Jon Scheyer Knows Duke is Different, but He's Up for the Challenge

Duke has to feel like it's done an excellent job throughout the first few games of the college basketball season, but it's going to get its biggest test yet as it takes on Michigan State on Tuesday night. 

Michigan State comes in at No. 5 in the country, and with this one being at the United Center in Chicago, there's a lot of hype around it. 

Duke looks to be a team that has a legitimate chance to win a national title, but the same can be said for the Spartans. Michigan State is no slouch by any means and is going to come in looking to get a marquee win.

But to stick with Duke for a second, we have to love what we've seen out of these guys. We all knew entering the season that it was going to be a different Duke team than in years past. 

Not because of a lack of talent, bad coaching, or anything else. Jon Scheyer is still one of the best coaches in America and is only getting better year in and year out. Duke has ridiculous talent on both sides of the ball, but there is a major difference in comparison to years past, and that's the fact that Duke doesn't have the best freshman in the country. 

While we can argue that it might have the best freshman class in general, the Blue Devils don't have that Cooper Flagg or Cameron Boozer type of guy who can take over a game and be the best player in college basketball as a freshman. Coach Scheyer admitted that, but also added some ways that his team can replace that production.

"We may not know [who our go-to players are] for a little while," Scheyer said, per ESPN. "I think part of the challenge and part of the exciting part is that it could be anybody on a given night, and we have multiple weapons, multiple ways to win. I think the thing for us is figuring out how to define roles with that as we're growing individually. And that, to me, is going to be the toughest challenge."

"Cooper, Cam, Kon, they gave us such a high floor," Scheyer said. "We got to find out where our high floor is. That's why Pat's stability is going to be huge for us. That's why Blackwell is here. Cayden and Caleb, that's what they should give us. Dame. We need to find that from those guys. That's a challenge for them coming back. In their roles last year, they had the ability to figure themselves out a little bit, where this year, we need them to just be consistent with who they are."

Asking any player on the current roster to do what Flagg or Boozer did would be a bit unrealistic, but it can definitely be done in the aggregate. 

There's also an argument to be made that this team is just as talented as any other that Duke has had over the past decade, specifically with Scheyer as the head coach.

We're going to find out a lot about what Duke really is over the next 15 or so days. Duke will play Michigan State, Illinois, UConn, and Florida all within the next few weeks. 

That's going to give us a better indication than any team in the country about whether this is a team as good as we all believe it is. If I had to put money on it, I'd say that Duke is going to fare well in all of these games.