Duke freshman Dariq Whitehead OUT vs. North Carolina

Duke basketball will once again be without one of its premier freshmen against North Carolina. According to the school’s newspaper, the Duke Chronicle, Blue Devil forward Dariq Whitehead will miss his third straight game due to a leg injury. Here was the Chronicle’s report, which they posted to Twitter:

“Freshman forward Dariq Whitehead is out for @DukeMBB against North Carolina, per release. It will be the third-straight missed game for Whitehead, who went down with a leg sprain Jan. 23 at Virginia Tech. Scheyer had left door open for his return at Thursday availability.”

During last Monday’s loss at Virginia Tech, Whitehead went down with an apparent lower leg injury. As Whitehead went up for the ball on a play in the second half, he appeared to come down awkwardly on his left leg. After the Hokies scored on the play, Whitehead quickly hobbled back to the Blue Devil side of the court to be looked at by the trainers. As he sat court-side, the Duke freshman appeared to be in a tremendous amount of pain and was eventually ruled out for the rest of the game.

A few days later and it seemed Whitehead would be back in the lineup at some point soon, though Blue Devils head coach Jon Scheyer says he’d miss at least one more game. Well, after today, he’ll now have missed the last three since injuring the leg. A concerning development that the timeline keeps getting pushed back — however, Coach Scheyer remains optimistic about a timely return.

Regardless, no Whitehead in UNC-Duke, Act 1. The rookie was averaging 8.4 points and 2.3 rebounds per game before going down.