Duke Football has seen its fair share of injuries this year but it appears that the injury bug may be contagious as the basketball team has suffered a potentially major setback. Marshall Plumlee who most likely would serve as Duke’s primary back up at center was seen with a walking boot on his left foot and
Marshall Plumlee is apparently in a walking boot and Mike Krzyzewski said he could end up being out for a while.
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said that he could be out for ‘a while.’
This certainly isn’t good news for a team that is a bit thin in the post. Marshall was expected to back up his older brother Mason as the team’s primary interior player. With players like Ryan Kelly who is more of an outside in player and Amile Jefferson who is unproven and not really a low post player right now, the burden falls on Mason and now Josh Hairston.
But beyond Mason who is clearly the best big man Duke has, the Blue Devils will have to turn to perhaps Hairston who at 6-foot-7 or 6-foot-6 is far too undersized to go up against the big boys reguarly.
The more disturbing part of the apparent injury is that there is no real time table for a reutrn and the term ’a while’ is about as non specific as indefinite and neither sounds very good. One has to wonder at this point if there is some kind of curse on the Plumlee boys as Mason missed the early part of his freshman season when he injured his hand prior to the start of the year.
That injury slowed his development and he would go on to become little more than a reserve for that team, though the season ended up having a pretty good ending to it. Perhaps this setback will prove to be another in the line of coincidences between this year’s team and that 2009-2010 team.
That year Duke had a highly touted transfer (Seth Curry) and a new Plumlee (Mason) to show off. Mason was hurt and Curry had to sit out but the end result was a national title.
I don’t much believe that coincidences are anything more than fun to think about, and they have no real baring on the season, but I’m sure this will get thrown it. As soon as we hear more about the injury to Marshall we’ll certainly post it here, so stay tuned.
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