Failure of Leadership at the Heart of Duke's Downward Spiral

This Duke team was supposed to make history.

Despite playing in possibly the most loaded conference ever, many were willing to cautiously discuss 40-0 potential. Harry Giles was going to be the next Chris Webber. Jayson Tatum, Marques Bolden and Frank Jackson were going to join Giles in constructing the greatest collection of freshmen since the Fab Five. Grayson Allen was the consensus pick for preseason national player of the year.

It was only going to be a matter of time before Mike Krzyzewski became the all-time leader in Final Four appearances, reaching the national semifinals for a 13th time in the process of likely securing his sixth national championship. Among the 11 college basketball experts at CBS Sports, Sports Illustrated and Bleacher Report, the Blue Devils received six preseason projections to win it all and were a unanimous pick to reach the Final Four.

Two-and-a-half months later, Coach K is nowhere to be found, three-fourths of the stud freshmen missed at least the first 25 percent of the regular season because of injury, Allen is playing like a man who wasn't prepared to have the weight of the world on his shoulders and Duke is out to its worst seven-game start in ACC play in more than two decades.

Luke Kennard is having a sensational sophomore season, transforming from a player who wasn't even expected to start this year into one who B/R's Jonathan Wasserman rates as the 36th-best NBA draft prospect. His breakout year kept Duke afloat for awhile. It just hasn't been enough for sustained team success in ACC play.

This team still might make history but not the good kind.

Over the past 32 years since the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams, the preseason No. 1 team in the AP Top 25 poll has posted an average record of 31.3 wins and 5.3 losses. More than half (17) made it to the Final Four. All but one (2013-14 Kentucky) received a No. 5 seed or better.

In other words, if Duke doesn't figure things out soon, we could be looking at the most disappointing preseason No. 1 team of the three-point era, possibly of all time.

That may seem like a harsh assessment after 20 games of what could be a 40-game season, but that's the reality Duke is facing. With no point guard, no go-to guy and no legendary head coach—not to mention the difficulty of the remaining schedule—it's growing harder by the day to believe the Blue Devils will be able to turn it around.

Let's start with Allen, since he's all anyone wants to talk about these days.

Grant Halverson/Getty Images

Something is clearly not right with the preseason favorite for top awards.

Maybe it's a physical thing. He missed a game earlier this year because of a nagging toe injury that first developed in the loss to Kansas. And in this past Saturday's game against Miami, he suffered a nasty-looking finger injury on his non-shooting hand. It's reasonable to assume he has other undisclosed bumps and bruises, too, considering his commitment to attacking the basket with reckless abandon.

It might also be a mental thing.

After the third tripping incident in the span of one calendar year and the subsequent backlash for it, perhaps he doesn't trust himself. Even if he isn't worried about tripping again, he doesn't look confident in his shot. Allen missed (at least) three wide-open jumpers from the corner in the loss to North Carolina State—shots he made in his sleep last season—and did so with the body language to suggest he was praying they would go in rather than trusting that they would.

Whatever the cause of Allen's struggles, the effect on the team is obvious.

Scenario	Games	Average O-Rating	FG%	3P%
2015-16 Season	36	124.9	46.6	41.7
2016-17 Duke Wins by 11+	9	127.0	46.3	40.7
Any Other 2016-17 Outcome	9	95.7	32.7	21.8

*Allen did not play in the 39-point win over Maine because of injury and missed the 14-point loss to Virginia Tech because of suspension.

There's a case to be made that Duke's problems start and end with Allen. If preseason POY candidates like Josh Hart and Frank Mason had splits like those, Villanova and Kansas would be struggling, too.

(Also worth noting: Amile Jefferson did not play in two of Duke's five losses and had three of his least efficient performances in the other Ls. Matt Jones has finally stepped up his game over the past few weeks, and a lot of Duke's woes would disappear if its other veteran leaders followed suit.)

Of course, part of the reason Allen and Duke are floundering is because he has been forced to become the de facto point guard, which isn't in his nature. Derryck Thornton was Duke's weakest link last season, but he was also a critical one. At least he ran the offense for 26 minutes per game, allowing Allen to play off the ball and be more selective about when and where to attack.

Allen losing Thornton has the reverse effect of what's going on at UCLA. Last year, Bryce Alford was the primary ball-handler for the Bruins, and his offensive production was good-not-great. Now with Lonzo Ball running the show and Alford solely serving as a shooting guard, Alford's effective field-goal percentage has skyrocketed from 47.4 to 63.8.

Ball is 10 times the freshmen phenom that Thornton was, so Alford's progression is more pronounced than Allen's regression has been, but the fact remains that Allen can't be as effective as a scorer unless someone else is running the offense.

And therein lies the true problem for these Blue Devils. They have so many alpha dogs that they actually don't have any. And when the going gets tough, it's every man for himself.

