Duke basketball players back on campus to begin COVID-19 protocol
While dozens of other Duke athletes preceded them in a return to campus, the Blue Devils’ basketball players are finally back in Durham preparing for what they hope will be a season full of games this winter.
With Duke’s football, soccer, cross country, field hockey and volleyball teams having arrived on campus on staggered dates over the last three weeks of July, the men’s and women’s basketball players reported on schedule Sunday.
Doing so meant immediate symptoms checks and testing for the coronavirus, followed by quarantine at the Washington Duke Inn until the results are received.
It’s the first time Duke’s basketball teams, both men and women, have been on campus together since March when the pandemic brought a sudden end to their seasons before the NCAA tournament could be played.
Duke’s women’s players have a new coaching staff, with Kara Lawson having been hired last month to replace Joanne P. McCallie as head coach.
The men’s players, of course, have the same coaching staff ready to lead them once they are declared free of coronavirus.
Mike Krzyzewski’s 40th season at Duke ended with a 25-6 record. His 41st Duke team returns senior guard Jordan Goldwire and 6-7 junior forward Joey Baker along with sophomore forwards Wendell Moore and Matthew Hurt.
The six-man freshman class, rated No 2 nationally by ESPN, includes 6-8 forward Jalen Johnson, 6-3 guard D.J. Steward, 6-2 guard Jeremy Roach, 6-8 forward Jaemyn Brakefield, 6-7 forward Henry Coleman and 7-0 center Mark Williams.
Duke also added a graduate transfer, 6-10 center Patrick Tapé of Charlotte, from Columbia.
The players held virtual meetings with the coaching staff and will have other online meetings with athletic department staff while they are awaiting test results or, in the case of a positive test, while in isolation.
“It’s exciting,” Baker said in a statement released by the school. “Obviously things are different and there are different guidelines we have to follow to keep everyone safe. But it’s just great to be back around and see all the guys that I haven’t seen in five months, meet the new teammates and hopefully get back to work pretty soon.”
Once cleared, Baker and his teammates are scheduled to go through individual medical testing this week. Those tests include MRI screens along with biomechanical assessments and Vox2 Max testing, a cardiovascular test which assesses how much oxygen a person uses during exercise.
Combine-style testing of basketball skills are set for the end of the week.
The basketball players arrived two days after Duke’s first report on the COVID-19 testing done on the athletes, coaches and staff who began arriving on campus July 12.
The school said it ran 700 tests covering 309 athletes, coaches and staff with 25 people showing positive for COVID-19. As of Friday, only nine athletes remained in isolation with the other 16 having presumed to be recovered.
All of the 25 athletes were either asymptomatic or showed mild symptoms.
The majority of the positive cases were the result of the athletes arriving on campus already infected. The school’s protocol requested the athletes quarantine with their families for 14 days prior to traveling to Durham.
The school has not halted any of its offseason athletic activities as a result of those 25 cases.
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 1:37 PM with the headline "Duke basketball players back on campus to begin COVID-19 protocol."