NC Pro-Am Schedule Tuesday, Aug. 3rd

6 pm Body Of Christ vs. Team Dreamworks

7 pm D1 Sports/C Ryan vs. Lucky 7

8 pm Team Jamison vs. Hendrick Of Durham

9 pm Coaches in Christ vs. Team 212/Trianglegi.com

Well, looks like this could be one of the last chances to catch a lot of Duke players at one time for this NC Pro-Am Summer League. With only two more regular season games and 3 playoff games remaining, get out to North Carolina Central ASAP if you want to see your favorite Devils compete before Countdown to Craziness on October 15th.

A lot of players are scheduled to compete Tuesday, Thursday, and into the weekend, including Kyrie Irving, Nolan Smith, Mason, Miles, and Marshall Plumlee, Tyler Thornton, Andre Dawkins, Seth Curry, Ryan Kelly, and Kyle Singler. As the playoffs wind up, you'll start to see more and more of the players make appearances, so don't be surprised if 2011 target Quincy Miller, last year's Freshman of the Year John Wall, and any number of pros listed on the rosters here show up sometime this week.

Kyle and Nolan to Train With US Team

Seniors Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith were selected as two of the ten USA Select Team members to train against the USA Men's National Team in New York City for the World Basketball Festival.

See the rest of the list here.

This is quite an honor and should cap off an extremely busy Summer for both team captains. Kyle has attended the Chris Paul Guard Skills Camp, the Amare Stoudemire Skills Camp, the USA Training Camp, played a few games in the NC Pro-Am, and now will travel to New York to help send the USA Team off with a bang. Nolan participated in all of the above as well as the Deron Williams Camp.

Congratulations to both of our Senior Leaders!

The Festival concludes Sunday, Aug. 15, when the USA squad takes on France at Madison Square Garden, 1 p.m. (EDT), in the first game of an exhibition doubleheader. China will meet Puerto Rico at 3:30 p.m. (EDT) in the second contest. Tickets for the exhibition doubleheader, which start at $15, are available on the Web via www.Ticketmaster.com and www.thegarden.com, by phone at 1-800-4-NBA-TIX, and at the box office at Madison Square Garden.

Where Nolan and Kyle Might Rank After 2011

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.

Kyle Singler 1-on-1 Interview

Part 2 of the USA Basketball Duke player interviews brings us Kyle Singler as he looks back on his busy Summer and looks forward to his Senior Year as Captain of the Duke Men's Basketball team. Duke Hoop Blog's Lara Lee sat down with Kyle before he joined the USA Select Team for training camp:


Duke Hoop Blog: What does it mean to you to be chosen for this Select Team?

Kyle Singler: It's a great honor. It's a good opportunity to play with and against great competition, and it's just a fun opportunity and experience to be part of.

DHB: What do you hope to take away from this week?

K: Hopefully I get better as a basketball player. Hopefully I have fun, and hopefully I learn some stuff. And so far, I've been doing all three.

DHB: You've had a really busy summer so far; it seems like you've been all over the place. What have you gained from the camps and the various things you've been up to?

K: You take away different things from different camps. But I think the main thing that has happened is just playing against good competition and just being away from Duke, I think, has helped, just being in different arenas and atmospheres. I think that's helped, and it's kind of mixed up the summer a little bit.

DHB: Have you got any plans to take a breather before you get into the season?

K: Yeah, I'll probably go home like the first part of August and stay there for about two weeks before school starts.

DHB: Speaking of home, what did you think when Coach first approached you with the idea of playing against EJ up in Portland this fall?

K: Yeah, I was really excited about it. You know, I was hoping that we would get the chance to at least go back to Oregon to play when I was at Duke. So now that I'm playing my brother, and it's in Oregon, it should be a really fun thing. A lot of people in Oregon are excited about it, so I'm excited to get back there.

DHB: You said that a big reason you decided to stay for your senior year was because you love Duke so much. What are some things that you love about the program and about the university that made you want to stick around?

K: Well, just those things. I love the program, I love being around the guys and Coach. The university and just the people at the school are fun to be around. Just the whole experience I’ve had a blast. Each year's been more fun so hopefully my senior year is even better than the last one. And that's pretty tough to do.

DHB: Speaking of next year, what does it mean to you to be a captain coming up this year?

K: Yeah, it's something new; it's something that I haven't done. I think it'll help Nolan and I as basketball players, just to become more of a leader, I guess, in our program. It'll just help us as basketball players, just become more complete.

DHB: It's going to be a very different year next year. Not only do you have a lot of personnel changes, but the outside expectations for the team are so different than they were last year. How do you tackle that as a captain?

