Duke welcomes Coastal Carolina to Cameron on Thursday night, and that means seeing an old opponent back, because Coastal is coached by former Wake Forest guard Justin Gray.
Gray, who teamed up with Chris Paul, and who played for Skip Prosser, has done a really nice job so far at Coastal. His first season was 10-22, and last year, the Chanticleers finished 19-13. That doesn’t sound imposing, but winning at the Sun Belt level isn’t easy.
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He also did well at Western Carolina in the Southern Conference, and that’s not easy, either.
Gray has built his program around what he calls “the Coastal Edge,” or just the Edge. For Gray, that means effort, toughness, and working hard together. Apparently, his practices are no joke, least of all on defense, so you can expect them to work hard on that end.
Coastal picked up 12 new players in the offseason, and Gray is going to push them hard on offense, too. He likes for his team to push the tempo and attack. Coastal spaces well, runs a lot of dribble-drives, and then kicks the ball out for threes.
It’s not a high-level team, but if they get hot, Coast could be a very dangerous team. You don’t want to let them get going.
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Coastal’s best player is arguably Trey Perry, who was part of that remarkable Miami of Ohio team from last year. He put up 20 points, 4 rebounds, and 3 assists in Coastal’s 71-70 loss to Eastern Michigan.
We don’t honestly know a whole lot about the rest of the roster, but sophomore Jaylen Cross played at Wake Forest last year, though he only averaged 4.9 minutes, and only got into 13 games.
There is another familiar name on the roster: Hardaway.
Penny’s son, Ashton, started off at Memphis, left for St. Mary’s, came back to Memphis, then departed his dad’s program again, bound for Coastal.
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Coastal has a reasonable shot at competing with Duke on the perimeter, but inside will be a major challenge. Gray has one player over 6-9, junior Caleb Middleton, who is 6-11, but who has one start in three seasons at three different schools.
Duke of course has several quality bigs, notably 6-11 Pat Ngongba and 7-2 JoJo Boumtje Boumtje, but Jon Scheyer has Drew Scharnowski, Cameron Williams, and Maxime Meyer in reserve.
He’d never do it, but we’d love it if at some point during the game, Scheyer put out Ngongba, Boumtje Boumtje and Williams, with Dame Sarr at the point.
Speaking of the perimeter, Sarr has significantly improved his offensive game. Cayden Boozer has become a steady, heady point guard, and may be a perfect fit. John Blackwell didn’t have a good game against Army on Monday, but we’ve seen enough. He’s really good.
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Then there’s freshman Deron Rippey, who had a jaw-dropping play against Army, a follow-up dunk that amazed everyone, including the Army defenders and Caleb Foster, who has built immense trust with the coaching staff.
Finally, there’s no neat slot for Sebastian Wilkins and Bryson Howard. Both are essentially Swiss Army knives for Scheyer to deploy where they’re needed, and both are likely to give Duke a huge boost when they get in the game.
We’ve learned not to get too cocky about supposedly lesser opponents, a lesson that Siena kindly reinforced last March. Gray is a quality coach who has earned respect. He’ll be moving up soon.
Still, it’s tough to see how Coastal overcomes Duke’s size and versatility. It would surprise us if Scheyer ran out the big team we cheekily suggested above; it would not surprise us at all if he put out a small ball team with, say, Wilkins, Sarr, Rippey, Howard, and Boozer or Foster.
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Why?
Because we won’t be surprised if Gray’s team puts significant early pressure on Duke that forces adjustments.
Do we think an upset is possible here? Well, it’s always possible, but it seems unlikely. Still, we won’t be at all surprised if Duke has a couple of anxious moments.
One last thing: no one has put Wake’s Steve Forbes on the hot seat. For one, he’s done about as well as he can with the resources Wake Forest gives him.
But if he does end up on the hot seat, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if Gray’s name enters the conversation.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
