The Duke men’s basketball team lost to the Kentucky Wildcats on Tuesday night, a second-half collapse that saw the Blue Devils get outscored 24-11 over the final 10 minutes.
Freshman center [autotag]Khaman Maluach[/autotag]’s absence played a big role in the late-game swing. The 7-foot-2 star finished with 10 points and seven rebounds, but he spent a large chunk of the second half on the bench as he dealt with cramps.
With Maluach needing to leave the game, cramps become an alarming trend for the first-year Blue Devils. Star forward [autotag]Cooper Flagg[/autotag] exited the first two games against Maine and Army with the same problem, and head coach Jon Scheyer sounded well aware of the connection after the game.
“Yeah, I mean, look, it’s concerning,” Scheyer said. “I think part of it is we have young bodies…Again, we’re not trying to just dip our toes in the water, we need Cooper to play a lot. And Khaman.”
“That’s something we’ve got to take a hard look at,” he concluded.
The Blue Devils host Wofford at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Saturday, but the following two games come against Arizona on the road and Kansas at a neutral site. So the faster any potential problems get solved, the better.