Tyler Adams Wavering On His Commitment?

A new post from BullDawgJunction.com, a Mississippi State recruiting website, seems to allude that 2011 verbal commitment Tyler Adams is open to other schools. Specifically, that he is open to the Bulldogs:

He told me MSU and Georgetown are really the only two schools still recruiting him since his commitment to Duke. And interesting enough, he told me "Mississippi State is still in the mix and still an option".

We know that Tyler has had grades issues in the past and everyone knew this would be a possible hindrance to him playing basketball at Duke, but by all indications Tyler had accepted the challenge put forth to him by the Duke coaching staff and was making strides towards achieving those goals. It's possible he has not and is keeping his options open. Or, it's possible Tyler's quote was taken out of context. It just goes to show that in the crazy world of recruiting a verbal commitment isn't worth the paper it's written on. We will continue to monitor this situation as it unfolds...

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.

New Shabazz Muhammad Highlights

Floaters, threes, dunks, layups, the #1 Shooting Guard (#1 player according to some) in the Class of 2012 shows off a diverse repertoire of scoring abilities in this new highlight video from PremierBall.com. Watch Shabazz make defenders look stupid during the Adidas Super 64 Classic below.

New Recruiting Calendar -- August 1st

As the new recruiting calendar turned over August 1st, prospects got one year older according to the NCAA and coaches began a whole new round of phone calls, text messages, emails, and social media connections.

Rising Juniors can receive telephone calls once per month through July 31st, 2011. Rising Seniors can be called twice per week, and off campus contact is only one month and a week away. There are obviously ways around this, but these are the guidelines put in place by the NCAA, however toothless they may be.

The Duke staff has surely contacted many of their primary targets and verbal commits today. You can be sure that Duke will do everything they can to stay in front of their uncommitted prospects and verbal commitments in this recruiting period and moving forward.

Alumni Update -- Paulus and Melchionni

We have a couple of updates on former Duke Basketball Players.


First, Greg Paulus has been hired as an Assistant Men's Basketball coach at the Naval Academy. This is Greg's first foray into the coaching world, and he steps into a pretty good situation as Navy finished the year at 7-7 in the Patriot League, 13-17 Overall and return quite a few players. Good luck to Greg as we know it has long been a goal of Greg to become a basketball coach!


Second, Lee Melchionni landed former Villanova and Duke-Killer Scottie Reynolds a contract with Prima Veroli, a second-division Italian team. Good to see Lee staying motivated in his post-basketball career. If you don't remember Lee's contributions in the early 2000s, here's a refresher: http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=4200&ATCLID=152121

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.