DURHAM – The biggest drama for Duke in its final game before a break for final exams came with a pre-game announcement that point guard Jeremy Roach would be out.

Deploying a five-freshman starting lineup for the first time in program history, Duke rolled to an 82-55 win over Maryland Eastern Shore on Saturday at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

“We just wanted to prove a point,” said freshman guard Tyrese Proctor, who scored 15 points. “I thought we played as hard as we could. All of the five freshmen stuff — we just really wanted to get stops.

“That’s what we talked about early on, and offense is going to come.”

Offense came in spurts in the first half, and not to start the game. But No. 15 Duke (10-2) fired up after a few minutes — and after veterans Ryan Young, Jacob Grandison and Jaylen Blakes entered the game — and led by double digits for most of the last 32 minutes.

Freshman Dariq Whitehead — Roach’s replacement in the starting lineup — matched Proctor with a season-high 15 points. Kyle Filipowski ran his season-opening stretch to 12 games scoring in double figures with 14, most of which came in the last few minutes of the first half.

For Filipowski, that felt routine. For Whitehead, it was the latest incremental step to the No. 1 recruit regaining his form after missing most of the preseason with a fracture in his right foot.

“It’s more so a comfortability thing,” Whitehead said. “Every game, I feel like I’m getting more and more comfortable and the game is slowing down. When I first got out there, everything was so fast.”

UMES (3-7) was all that stood between Duke and its first significant break of the season; Duke enters a nine-day span between its next game, which will be its first road game of the season, at Wake Forest on Dec. 20.

This break comes at a good time for Duke; the Blue Devils played their first 12 games in a span of 34 days, never going more than four days between games.

“It’s definitely going to be weird,” freshman Mark Mitchell said of this upcoming stretch. “We’ve had a game pretty much every three days for the last month. Some of us are banged up, Jeremy’s hurt, I’ve been under the weather for the last couple of days.

“Getting us healthy, getting right academically is going to be good.”

Saturday’s game was never going to be the ultimate test of Duke’s defense, but it’s worth noting again that Duke held its opponent under 60 points. Through 12 games, that’s happened seven times; the Blue Devils have only given up 70 or more twice, in the win over Ohio State and in the loss to Purdue.

Call it a curveball that the Blue Devils had to play this game without Roach, who was on the bench in a polo and spent most of the game in the ear of the assistant coaches.

There was a silver lining, too, under less-than-ideal circumstances.

“It’s great having Jeremy out there, but also we’ve got to learn to play without him at times, too,” Filipowski said, “just to be prepared for any situation.”

Roach didn’t just miss a game for the first time this season; it’s the junior point guard’s first missed game in his career (74 games total).

Duke’s lone captain suffered a right toe injury two weeks ago against Purdue. He finished that game and played 33, 28 and 37 minutes against Ohio State, Boston College and Iowa, respectively, since that game — including a career-high-matching 22-point game against the Hawkeyes — since the initial injury.

“He hasn’t said one word, he’s been battling,” Scheyer said of Roach. “I actually had to go to him, talk to him about it, because he’s a true warrior out there.

“It’s not right for him to continue to do that.”

In Roach’s absence, Duke went to an all-freshman starting lineup. Whitehead started for the first time, along with regular starters Proctor, Mitchell, Filipowski and Dereck Lively II, who had a stat-stuffing eight-point, nine-rebound, five-block performance.

The Freshman-5 didn’t get off to the crispest of starts.

Duke had more turnovers (three) than points (two) in the first four minutes.

“We talked about it before we went out, we’re like, ‘Listen, we’re five freshmen, everyone is going to say whatever they want about us. But we’ve gotta lock in together, talk, be on the same page,’” Filipowski said. “I don’t think we did that in the first few minutes of the game, but we got better going down the stretch.”

After scoring on one of their first six possessions, the Blue Devils scored on their next six possessions to build an early 16-4 lead. In that 14-2 spurt, five players scored — Proctor was the only one who had more than one field goal, hitting a floater and a 3.

Filipowski didn’t score for the first 14 minutes of the game and by halftime was the only player in double-figure scoring. He scored 12 of Duke’s last 14 points, including a couple of three-point plays, as he went to work on post-ups on the low block.

Duke stretched the lead to 24 about five minutes into the second half and UMES got it down to 17 before the Blue Devils accelerated one more time. The lead grew to 30 with about eight minutes left.

The biggest negative for the Blue Devils was a season-high 19 turnovers — as a reminder: Roach was missed — which turned into 14 points for UMES. The Hawks committed 18 turnovers, which Duke turned into 23 points.

“For us, 18 assists, 19 turnovers, it wasn’t the prettiest,” Scheyer said. “But overall, thought our effort was good. I thought different guys stepped up.”

TIP-INS: Freshman Jaden Schutt had played once in the past seven games, getting a few minutes at the end of the Boston College game, before entering in the first half against the Hawks. He drained a step-back 3 in the first half and hit another two 3s in the second half, without a missing a shot. … Duke outrebounded UMES 42-20, the largest rebounding margin since outrebounding Delaware by 22 in the fourth game of the season. … Carlos Boozer was one of eight people honored at halftime, having been inducted into Duke’s Hall of Fame on Friday night. Boozer’s sons— Class of 2025 recruits Cameron Boozer and Cayden Boozer — weren’t in attendance, but one Crazie yelled, “Send your kids to us” when Carlos Boozer was at midcourt with athletics director Nina King.