K: Well, you kind of have to just be yourself. I think that's the main thing. Just like you said, it's going to be different. Every year's been different since I've been at Duke, so I think if Nolan and I are just ourselves, our instincts will take over. I mean, we're leaders already, so I think we'll just be ourselves and things just come natural.

DHB: You mentioned how it's been different every year... that's really been true for you, because you've been moving around on the court pretty much every year. What do you think your role this year will be on the court?

K: I have no idea, to be honest. It could be anything. I really can't see what it's going to be like. We're just going to work hard during the summer and hopefully we put ourselves in the right positions to be successful.

Nolan Smith 1-on-1 Interview

Nolan Smith is in Las Vegas for a week with Duke teammate Kyle Singler and a number of other college players training with the USA Select team. This squad was hand selected by a panel of college coaches and USA Basketball Men’s Junior National Committee to train against the USA Men's National Team and gain valuable experience in the Olympic program.

Duke Hoop Blog's Lara Lee caught up with the two players before they set out on their second day of practice. Here's the first interview with Nolan:


Duke Hoop Blog: What does it mean for you to be chosen for this Select Team?

Nolan Smith: It's a huge honor to be out here, you know, to play alongside these great college guys and also get the opportunity to play against some of the best NBA players. It's a great honor, and it's very exciting to be out here.

DHB: What do you hope to take away from this week, for yourself?

N: Just learn a lot about my game. I'll really know what I have to do to improve, not only for next season in college basketball, but going forward in my game at the next level. To see myself against the NBA guys, I'll really get to test myself and test my game.

DHB: You've had a really busy summer so far. You said that yourself yesterday... you've been all over the place. What do you think you've gained from going to the different camps and things like that?

N: Oh, I've gained a lot. In my next blog coming out, I'm actually going to talk about that. I've gained a lot. Learning from guys like Chris Paul, Deron Williams, LeBron... all of them have really just given different pieces of their game that they have. And then all the trainers that I've been working with all summer, you know, I've tried to just soak it all in. Keep my game the way it is, but add different pieces that they have. I really feel like I've grown this summer.

DHB: Speaking of the blog... What brought that on?

N: You know, just my personality. Really wanting to become one with my fans, Duke fans, and basketball fans. I really think that they appreciate it. People that love sports love to hear what we're doing, love to hear and see our personalities. And I love giving out to them, so it's just something I want to do to really just spend my free time, you know, when I'm just sitting at the house, and really just do it for the fans.

DHB: So is that your ultimate goal with the blog, give more the insider view of your life off the court?

N: Oh yeah, definitely... give an insider's view, allow people to ask me questions, and I'll try to answer as many questions as I can, and really just try to connect with everybody. I'm a people person; I love putting a smile on people's faces. That's just me.

DHB: Most people were under the impression earlier in the spring that you had no thoughts of declaring for the draft this year. And then after the fact we got a little bit of a different story. How come you kind of kept your thoughts to yourself for a while there?

N: That was just the way I wanted it. You know, I really didn't want to deal with the questions, deal with the interviews asking me about it. I wanted to keep it inside Duke, and keep it with the coaches, keep everything just really low-key. If I would have decided [to leave], then I'd have been prepared for any questions. But then when I decided to stay, it was kind of like, everybody was expecting me to stay, and that's just the way I wanted it.

DHB: What does it mean to you to be a captain coming up this season?

N: It means a lot to me. You know, especially the captains that we had this year, they set a high bar. You know, Jon and Lance... and Zoubs wasn't a captain but he really was, just our senior leadership. This year it's going to be Kyle and myself, and we're ready to try and do the best we can, like last year's guys did. And we're ready for it, you know, leading by example but also being very vocal with our freshmen and our guys coming up. So, it's a huge task and we're ready for it.

DHB: Along that same line, it's a very different team coming in this year personnel-wise, but also the outside expectations for this team are very different this year from last year. How do you handle that, starting out?

N: Just try and be humble. You know, as long as we get everybody on the same page, and play to take it one game at a time. We know the expectations are going to be very high for us. But we just have to stay relaxed, and we got to expect that after winning a championship, the expectations are always going to be high. But even more so with the guys coming in, Kyrie Irving and Seth Curry, who was sitting out, you know people are expecting a lot out of those guys. So we're just going to have to all keep it together. If we play together, then everything will just fall into place.

DHB: Are you going to make it to any of the DC Assault games while you're out here?

N: I definitely plan to. Our workouts here are pretty much over by 2 or 3 o'clock every day, so I definitely plan to go support DC Assault kids and just watch my guys.