If not for the presence of Oklahoma guard Trae Young (and, to a lesser extent, Arizona big man DeAndre Ayton), Duke freshman Marvin Bagley III would have a real case as the best first-year player in the world of college basketball. The talented big man is averaging 21.2 points and 11.4 rebounds per game on a top-five team in the nation and that would normally be a fantastic recipe for, at a minimum, Freshman of the Year honors in the sport.
However, Bagley III’s season has taken a bit of a strange turn and, on Wednesday evening, he will miss his fourth consecutive game with what the Duke program is calling a “mild right knee sprain.”
NEWS: Freshman forward Marvin Bagley III will miss today's game vs. Louisville as he continues to recover from a mild right knee sprain.
— Duke Men’s Basketball (@DukeMBB) February 21, 2018
Duke remains a double-digit favorite Louisville even without Bagley III in the lineup, but the Blue Devils tossing in “mild” with regard to the injury is interesting in many ways and, in short, it could be an accurate description. After all, Duke has every incentive to ensure Bagley III is healthy when March Madness arrives and, even if the team falls a seed line or two in his absence, every goal is on the table for one of the country’s best squads.
Still, Bagley III is regularly projected as a top-five pick in the upcoming 2018 NBA Draft and any sort of knee ailment could sound alarm bells for future evaluation. At the moment, there is nothing to suggest that this is a serious or lasting injury, and Bagley III has put together a sizable workload (averaging 33.0 minutes per game) during what everyone expects to be his one and only college hoops campaign. In the end, though, every game missed by Bagley III will be increasingly notable and not even a “mild” distinction can stop that.
