There is optimism that Duke will have Maliq Brown back on the court at some point this season.

The Blue Devils just don’t know when that could be.

“We … did all the imaging, positive news. There’s nothing abnormal that you aren’t ready to see with a dislocated shoulder,” coach Jon Scheyer said via Zoom on Thursday. “I think we’re optimistic that we can get him back this season.

“I think the hardest part is a lot of it has to do with his stability which, right now, he’s pretty sore still. We have to see how much time that takes.”

Scheyer added that Brown won’t play “in the next week or so.” Duke plays Illinois in New York on Saturday night, and goes to Miami on Tuesday.

Brown suffered the injury late in the first half of Duke’s 80-62 victory at Virginia. On a play that seemed routine enough — certainly one we’ve become accustomed to seeing from Brown — he reached to deflect a pass and immediately recoiled and doubled over, grabbing his left shoulder.

Duke has five games left in the regular season and a one-game lead on Clemson and Louisville in the ACC standings. The Blue Devils hold the head-to-head tiebreaker with Louisville, by way of their win against the Cardinals back in December, but Clemson holds the head-to-head edge as the only ACC team to have beaten Duke.

“I’d say it’s a few weeks,” Scheyer said. “But Maliq will do whatever he can to get back on the floor. We’re happy that we didn’t see anything crazy in there.”

Traditional counting stats for Brown will never tell the story of his impact. He’s averaging 2.5 points and 4.1 rebounds per game, and has 33 assists and 30 steals in 21 games. Per EvanMiya, Brown is Duke’s second-best defensive player behind Cooper Flagg, with a Defensive Bayesian Performance Rating of 3.16 (DBPR incorporates a player’s individual efficiency stats and on-court play-by-play impact).

The Blue Devils have been without Brown for five games this season. He missed a game in December against Incarnate Word because of a toe injury, and then missed four in January with a sprained knee.

Duke went 5-0 in those games, though the last two played without Brown were games at Wake Forest and against N.C. State, both of which needed second-half comebacks. It’s worth noting: In both of those games, Duke went to a 2-3 zone in the second half to address some defensive problems in those games.

Without Brown, it means the Blue Devils are reliant on freshman Patrick Ngongba II and transfer Mason Gillis for minutes at the 5-position behind starter Khaman Maluach.

Ngongba, for a freshman who missed the preseason because of a lingering injury from high school, has taken encouraging steps forward in his development. He had a season-best eight points against Virginia; in the Wake Forest game, he played a season-high 21 minutes.

“He just has taken coaching at such a high level,” Scheyer said of Ngongba. “An injury can happen early in the season or you’re not playing as much … that’s when relationships are formed. That’s when trust is formed.

“And so, Pat took everything that our staff told him he had to do. He addressed it, he worked at it, and I think our staff has just done a great job of bringing him along.”

Gillis is 6-6, 225, but makes up for his lack of size at the 5-position with some strength and grittiness as a fifth-year player. With him at that position, Duke is also able to play some five-out offense, as he’s more of a 3-point threat than any of Duke’s other three centers.