Tag Archives: Jay Williams

Incoming Duke freshman Matt Jones to wear No. 13 next season

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Class of 2013 Duke signee Matt Jones will be wearing the number 13 jersey next season as a Blue Devil.

Jones hails from DeSoto, Texas and is the No. 5 rated shooting guard in the class of 2013 by ESPN.

Jones’ incoming Blue Devil classmates—wings Semi Ojeleye and Jabari Parker—have yet to announce what numbers they will wear at the next level.

The No. 2 player in the class of 2013, Parker—who committed to Duke in December—will not wear his high school number of 22 even though former Duke guard Jay Williams gave Parker his blessing to wear his hold number.

While playing for the Chicago-based Mac Irvin Fire AAU team through high school, Parker wore No. 11, which is also retired for former Duke guard Bobby Hurley.

Likewise, Ojeleye—the No. 36 overall player in the class per ESPN—will not be able to wear his high school number of 33 in Durham due to the number being retired in honor of former Duke forward Grant Hill.

Jones, Ojeleye and Parker are expected to arrive in Durham in late June or early July to begin taking summer school classes and training for the 2013-14 season.

Kyrie Irving dazzles in the NBA Rising Stars Challenge

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At just 20 years old, former Duke basketball point guard Kyrie Irving has already established himself as one of the most captivating players in the NBA.

Friday night Irving put on a show in the NBA’s Rising Stars game in Houston, Texas. He scored 32 points in spectacular fashion. His team, Team Chuck, lost to Team Shaq 163-135.

Irving battled against Detroit Piston guard Brandon Knight—Irving’s high school rival on the AAU circuit—for much of the night, which proved to be highly entertaining.

Here are some of Irving’s highlights from Friday night:

In response to Irving’s performance, the twitter world blew up. Here are some notable twitter reactions from last night.

North Carolina guard Dexter Strickland, who played high school basketball with Irving:

Former Duke guard and current college basketball analyst Jay Williams:

Former Georgia Tech guard and current New York Knick Iman Shumpert:

This Week in Duke Tweets: February 2

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After a long hiatus, The Blue Zone is bringing back “This Week in Duke Tweets” with five of the week’s most notable Tweets about Duke basketball.

1) The Blue Devils held a lead as large as 22 points in the second half against St. Johns, but within fewer than eight minutes saw it dwindle to just seven. Although Duke pulled out an 83-76 victory, the team allowed 47 of those points in a defensively challenged second-half showing. During that second half, noted college basketball analyst and statistician Ken Pomeroy tweeted about how the Blue Devil defense continues to slide within his rankings:

2) Against Maryland last week, Mason Plumlee dominated with 23 points and 12 rebounds on 9-of-13 shooting from the field, leading the Blue Devils to a 74-61 victory on the road. Former Duke guard and current hoops analys Jay Williams praised Plumlee for his Glenn Robinson-like domination against the Terrapins in the below Tweet. In the team’s following game against the Red Storm, Plumlee validated Williams’ praise with a similar performance, notching 15 points and 17 boards on 5-of-8 from the floor.

3) The Blue Devil basketball world has been abuzz recently ever since Chronicle sports editor Chris Cusack wrote an expose on how the team has needed to sell additional tickets due to poor student attendance in Cameron Indoor Stadium’s student section. People have spent the past week trying to decipher how this is possible, with some asking if the Crazies have lost some of their craze. It’s still important to remember, however, that Cameron will always be hallowed grounds, even if the team is experiencing a current dip in attendance. This first Tweet, from Duke alumnus Seth Davis, a college basketball analyst for Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports, links to this picture from the author admiring the confines of Cameron this past Tuesday.

4) The second Tweet about Cameron is not about the stadium – at least directly. But, one can guess as to the importance of the stadium to former Duke great Bobby Hurley, who led the team to back-to-back national championships in 1991 and 1992. The name of his daughter, who celebrated her Sweet 16 last week? You guessed it.

5) Finally, the final spot goes to Austin Rivers who eclipsed a Twitter milestone within the last week. Congratulations to the Duke guard, who earned his 100,000th follower last week. He has now climbed over 103,000 since then.

Duke-North Carolina “Kings of Tobacco Road” exhibition confirmed

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Correction: According to his personal Twitter account, Jay Williams will not coach the Duke team at the Kings of Tobacco Road game, as an earlier version of this article stated. The Chronicle regrets the error.

 

The Chronicle confirmed Monday that the rumored Kings of Tobacco Road game between basketball alumni of Duke and North Carolina will take place Nov. 17 at 8:30 p.m. Rob Blair, founder and CEO of Bleid Sports, one of the event’s presenting sponsors, told The Chronicle that an agreement is in place to host the game at McDougald Gym at N.C. Central, but no official contract has been signed by the two parties.

