Last year saw many milestones reached such as Cameron Indoor Stadium's
70th year, 754th victory, and 15th undefeated season. Duke fans also saw Coach K's 395th victory in Cameron, his 868th career victory, and his
1,000th game. Jon Scheyer played his part and moved past 2,000 points on a Free Throw in the
second half of the 2nd round Cal game, something only 9 other Duke players have done in their careers. Jon's 2,077 points put him at the #9 spot on the career scoring Ranks. Jon's 297 made 3-point FGs moved him into 3rd place on that list, just passing Bobby Hurley. He didn't stop there, also passing Hurley into 3rd place for Career AST-TO Ratio with 2.08:1.
While Jon has graduated, and can't move up the ranks any longer, Seniors Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith have an opportunity to make their own history this coming season. Based on their career totals to this point, let's have a look at where they might end up after their senior seasons.
Kyle has a chance to pass the 2,000 point threshold quite easily next season. He currently sits at 1,767 after 3 seasons, and if he tops the 702 points he notched last year, he would join JJ Redick and Johnny Dawkins as the only two Duke players with over 2,500 career points. At 15.5 PPG, Kyle ranks 18th on the all-time scoring average list at Duke. We can only assume he'll improve on that percentage next season. By only repeating his 32 blocks from last year, Kyle will move into 9th place, but only 4 blocks would separate he and Grant Hill at 6th place.
Somewhat surprisingly, Kyle needs to play 38 games to move past Christian Laettner as the player to play the most Duke games in his career. If the expectations for this season are met, Kyle should be able to achieve this feat late in the NCAA Tournament. Kyle also has a chance to move into 1st place in minutes played, as he currently sits at 3,601 minutes and is 1,212 minutes behind Chris Duhon. By starting 30 more games, Kyle will also move into 1st place on that list.
By returning for his Senior Year, Kyle has the opportunity to move into some rare company among many Duke greats who have their jerseys in the rafters of 70 year old Cameron, and names burned in the minds of Duke fans for eternity.
He wouldn't be back if not for Nolan's decision to return. Let's see where Nolan could end up next.
While Nolan doesn't have quite the numbers as Kyle, he can put himself into the upper echelon of a few statistical categories. Nolan more than doubled his scoring output from his Sophomore Season, and he shows now signs of slowing down this year. While he will have more company at the guard spots, with Seth Curry, Kyrie Irving, and Tyler Thornton joining the back court, and only Scheyer leaving, Duke's more uptempo pace will create many more scoring opportunities and shouldn't lead to a big drop off, if at all.
Nolan ended last season with 1,147 points after dropping 660 points in 40 games. If he matches that point total this year, Nolan will end up in 17th place, just between Jeff Mullins and Bob Verga.
These two Seniors turned down millions of dollars to return to Duke for their final year under Coach K. At the end of their fourth year, their names will be at or near the top of many statistical categories of past Duke greats. Let's enjoy these two special talents and their climbs up the Duke statistical ladders for (hopefully) 40 more games. This will be the last assault on the leaderboards for quite some time.
