Short-Handed Duke Still Thriving in Win over Michigan State, but at What Cost?

By the time Miles Bridges got his obligatory highlight-reel dunk for the night, it was too little too late for Michigan State, as the No. 5 Duke Blue Devils hung on for a 78-69 win over the Spartans.

The first two-thirds of the game was much closer than most expected. Duke and Michigan State were tied at 35 at halftime and knotted up again at 48 early in the second half after an emphatic Nick Ward rejection led to a fast-break bucket for the Spartans.

There was too much history on the Blue Devils' side, though.

Duke's last home loss against a nonconference opponent came way back on Feb. 26, 2000, against St. John's. That winning streak is now 130 games. Duke is also now 16-2 all time in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, while Mike Krzyzewski holds a career record of 10-1 against Tom Izzo.

Throw in the fact Michigan State already had three losses this season and was relying heavily on four freshmen and it's not hard to see why Vegas favored the Blue Devils by 13, according to Odds Shark.

But Duke had to fight for this one, and it's time to start questioning what toll these early-season wins are taking on this short-handed rotation.

Both Matt Jones and Luke Kennard played all 40 minutes. Despite a toe injury that has kept him from practices, Grayson Allen was out there for 37 minutes and a game-high 24 points. Amile Jefferson logged 35 minutes and his fourth double-double of the season. And Frank Jackson certainly would have played more than 27 minutes had he not been saddled with foul trouble midway through both halves.

The only other Blue Devil to appear in the game was Chase Jeter.

Eight players were enough to win the 2015 national championship, but six is pretty extreme. Guys like Antonio Vrankovic, Jack White and Javin DeLaurier have received minutes in meaningless games. Against Kansas, Rhode Island and Michigan State, however, players outside the core six have played a combined total of five minutes.

Jones has played all 120 minutes in those three games, and it's already taking a toll on his legs, as he was 0-of-6 from three-point range against Michigan State, including a pair of air balls that missed so badly you'd have thought he shot them with his eyes closed.

Kennard has played 115 of 120 possible minutes, and he front-rimmed a meaningless free throw at the end of Tuesday night's game that might also suggest his legs won't mind only needing to play five games in the next 32 days. And Allen logged 114 minutes in those three games despite the aforementioned toe injury that led him to sit out most of the second half against Appalachian State on Saturday.

Now, this is the part of the program where we're supposed to look down the Duke bench and find three potential lottery picks wearing street clothes and shrug off any concerns.

Grant Halverson/Getty Images

"The Blue Devils will be unbeatable when they're fully healthy," we've been told repeatedly for the past several weeks. And that might be true. They did nearly beat Kansas on a neutral court two weeks ago while getting terrible games from both Allen and Jefferson.

But forgive me if I've grown weary of playing the "when they're fully healthy" game.

We did it three years ago when Florida started the season without both Scottie Wilbekin and Chris Walker and dealt with minor injuries to three other key players. That team reached the Final Four, but it was never close to unbeatable.

That same year, we kept hearing the same thing about Michigan State, which battled injuries to Gary Harris, Keith Appling, Branden Dawson and Adreian Payne. Those Spartans had only one player appear in each of their 38 games, and they ended up fizzling out in the Elite Eight.

And it feels like we end up making this argument every year for North Carolina. Between Marcus Paige, Joel Berry II, Kennedy Meeks, Theo Pinson and others, the Tar Heels have been in a near-constant state of playing at less than 100 percent since Kendall Marshall broke his wrist in the 2012 NCAA tournament.

Hell, we said it for a while with Duke last year while Jefferson's foot injury persisted for months until it was finally decided he wouldn't play again and would take a medical redshirt.

So, you're more than welcome to hope this team eventually gets healthy, but there's no guarantee.

"We can't go through the whole year with lingering injuries," Krzyzewski told ESPN.com's C.L. Brown earlier this month. "We're not the team we thought we would be at this time, but we're a good team. To be the team that we hope to be, we've got to be healthy. We're going to really be adamant about taking a longer time than a shorter time, no matter what."

Harry Giles has had multiple major knee surgeries and might be best served sitting out the season to avoid any further damage before he becomes a top-five pick in the NBA draft. We were told in late October that Jayson Tatum's foot injury would set him back just two weeks, but that was five full weeks ago, and he still hasn't played. And when is the last time we got any sort of update on Marques Bolden's lower-leg injury?

That trio has been day-to-day for nearly a month. How many more games can the Blue Devils afford to play with six guys before we start to worry about how fresh everyone will be in March?

Maybe this is a moot point a week from now. Perhaps Tatum and Bolden play in next Tuesday's "neutral-court" game against Florida at Madison Square Garden, and Duke finally starts to look like the team we were promised all summer long.

But if those young big men aren't back within the next seven days, it wouldn't kill the Blue Devils to risk a loss or two by occasionally subbing out their McDonald's All-Americans to give some minutes to the 4-star guys wasting away on their bench.

Because—let's be honest—these games don't mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Nonconference home winning streaks are nice, but national championship banners are nicer. And if there's any chance Duke won't have Giles, Tatum or Bolden for the NCAA tournament, it's going to wish it had saved some of these 40-minute workouts by their guards for March.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.