Bryson Howard, we suspect, will come into Duke a bit underrated. After all, look who else is in his class: Cameron Williams, Deron Rippey, and Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje.
Howard has a lifetime of basketball education from his father Josh, who started for four years at Wake Forest and was not necessarily fond of Duke.
Fortunately, he seems to have gotten over it.
Young Bryson is athletic, to be sure, but he didn’t make the McDonald’s game, and he wasn’t universally seen as an elite prospect. Our guess is that’s a serious mistake.
It’s not just the lifetime of lessons sucked up from his father, who was a very good NBA player. It has more to do with what we think we’ve seen of his mentality.
Because Howard is a dog.
He gets after it on defense. And when you pair him with Dame Sarr, that’s going to be an absolute nightmare for people to go up against. Toss in another perimeter defender – Foster, Boozer, or Rippey – and that’s as imposing a trio as you’re going to find.
Sarr’s offense had a lot of flaws as a freshman, not least of which was that he struggled to drive to the basket.
However, his on-ball defense is spectacular. At times, it was breathtaking. There should be a better word, but we just can’t find it. But watching him hound the ball is a thing of beauty.
Can you imagine if you look out and you see Sarr on one side and Howard on the other, and these two guys have just made it clear they’re gonna hound your ball handlers into oblivion? That’s going to be fun.
We’re not sure who to compare Howard to as a freshman, but possibly Justise Winslow. People might also compare Howard to Brian Davis, although we think his ceiling is higher than Davis. But he could be that same kind of a player for however long he’s at Duke.
Offensively, we haven’t seen as much Howard yet as we’d like. However, he has an NBA tutor at home, so he hit the lottery there. You may have noticed over the years that Duke likes to recruit guys who come from basketball families. Last year, we saw this with the Boozer twins, Nikolas Khamenia, and Patrick Ngongba; last year, we had Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel.
So while it’s still too early to say how next year’s minutes will be divided, Jon Scheyer has made it clear that defense comes first. And on that basis, we are pretty sure that Howard is going to get minutes.
If it turns out that is offensive game is equally developed, Duke is gonna have a monster on his hands.
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