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Over the final 11 minutes of Monday's loss to North Carolina State, they scored 21 points with one measly assist—this after recording assists on 15 of their first 23 buckets. In the losses to Florida State, Louisville and Virginia Tech, they assisted on just 26 of their 73 field goals—a 35.6 percent assist rate that would rank dead last in the nation by a mile if that's how they played every game.

Jayson Tatum has been the biggest offender. In addition to having four assists against 12 turnovers in his last four games, he isn't even letting teammates record assists on his buckets. Of his 21 made field goals during that stretch, only eight have come with an assist. All five of his three-pointers have included dimes, but that means 13 of his 16 two-pointers have been unassisted.

That'd be fine and dandy if he were a more efficient scorer, but Tatum is putting up numbers that are almost identical to what Jaylen Brown did last year with California. That may endear him to NBA scouts in search of a guy who can create for himself, but it's not a compliment at the collegiate level.

Player (Season)	%Shots	2P%	3P%	eFG%
Jaylen Brown (2015-16)	28.7	48.2	29.4	47.1
Jayson Tatum (2016-17)	28.6	48.6	29.5	47.4

The Golden Bears were supposed to be a Final Four candidate last year, but between injuries to key players (Tyrone Wallace and Jabari Bird) and a willingness to let Brown try to be The Guy, they stumbled to a No. 4 seed and a first-round exit from the NCAA tournament.

Could Duke be destined for a similar fate?

The only reason Tatum has a better O-rating (104.6) than Brown had (95.4) is because the former is shooting 84.1 percent from the free-throw line and the latter only shot 65.4 percent.

Even with that free-throw stroke, though, Tatum has the worst effective field-goal percentage among all Blue Devils not named Bolden. Yet he's the one taking the highest percentage of shots, at least tying for the team lead in field-goal attempts in each of the last six games.

Because they don't have a leader on the court, arguably the last guy who should be in that position is claiming it for himself, and the greatest coach in the history of the sport isn't around to make things right.

If Duke had been at full health for the first two months of the season, losing Krzyzewski's presence on the sidelines for a few weeks probably wouldn't have been a big deal. Maybe the Blue Devils wouldn't be quite as good under Jeff Capel, but the guy spent nine seasons as a head coach and has been K's right-hand man for the past half-decade. One month of him driving a vehicle on cruise control should have worked out fine.

But this team never had a chance to get Krzyzewski's personal touch. When he left, Giles was four games into his return from a 13-month hiatus from basketball, Bolden was scoreless in games decided by fewer than 39 points, and the latest installment in Allen's tripping trilogy was all anyone wanted to talk about. The Blue Devils somehow cobbled together a 13-2 record on K's watch, but there's no question there was a ton of work left to be done with this team.

At this point, here's the $64,000 question: Is there enough time left for this team to sniff its world-beating potential?

Is banning the team from the locker room the necessary fix, or is it a Hail Mary move?

We're not ready to put "Duke" and "bubble" in the same sentence yet—a loss at Wake Forest on Saturday might change that—so the Blue Devils have about seven weeks left to hit their ceiling. And at this time three years ago, Kentucky was in the exact same boat, sitting at 15-5 overall, reeling from a couple of bad conference losses and holding a tournament resume that desperately needed a makeover. That Wildcats team finally put it all together in March and made a run to the national championship game.

However, that team had the entire season to work together. It wasn't until Willie Cauley-Stein's ankle injury in the Sweet 16 that the injury bug took any toll on the Wildcats.

If you count Coach K's back surgery as an injury, Duke has played just one game all season at full strength—beating Georgia Tech 110-57. Even if you don't count Coach K, the primary eight Blue Devils have only appeared together in four games. As far as rotations and role allocations are concerned, it might as well still be November for Duke, even though February begins on Wednesday.

On the one hand, that's a great reason to buy stock in a Duke renaissance. Giles is just now starting to look a little bit comfortable on his own legs out there. Bolden has emerged as a Plumlee-esque energy guy in the past two games. With that duo making strides, if and when Jefferson and Allen get fully healthy and play like we know they can, Duke could be borderline unstoppable.

But at the same time, pointing to a combined average of 10.0 points and 8.5 rebounds in two late-January games as improvement for the No. 2 and No. 8 overall recruits in this year's class, according to Scout.com, shows how far this team is from its ceiling. Putting faith in Jefferson's foot returning to full health after it was the reason for his medical redshirt last year could be a mistake. And we're in uncharted territory with Allen's fall from grace, in which there's no telling whether things will get better or worse from here.

Three months ago, Duke vs. the field was a fun debate with no definitive answer. There's still a chance the Blue Devils could win it all, but only an irrational fan wouldn't bet the field today.

Stats are courtesy of WarrenNolan.com, KenPom.com and Sports-Reference.com.

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