Duke Football’s 2024 recruiting class has mostly stayed intact despite the coaching change, will it stay that way?
Kyle Filipowski had his best season stat line on Tuesday, going for 28 points, 12 rebounds, 8 assists, and 3 blocks to lead No. 21 Duke against Hofstra.
Filipowski’s eight assists set a new career high, and his four three-pointers matched an old career high. He shot 10-16 from the field, 4-7 from three-point range, and 4-5 from the free-throw line. The only drawback was that he turned the ball over seven times.
While the figures are outstanding, it is the manner in which he obtained them that stands out.
Some of his points simply came from being bigger and stronger going to the rim than anyone Hofstra could counter with, especially down the stretch of the first half when Hofstra led by five points. Duke force-fed Filipowski on the block and he just bullied his way into buckets. It was timely and a key to turning the momentum of the game, but it’s not translatable to the next level, so it’s not particularly relevant for that projection him toward the basket where Filipowski’s bigger defender was blocking that path.
Filipowski read this action quite well. He got out of it a couple times and even used his guard’s dribble. The majority of these cutters resulted in easy finishes, taking advantage of Hofstra’s lack of rim protection against a player of Filipowski’s size and skill.
Filipowski’s shooting and passing were the two things that stood out to scouts the most. Both of them are based on his assessment from his high school years.
Many national media members who hadn’t watched him play enough before labelling him a shooter after he graduated from high school. As a freshman, he shot 28% from behind the three-point line. This year, he’s taking the same number of shots (3.4 per game), but his percentage has risen to 32%. That is still insufficient. But, if Tuesday’s performance is any indicator, he can make spot-up threes with room and rhythm, as well as the occasional pick-and-pop three. These are the two shots that matter when predicting his NBA potential.
His first three of the game came on a pick-and-pop in the middle of the floor. He caught the ball in rhythm, had plenty of time, then added a couple of microseconds to his advantage with a clever pass fake to the corner. Later in the game, Duke capitalised on a Jeremy Roach and Mark Mitchell pick-and-roll in the middle of the floor, with Filipowski serving as a corner spacer (again, very translatable for NBA reasons). In that spot, he made two step-in threes. The first occurred when Mitchell short-rolled into the lane before kicking to him. The second came when Roach drove baseline and straight hit Filipowski. His final three of the night occurred once more while Mitchell was establishing a sideline ball-screen and Filipowski was used as a spacer. This time he let it fly from around the top of the key.
Duke continues to play without Tyrese Proctor. That means they’re asking Filipowski and Jeremy Roach to assist in creating offence for others. Filipowski demonstrated that he was capable of doing so. And this comes as no surprise to those of us who saw him play a lot in high school. In fact, it was shocking that he only averaged 1.6 assists and 2.6 turnovers last year.
The Duke coaching staff has reportedly spent time working with him on passing out of a double-team in the post. That is relevant for Duke’s future this season, but perhaps less so for Filipowski’s NBA stock as he’s unlikely to be much of a low-post anchor at that level.
What is relevant is his ability to grab and go off the defensive glass and play out of various actions, whether that’s off the elbow or in dribble hand-offs. Scouts had to be encouraged by some of the passes they saw last night. It was the quickness of his decisions and the right reads that stood out in the game more than the specific actions he was operating in. There were multiple examples of patience and poise when his back was to the basket. There were other examples of his ability to collapse a defense and kick it out to open shoots without committing a charge.
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