DURHAM — There are some interesting stats from Duke’s four straight ACC wins to open the new year: Over that span, coach Jon Scheyer has mentioned junior guard Jaylen Blakes seven times, all without prompting from a media question, in his postgame press conference. That’s interesting, considering Blakes has scored a total of five points.
For the year, Blakes is averaging 2.8 points, 1.2 rebounds and less than one assist, steal and block per game. And he hasn’t been on a tear, stat-wise, since the calendar flipped to 2024. His numbers are down across the board — 1.3 points and 1.0 rebounds over the last four. Blake has made just one of the five shots he’s attempted over that stretch. He has more fouls (five) than rebounds (four) and nearly as many turnovers (two) as assists (assists).
And yet, in January alone, Scheyer has called Blakes a “guy that was key for us,” said he “was just making every right play again,” and asserted he “made some big plays.”
There’s no “Introduction to Hypnosis” class listed in Duke’s course catalog, so the only other explanation for the gap between what Scheyer is seeing and what the scorebook is saying is that Duke’s coach has lost touch with reality. That would explain some of his other decisions, including continuing to play big man Ryan Young despite the outcry on social media from Duke fans every time he heads to the scorer’s table to check-in.
A closer look indicates that perhaps there’s a method to Scheyer’s madness because it seems like good things tend to happen when Blakes and Young are in the game. They may not be making the shots or accumulating the stats, but when the two veterans take the floor, their teammates tend to, and the guys on the other team don’t.
“Every young player should watch him,” Scheyer said of Blakes after the Syracuse game. “He takes one shot, has three steals, and he was in for two of the critical moments in the first half just to keep us steady. And then we played four guards, and Jaylen was our 6-foot-1 four-man there for a second and was just getting every loose ball, every right play.”
After the comeback win against Georgia Tech, Scheyer said, “The biggest stretch, to me, was that second half when we got down 10. We subbed in Jaylen Blakes, we subbed Ryan Young in, and they just made it happen, especially in this building, and on the defensive end.”
The numbers bear that out. Over the four ACC games in January, Young has a plus/minus of plus-34, meaning Duke outscored opponents by 34 points when he was on the floor. Blakes has a plus-20.
Those trail the plus/minus figures of Duke’s starters. Kyle Filipowski is at plus-43 over the four games. Jeremy Roach and Jared McCain are plus-48. Mark Mitchell is plus-47, and Tyrese Proctor is plus-35.
Of course, they’ve done that in far more playing time. Duke outscored the four opponents by a total of 55 points, so the longer someone is on the floor, the higher their plus/minus should be. Proctor accumulated his plus-35 in 105 minutes of playing time, while Young got his plus-34 in just 49 minutes on the floor.
On a per-40-minute basis, the plus/minus list looks very different.
Then there’s the flip side of plus/minus — how the team does when the player isn’t on the floor. And Duke is worse when Young and Blakes are on the bench.
In 49 minutes with Young on the floor, Duke outscored opponents by 34 points. In the other 111 minutes without him, the Blue Devils outscored foes by just 21. On a 40-minute basis, the game is a 28-point blowout with Young on the floor and an eight-point slugfest with him on the bench. Similarly, Duke is more than 5½ points better on a full-game basis with Blakes on the floor than when he’s on the bench.
Call them glue guys if you want, but when Young and Blakes take off their warmups and head to the scorer’s table, it usually means good things are about to happen for the Blue Devils.
It’s a cliché to say that what Blakes and Young do doesn’t show up in the box score, but it’s also not true. What they do doesn’t show up in their line of the box score. But at the very top of every box score is the score of the game, and that’s the best way to measure their impact.
