Jon Scheyer partially blamed Kentucky's comeback on player cramps

If you head on over to ESPN, the “top headline” won’t be about how Kentucky beat Duke in the Champions Classic. It won’t be about Mark Pope‘s first high-profile win in his first high-profile matchup. It won’t even be about Cooper Flagg‘s 26-point, 12-rebound performance for Duke.

Nope. Instead, the “top headline” centers around what Duke head coach Jon Scheyer said in his postgame press conference. Cramping has been an issue for the Blue Devils so far this season and Tuesday night was no different. Scheyer says it was a reason why Kentucky was able to mount a comeback.

“We’ve got a long season to go,” Scheyer said. “I feel more optimistic tonight losing than I did even before because you find out in this game the character of your team, the heart that they have, and this team’s got a lot of heart. We’re missing Khaman (Maluach) — I think we were up nine when Khaman started cramping in the first half. Sion (James) too. There was a huge sequence for us Sion got injured and they hit a 3. It was a double whammy.”

What Scheyer didn’t mention was that, with Duke up by nine and 2:28 left in the first half, Maluach got tagged with his second personal foul. He went to the bench and did not return until the second half. Maluach was clearly dealing with some sort of pain throughout the second half, which limited his availability and impact down the stretch. In that ESPN “top headline” article, Jeff Borzello reported that Maluach was battling both an injured knee (which happened early in the second half after Andrew Carr landed on him) and cramps after halftime.

“Look, it’s concerning,” Scheyer said of his players cramping. “I think part of it is we have young bodies. I think that’s part of it, where we’ve got to help these guys. Again, we’re not trying to just dip our toes in the water. We need Cooper to play a lot and Khaman.”

Did Maluach’s absence help Kentucky down the stretch? Of course. Whenever a 7-foot-2 future lottery pick is out of the game, it’s going to make life a little bit easier.

But Kentucky was already trending in the right direction to start the second half. A simpler explanation would be that the Wildcats’ veterans wore down Duke’s freshmen as the game toiled along. Flagg and Kon Knueppel combined to shoot just 6-20 in the second half while Caleb Foster was 0-4. Duke turned the ball over six times after recording just one in the first 20 minutes. Pope made the necessary adjustments to pull off the win.

Maybe Scheyer should work a few more bananas into the pregame meal.