Duke Basketball: 3 Players Who Must Step Up for the Blue Devils in the Tourney

While Austin Rivers leads Duke in scoring and Mason Plumlee paces them in rebounds, those won't be the most important players looking forward to the NCAA tournament. 

No, those players have given us no reason to believe that the production won't be there. Looking at some of the rest of the Blue Devils, though, the reliability isn't quite there, and it needs to be.

If Duke is going to win Mike Krzyzewski's fifth NCAA Championship, these players will need to be on.

Ryan Kelly

There is no more of a Jekyll and Hyde player on the Duke roster than Kelly.

We know that he can shoot like a madman—he just needs to do that more often.

This comes down to the numbers, which are far too inconsistent. First, let's take a look at the overall stats:

MPG	PPG	FG%	3PT %
25.3	12.4	46.7%	41.3

Not bad, especially for an outside shooter. The Blue Devils have lost four games this year, and those numbers aren't quite as pretty:

MPG	PPG	FG%	3PT%
21	5.7	30.4%	44.4

Even the three-point numbers are a little misleading, as Kelly tried only nine shots. In two of those losses, he didn't even attempt a single three. 

Kelly is a junior, which means he is too experienced for his numbers to drop off in such a big way when playing the better teams. If that continues, Duke is going to have a hard time advancing beyond the Sweet 16. 

Rivers is going to draw the attention of opposing defenses. When those defenders flock to him, Duke's other shooters will need to step up, and Kelly has to be that guy. If he can make the big three's and hang at around 15 points a game, this team is very hard to beat.

If not, an early-tournament upset is in the cards. 

Miles Plumlee

Plumlee is a 6'10" senior, and he needs to do a better job of helping his little brother, Mason, in the paint. Miles' 6.5 points and 6.4 rebounds a contest are just not going to be good enough from the inside. 

Kelly is 6'11", but plays as much from the outside as he does from the paint. But when Miles is struggling, that leaves only Mason as a constant inside presence.

Miles is a fine player, but he won't give Duke the kind of production they need to make a quality run—not on his own, anyway. 

This is where Miles needs to step up, stay on the floor and get closer to 10 and 10 a game. Against the likes of Anthony Davis, Jared Sullinger and Tyler Zeller, Duke will need a deep inside presence to prevent those kind of players from domination. The elder Plumlee brother has to pull his weight.

Seth Curry

As we saw against North Carolina, Rivers is the focal point of this offense. He is the leading scorer and deadliest shooter.

But when he is off or being double-teamed, other outside shooters will need to step up. Duke is always a team that has thrived behind the three-point line, and Curry will have to be sharp when given his chances. 

Curry averages around 13 points a game, which is good, but he needs to be closer to 20 for the Blue Devils to make a deep tournament run and pose a threat for the title. 

Remember that as great and exciting as Rivers is, he is only a freshman. Those players tend to struggle from time to time during big games. When that is happening, Curry (a junior) will have to step up to take the pressure off. 

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