How Does Kyrie Irving Rank With Recent #1 Rated PG Recruits?

Kyrie Irving became the first #1 Rated PG commitment for Duke that actually will enroll at Duke since Chris Duhon in the Class of 2000 (Shaun Livingston was a Duke commit and #1 rated PG in 2004, but never made it to Durham.)

While the expectations for Kyrie are sky-high, is it that much of a stretch to predict he will perform at least as well as the last 5 #1 rated PGs to go to college? Let's take a look at their Freshman years:


2002
Ray Felton -- UNC
GM MIN PTS REB AST TO A/T
35 35.4 12.9 4.1 6.7 3.7 1.81

2003
Chris Paul -- Wake Forest
GM MIN PTS REB AST TO A/T
31 33.6 14.8 3.3 5.9 2.6 2.23

2006
Ty Lawson -- UNC
GM MIN PTS REB AST TO A/T
38 25.7 10.2 2.9 5.6 2.2 2.57

2007
Derrick Rose -- Memphis
GM MIN PTS REB AST TO A/T
40 29.2 14.9 4.5 4.7 2.7 1.8/

2009
John Wall -- Kentucky
GM MIN PTS REB AST TO A/T
37 34.8 16.6 4.3 6.5 4.0 1.62

Just by averaging these numbers out, we can extrapolate the following.
**I am not an idiot. I don't expect these to be the actual numbers...

2010
Kyrie Irving -- Duke
GM MIN PTS REB AST TO A/T
36 31.7 13.9 3.8 5.9 3.0 2.01

Compare this to our PG from last year, Jon Scheyer:

2010
Jon Scheyer
GM MIN PTS REB AST TO A/T
40 36.8 18.2 3.6 4.9 1.6 2.98

While Kyrie will obviously not play as many minutes as Jon did last year, he should play more than the 25.7 played by Ty Lawson in 2005. Kyrie will have the ball in his hands from Day 1 and will play in a fast-paced offense more similar to the other #1 PG recruits than to the Duke offense of last year so he will have many opportunities to score and pad the assist numbers. If he can control the turnovers and bring down some rebounds in that high-paced offense, you should see Kyrie's numbers fall more in line with the top tier of these five players than the bottom.

Is it Countdown to Craziness time yet?


*all stats from ESPN.com
*all recruit rankings from rscihoops.com