Next Up - Southern Indiana

When you look a little deeper, this is a much more interesting team than you might think.

Next up for Duke is the Southern Indiana Screaming Eagles and if the team is as menacing as the nickname suggests, it could be a very interesting game. That might be asking a lot though.

Southern Indiana is in Year II of D-I basketball and in many respects they are an unknown.

Coached by Stan Gouard, who took over in the midst of the Covid pandemic, the Screaming Eagles finished their first D-I season at 16-17, .500 in the OVC and they got to play in the CBI, so all in all, not a bad first season.

This year, the Squawkin’ Eagles are off to a 1-5 start but in fairness, a lot of schools at their level load up on buy games to a) make bank and b) toughen up for conference play.

The only win is against a D-II school called Tiffin, but they have been competitive against everyone except for Michigan State. They were with eight points of St. Louis, nine against Chicago State and Bucknell and lost to LaSalle by just one.

This is an experienced team. There’s just one senior - 6-11 Nolan Causwell - but there are seven juniors and six sophomores, including 6-6 forward AJ Smith, who is averaging 12.3 ppg and 8.7 boards

Against LaSalle, USI started Smith, 6-7 junior Jack Mielke, 6-8 sophomore Kiyron Powell, 5-11 junior Sam Mervis and 6-4 junior Jeremiah Hernandez.

Not surprisingly, several guys are transfers. Powell came from Houston, Mervis from Indiana State, Hernandez from Kent State. Causwell came from Tennessee Tech while sophomore Yarin Hasson transferred from UConn. Like Mervis, junior Nick Hittle was at Indiana State first.

There are more but you get the idea.

The main thing you should probably focus on is not the record but the competiveness this team has shown and that their players are experienced and some of them at high-level programs. Hasson has a national championship ring. How many guys can say that? He’s the only player in Friday night’s game who can.

For Duke, it’s a chance to keep growing. As we expected, Scheyer is building the way he played and understands the game. His team is competitive. It’s smart. It shares the ball well, as well at this point as any Duke team since the Zion Williamson/RJ Barrett juggernaut of 2019, according to Rodd Baxley of the Fayetteville Observer. He also notes that Tyrese Proctor has 27 assists to four turnovers and that includes three straight games with none.

Does that remind you of anyone?

And while we have a good idea of what to expect from Proctor, Jeremy Roach, Jaylen Blakes, Ryan Young, Kyle Filipowski and Mark Mitchell, we don’t know what we’ll get yet with the injured Christian Reeves and the freshman class.

We’ve seen moments of brilliant play from Caleb Foster, Jared McCain, Sean Stewart and most recently TJ Power, but none have been consistent yet. This is a chance for all of them to work towards that.

As Coach K taught us, you have to respect your opponent, so the idea that any win is a given is not a good way to look at things.

Should Duke win this?

Obviously, but that’s what people said about Steven F. Austin too. Mess around and find out, as they say.

This is a chance to pick up a win and also a chance for individual players to excel and to work on team chemistry too. That’s not to suggest that it’s bad, because the players seem to genuinely like each other.

But it’s a chance to improve it and that’s always a plus.