Top 10 Recruit Considering Duke
Last week Rodney Purvis de-committed from Louisville and has said that Duke, along with Kentucky, NC State and Louisville are among the schools he is looking into.
The high school junior guard de-committed after the Louisville assistant who recruited him, Tim Fuller, joined Frank Haith’s staff in Missouri.
“I had built a very good relationship with Coach Fuller during the recruiting process,” Purvis said. “With the coaching changes at Louisville, I was going to have to start building new relationships with the staff.”
“My family and I talked it over and decided that if I was starting to build a new relationship that I should consider other schools as well.”
The 6-foot-4 guard from Raleigh’s Upper Room Christian Academy averaged 25.4 points per game last season for a team made up mostly of freshmen and sophomores.
Upper Room coach Avie Lester said Purvis “emphasized to me that he has never said that he would not go to Louisville.”
“My family and I talked it over and decided that if I was starting to build a new relationship that I should consider other schools as well.”
This is good news for Duke as Purvis (#1 SG on ESPN.com) would be a great addition to Rasheed Sulaimon in the 2012-13 Duke incoming class.
The two shooting guards would be needed in the future, with Austin Rivers most likely a one-and-doner, Seth Curry and Andre Dawkins seniors that season, someone will need to pick up the slack going forward.
Is Alex Murphy Joining Duke A Good Thing? No.
Alex Murphy has decided to enroll at Duke a year early.
But is it the right move? I don’t think so.
Instead of becoming a Blue Devil for the 2012-13 season, he joins Austin Rivers, Michael Gbinije, Marshall Plumlee and Quinn Cook as part of the 2011-12 incoming class.
The 6-foot-8 small forward has been called a ‘clone’ of Kyle Singler and will look slide into starting rotation in his place, but will he be able to carve out enough minutes?
Murphy is going to have plenty of competition to get into the starting lineup as next years Duke’s team looks even deeper than this past year. Is his decision to join the team actually good for Duke? How much playing time is going to be available for him?
At the point, Quinn Cook and Tyler Thornton will split all the minutes, as the only two point guards on the roster.
The two and three positions will be filled by Austin Rivers, Seth Curry and Andre Dawkins, who should command about 70-75 minutes at the 2 and 3.
On the inside, Ryan Kelly, Mason & Miles Plumlee will each get 20-25 minutes, as Coach K prefers to play guys who know the system and their roles over younger, untested, undersized players.
That leaves about 20 minutes per game for everyone else on the team. Rising sophomore Josh Hairston should see an increase over his six minutes a game. Then, there are the other freshmen, Michael Gbinije and Marshall Plumlee, both of who should see some time on the floor because of their unique talents. Marshall as a true center and Gbinije as Duke’s only swing player.
I think Murphy would have done himself -and the Blue Devils- better by remaining part of the 2012-13 class, as, by then, the inside would be less crowded. Miles will graduate, Mason will probably leave after his junior season, that would leave Kelly and Marshall Plumlee inside. Murphy would have a better chance of getting bigger minutes next season, as opposed to this season.
With him entering Duke, its just going to clog things up in the rotation. Although the team could be 11 deep, Coach K has never played that many. By the end of the season he is usually down to 8 or 9. That will mean someone, maybe even two someones, will not see as much time as they expect, so don’t be surprised if someone transfers before the end of the season, say around mid-January after the first two weeks of ACC play.
As much as having another talented player on the team is a good thing, sometimes having too much talent can be a bad thing if it forces people onto the bench, or to another school.
Will Duke Be Able To ‘Flip The Switch?’
Entering the ACC Tournament Duke has dropped 2 of its last 3 games, both on the road. One to a team playing for its NCAA life, the other to the hottest team in the ACC. Dropping two of the last three is not the way anyone wants to head into their conference tournament.
The recent losses have worried some Duke fans. Like me.
Some people think that Duke has yet to play its best ball. I beg to differ. I think they are past playing their best ball. They haven’t really made any progress on the offensive end in the past few games. They’ve been static and don’t seem to have the same toughness they did last year.
Right now, teams need to be playing better than they did the game before, or at least show some signs or growth. Last year, that was true of the Duke Blue Devils. Not this year. Yes, they have senior leadership, but so did the 2005-06 team and look what happened to them.
There are similarities with this years team and that team, which was led by seniors JJ Redick & Shelden Williams. That team hit their peak too early, lost a couple of games late in the season. They were able to rebound and win the ACC Tournament, but then they were bounced by LSU in the Sweet Sixteen because they did not have enough scoring options.
Every game (save the Georgia Tech game) since the first UNC game has been pretty much the same. Let Nolan Smith drive the ball into the lane, maybe he’ll shoot, maybe he’ll look for someone on the perimeter. That’s about it. Sometimes Kyle SIngler will get the ball, run around a screen and take a shot.
There doesn’t seem to be an effort to get the big men involved in the offense. Unlike last year, Duke does not have three guys to take care of the scoring game-in and game-out. During last years’ run, Duke could afford to have Brian Zoubek and Lance Thomas do nothing but rebound and play defense because Jon Scheyer was out on the perimeter with Smith & Singler.
This years team does not have that luxury. Smith and Singler will get their 40 points a game, but there is no consistent third scorer to help them out. Seth Curry has been the ‘third option’ most often, but he’s disappeared almost as frequently (Virginia Tech anyone?). Andre Dawkins has been more cold than hot recently. Ryan Kelly has all but vanished and the Plumlee’s can each play good games, but never at the same time.
All of these factors give me a sick feeling that, one, this team will not be able to win the ACC Tournament; and two, that getting knocked out in the Sweet 16 is more likely than a trip to Houston.
