyus Jones.
It’s not to say Caleb Foster and Cayden Boozer are at the same level of either of those two duos but it’s certainly a point worth talking about that you can still play really good basketball with both of them on the floor.
“I think these guys have done a great job playing for each other, being ready when their moments called,” Scheyer continued. “Obviously Cayden did a great job of that. Caleb made some big time plays. We may start a certain way and that can be an evolution, but also finishing can be a different way because we have a real team and we don’t just have five players. We have a real team.”
Duke will return home to play Niagara and Howard this weekend but then things get very difficult for the Blue Devils who will play 23 of 24 games to close the regular season against power conference opponents.
If Jon Scheyer can get Caleb Foster and Cayden Boozer clicking on all cylinders entering the new calendar year, it’ll only give him more options to use in a game and make Duke stronger in the long run.
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