Blair also confirmed that the Duke roster will feature a who’s who of former Blue Devils, including Kyrie Irving, Nolan Smith, Corey Maggette, Chris Duhon, Elton Brand, Gerald Henderson and J.J. Redick. The North Carolina team includes Jerry Stackhouse, Rasheed Wallace, Brendan Haywood, Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter, Raymond Felton and Donald and Shammond Williams, Blair confirmed.

Blair also said that he is in talks with other former players with both schools to participate.

The event will be co-hosted by Bleid Sports, a tournament organizer founded in 2010, and S.J.G. Greater N.C. Sports, Inc., an organization co-founded by North Carolina great Jerry Stackhouse to organize summer pro-am leagues in which members of both the Blue Devil men’s and women’s basketball teams have participated. The two sponsors will also host Clash in Cameron, a Dec. 17 showcase of high-school teams in Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Jay Williams Says Irving Not New Jersey’s Best Yet

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Former Duke guard Jay Williams speaks to the media at K Academy. (Melissa Yeo / The Chronicle)

Former Duke point guard Jay Williams expects incoming freshman Kyrie Irving to be a leader on the court next year, but he isn’t quite ready to call him the best point guard  in his home state’s history.

“You know, people already label him the best point guard to come out of New Jersey, and I told him, ‘You haven’t proven anything on the college level yet,’” Williams said at K Academy, Duke Basketball’s fantasy camp. ”‘[When] you’re considered… to be a top-five NBA Draft pick in 2011… you have the biggest ‘X’ on your back [for] everyone that steps on the court to play against you. So if anything, you have to prepare harder.’”

Williams said he anticipates that Irving will likely have ups and downs like any other freshman point guard. The high standards will be an adjustment in the transition form high school basketball to the college level, he added.

But what makes Irving different is his unwavering confidence that Williams said amounts to a positive sort of cockiness. Irving will wear No. 1 on his jersey next season, becoming the first Duke player to do so under head coach Mike Krzyzewski’s tenure. But with wearing that number comes added pressure and responsibility, Williams noted.

“We joke around because that was the number I wanted to wear coming into school,” Williams said. “He got the opportunity to wear it, and I told him, you know, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected. So understand that just because everyone tells you how great you are, don’t let that go to your head.’”

Williams sees Irving’s confidence in his mannerism and insistence on not only matching the greats, but also surpassing them. When the two played a casual game of HORSE together in March and Williams hit a couple of wild shots, Irving’s competitive nature showed itself, Williams said.

“First of all, he has drive. Secondly, he has a very old school mentality. He’s very explosive and very quick, but he understands how to change speeds. He has the [youth]  of someone his age with the mentality of that guy in the park that’s 35, 36 [that] understands how to play, which is phenomenal for somebody his age.”

Q&A with CBS Sports’ Seth Davis

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CBS college basketball analyst and former Chronicle sports columnist Seth Davis was on campus Tuesday to speak to students and promote Coke Zero’s Department of Fannovation contest. Coke Zero will award $10,000 to the creator of the most innovative way to enhance the basketball fan experience as chosen by other fans. The Chronicle’s Gabe Starosta and Taylor Doherty sat down with Davis before the event to talk about college hoops.

The following are excerpts of that conversation:

The Chronicle: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us. How long will you be in Durham for?

Seth Davis: I’ll be in town until tomorrow night. I’ll be at the game tomorrow night. Early Thursday morning I’m going to fly to Indianapolis. The NCAA has a mock selection [session] for the media, which I did last year so I probably wouldn’t have gone this year, but I have this new show on CBS College Sports Television, an hour long show, and so we’re going to put a camera crew there that will watch us go through the process.

TC: Can you tell us more about the NCAA mock selection process? In terms of the ACC, what’re you looking at?

SD: Well we’re not looking at North Carolina, are we? It’s interesting, even a few weeks ago I was saying, “Hey, everybody stop panicking, Carolina is going to be fine,” because you just assumed that they would get better. They’re so young and they have a great coach, so you just assumed this is how the process happens. To not only not have that happen but for them to go the other way is pretty striking. They’ve got a lot of work to do. They have to at least split with Duke and they have to probably win a couple of road games at [Georgia] Tech and at Wake Forest. I think at the end of the day, the minimum is going to be six [teams], and right now the seventh is probably Virginia Tech. They have a pretty good case.

TC: So if the season ended today, who would be the number one seeds, and what seed would Duke be?

SD: Not a number one seed. The top three are easy in Kansas, Kentucky and Syracuse. I think Villanova is the fourth, especially with their win last night [over West Virginia]. Coming off the loss to Georgetown, their best win before that was probably when they beat Georgetown at home. They didn’t have a whole lot of quality wins. But I think they’re a number one seed.

Duke right now is probably a two. They’re no lower than a three. The thing about Duke now [is] you’d be hard pressed to find an example to find a team winning the ACC regular season and winning the ACC tournament and not being a number one seed. I doubt that’s ever happened. Duke’s got a chance to do that. People don’t really talk about them being a number one seed, but if they do that…the opportunity is there for Duke.

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