It would be nice if they come out and flip a switch in the ACC Tourney. They have a great opportunity to get off to a good start in their first game against either NC State or Maryland, they’ve beat both teams twice this season. After that they will most likely play either Florida State or Virginia Tech, two teams who have shown the ability to beat the Blue Devils this season.
I know that Coach K is a Hall-of-Fame coach and Duke has won 9 of the past 12 ACC Tournaments, but its not as easy as ‘flipping a switch’ once the post season starts. There needs to be growth, signs that something is happening and people are growing into their roles.
I am not seeing that right now and it has me worried. I hope I am wrong and that Duke will be able to turn in on, win the ACC Tournament. If that happens, I will gladly eat crow.
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Andre Dawkins Is Not Going Anywhere
There have been rumblings from Duke fans who fear that Andre Dawkins may transfer because he has lost all confidence in his game.
While it is true that his minutes have declined as the season has progressed, but that is true of all Duke teams. Coach K always shortens his bench at the end of the year and Dawkins is the fourth guard on the depth chart. Since his ball handling skills are the worst of the four, he’s not going to get much time.
His shots may not be falling right now, but you will never hear any rumblings from teammates of coaches that he should stop shooting. What’s the adage for shooters? That they have to keep shooting to shoot themselves out of the slump. He just needs to get his head straight.
Its true that he may be playing poorly and his confidence may seem shaken, but I don’t think he is going to transfer. Players who have transferred from Duke have played a lot less than Dawkins.
Lets check some of the recent players who have transferred from Duke:
Olek Czyz – 112 minutes in 19 games over a year & a quarter
Elliot Williams – 563 minutes over a full season
Taylor King – 330 minutes over a full season
Jamal Boykin – 100 minutes over full season & 3 games
Eric Boateng – 50 minutes over a full season
Dawkins played 477 minutes his freshman year and another 654 this season. That’s more than anyone on the list except for Williams, and he transferred for personal reason. The others learned that the Duke system really wasn’t for them; or those who came back for a second season, that they wouldn’t be seeing that much playing time, so they left. (Apparently the entire college experience wasn’t for Taylor King.)
Let me tell you a story of another Duke two guard who had his confidence shaken at the end of his sophomore season. He lost his starting job to a freshman and his head wasn’t on straight, not because of poor shooting, but because he ran full speed into a pick and nearly knocked himself out. His name was Nolan Smith.
I’m not saying he’s going to be the next Nolan Smith, but I don’t think he’s going to leave because of a down swing in his game. He faced larger adversities that just having his minutes cut (last years’ car accident) and he has rebounded. Also remember, he’s just 19 years old.
I don’t think that the Duke staff is going to give up on him and neither should we.
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Duke Mid-Season Grades, Part 1
Nolan Smith [A-]
I know its tempting to give Smith an A of higher, but his field goal & 3-point percentage (48% & 34%) are too low for the teams leading scorer. There are games when he takes too many ill-advised shots and ends up with Iverson like numbers from the floor (5-of-18, 6-of-22, 6-of-17). Don’t even get me started on the turnovers, more than 3 a game with an assist-to-turnover ratio under 1.8.
On the upside, he’s a great on the floor leader and someone you want with the ball in his hands at the end of the game (95% free throw shooter in ACC play). He’s also a great defender. He often ends up defending the other teams best perimeter player -he recently shutdown BC’s Reggie Jackson- and hasn’t been exposed on the defensive end all season.
He would probably get an A if he were still among the country’s top 5 players, but a low 3-point % and high turnovers in a weak ACC has dropped from the ranks of First-Team All-Americans.
Andre Dawkins [B-]
Dawkins was one of the two players talked about as making the biggest strides in the off-season, and he has. He is slowly making the transition from 3-point assassin to a more rounded player. Last year, it was all 3′s all the time, now if someone is flying out on him he will ball fake, step inside and take the easy 15-footer or go all the way to the hoop.
He makes sure he finds the open spots on the floor when Duke is in transition and makes teams pay for leaving him alone (almost 45% from 3 this year). If his game continues to progress at this rate, he could make a B or B+ by the end of the year.
Kyle Singler [B+]
Singler hasn’t quite lived up to the pre-season Player of the Year candidate everyone was expecting, and his averages (17.9 & 6.3) aren’t bad, but they aren’t a leap over last years numbers. Just like last year, he isn’t the Duke player most talked about as POY in the early part of the season, but all Duke fans hope that his season arc follows last season. He got better and better all year long and saved his best for very end of the season.
Most of his games follow that path as well. In games where he shoots poorly in the first half, its not strange to see him end up with 20 or more points. Like Smith, he wants the ball at the end of the game and is more than willing to take (and make) the big shots at the end of the game. He is also very adept at making the ‘dagger’ shots, baskets that crush the spirit of the other team. Just ask NC State.
Ryan Kelly [B-]
It would be nice to rate him higher, but we have to grade Kelly on the entire season, not just the last two weeks. Just like Dawkins, he was one of two players that had made the greatest strides during the off-season. It looks like those reports were true, it’s just taken a little longer for him to show.
He is barely a sophomore (he scored just 6 points in the ACC last season), so he’s really only got 20 meaningful games under his belt.
Kelly appears to be ‘getting it’, he’s too slow to play the 3 and not strong enough to play the 4, but he’s carving out a niche as a 3.5 in the Duke offense. He has the ability to pull out his defenders opens the middle for the driving guards because he is a good enough shooter to demand respect (45% from 3-point range). He is smart enough to get himself into the offense by finding open spots on the floor. You don’t make 18 straight shots by having a defender in your face all the time.
He could climb as high as B+ with a good second half of the season.
