College Basketball
What Happened With Marques Bolden?
Expectations
May 19th, 2016, the day highly touted Marques Bolden committed to the Duke Blue Devils basketball program. A member of the freshman class that included Jayson Tatum, Harry Giles, and Frank Jackson among others. Additionally, Bolden was seen as the next great Duke center after Jahlil Okafor.
Injuries
Unfortunately for Bolden, injuries hit him hard out of the gate, keeping him sidelined from summer workouts. He missed a large part of non-conference play, eight games to be exact. He debuted for the Blue Devils December 3rd, 2016 at home against Maine. This was just the beginning of a career dominated by injuries. During January of 2018, right at the beginning of ACC play, Bolden missed a large stretch of games in January during his sophomore year, delaying the strides he was finally beginning to make.
2018 Summer practices
As team practices began in early August, Bolden impressed his teammates, but more importantly, his coaches. Coach Mike Krzyzewski spoke highly on the big man, telling media members that Bolden scored 18 points during a intra-squad scrimmage prior to the Duke Canadian Tour. For the first time in the Bolden era, it seemed like Bolden was finally full healthy and ready to dominate.
The Canadian Tour
Heading into the Canadian tour, Bolden was widely seen as the starting center for the upcoming season. It was also seen as an opportunity for the big man to prove that his struggles were over and that he was finally going to morph into what his five star rating suggested. The Canadian tour ended up doing the exact opposite of what everyone expected. Bolden failed to score in all three games. There were truly no positives coming from these three games, he will likely start the upcoming season on the bench, while Javin DeLaurier starts at the center position.
