First-year Texas Longhorns head coach Sean Miller is, quite sincerely, trying to find the guy who did this.
For his debut in burnt orange and white, Miller and his Longhorns are traveling to Charlotte to face the No. 6 Duke Blue Devils on Tuesday, a decision Miller was pointedly noted was not his decision.
“As you know, the Duke game was scheduled before I became the head coach,” Miller said on Thursday during his opening statement.
The prospect of facing the Blue Devils in North Carolina isn’t exactly appealing to Miller on a daily basis.
“When you’re playing against the best, you hope it brings out the best in you. There’s also a side of me that wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Why in the world are we playing Duke?’ There are a lot of other choices out there, but we’re going to take on the challenge,” Miller said.
As a first-year head coach, the reality is that Miller will play the schedule he’s faced with, not the schedule he’d choose.
“We look forward to the challenge of playing, if not the best program in America, certainly one of them. We have amazing amount of respect for Duke, and I really have a lot of respect for Jon Scheyer as a coach,” Miller said.
“I think the job that he’s done, taking over for Coach K is, in itself, on its face, superior. I don’t know if anybody could do a much better job than Jon has done, taking over at Duke, and then leading them here to the future.”
Replacing a coaching legend is never easy, but after playing four years for Krzyzewski and spending another nine years as his assistant, Scheyer took over as the Duke head coach well steeped in the culture that Krzyzewski built in Durham, easing the transition.
In three seasons, Scheyer has an 89-22 record leading the Blue Devils, peaking with a 35-4 record last year as Duke finished first in the ACC and made the Final Four, suffering a heartbreaking loss when Houston went on a 15-3 run to finish the game.
After losing three top-10 draft picks, including No. 1 pick Cooper Flagg, Scheyer reloaded by signing the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class, led by the nation’s No. 1 power forward, Cameron Boozer, enough talent to secure the No. 6 ranking in the preseason AP Top 25.
Ahead of the season opener, Boozer already looks like a superstar after scoring 33 points on 12-of-19 shooting, including 4-of-7 from three, while adding a game-high 12 rebounds and dishing out four assists in a 25-point exhibition win over UCF.
On the road against Tennessee, Boozer continued to impact winning in a variety of ways, notching 24 points, 23 rebounds, six assists, two blocks, and a steal.
“Cam is the best of the best with his ability to rebound. Just look at the rebounds that he’s had in the first couple of games he’s played. You don’t see many players, let alone freshmen, able to do that. I also think that Jon Scheyer uses him in a very intelligent way, playing both the four and the five, and makes the matchup with Cam even more difficult than just his already unbelievable ability,” Miller said.
Miller believes that Boozer is so good one single player won’t be capable of defending him — it will take a team effort, which is complicated by Boozer’s ability to make the right decisions when his teammates are open. Texas will also have to be diligent about blocking him out because Boozer totaled 12 offensive rebounds in the two exhibition games, often on his own missed shots.
“I think that’s a big starting point with him — just how many second shots does he get? He’s like a one-man wrecking crew with that stat alone,” Miller said.
Whether Miller’s concern about opening the season against Duke is influenced by previous outcomes is unclear. What is undeniably true is that the Longhorns have been bad against the Blue Devils, losing all five previous matchups, including a 31-point loss in 2005.
“We know it’s going to be a difficult challenge, but I think at Texas, to go where we want to go and be the program we want to become, part of that path is you have to be able to play against the best, and Duke certainly represents that,” Miller said.
Even if Tuesday’s matchup ends the same way the same the previous five matchups did — an extremely likely outcome with ESPN’s matchup predictor giving the Blue Devils a 79.9-percent win probability — Texas will benefit from the challenge of facing Duke.
“I do know this — we will learn a great deal about our team. It’s a great game to play when you think about playing them away from home,” Miller said. “It has great meaning towards March, and there’ll be no doubt that when we get on the plane after the game, regardless of how it went, we’ll be better because of it, because we’ll have learned true lessons on where we stand.”
Tip at Spectrum Center is at 7:30 p.m. Central on ESPN.
