A team full of folks over 6' tall and they have a bunch of lapdogs who probably have play dates. This just tickles me so much.
But who keeps all the dogs when the boys are away?!
A team full of folks over 6' tall and they have a bunch of lapdogs who probably have play dates. This just tickles me so much.
But who keeps all the dogs when the boys are away?!
To say that Paulus is a typical Duke player because he rises above limited talent seems a bit disingenuous to me. First off, the guy has quite a bit of talent--it's not like I'm out there playing over my head. Second, he seems like a nice enough guy, but, unless you happen to know him, I have no idea what he's like as a person and so would have a hard time assessing him as typical in regards to personality.
I'm not sure that Duke has a lock on squeezing talent out of players. In fact, there are plenty of reasonably objective people who might point out that Duke's former high school All Americans underperform as often as they overperform. In particular, we've had our share of top 10 hs players who never make the NBA, and we've probably had fewer than our share of recruits who were ranked out of the top 50 who went on to start or star for us. Offhand, I can't actually think of anyone--maybe Carrawell.
I don't know Paulus personally (although he is supposedly one of the smartest basketball players; poli sci is certainly not the easiest major) but I met his dad briefly who seemed incredibly nice...I was in the front row of a game a few years ago by the baseline and this random guy (random to me) came up to me right before tipoff and started asking questions about the students, preparing for b-ball games, tenting, etc. Then he offers me and a couple other people some of his popcorn (which I said "no thanks" to) and he talks about how great Duke seems to him. Then, he introduced himself and shook our hands. "I'm Dave Paulus. My son is on the team. Nice to meet you guys. Enjoy the game!" It was priceless!
They need to upgrade their trailor parkesk motion upholstery!
I guess you can say that we have some guys in the top 50 recruits who do end up becoming starters for us. Nolan was around 40, and the same for Scheyer. I just don't know how much you can say because someone was ranked high in high school they underperform to unreasonable expectations. Hell, Mcbob was 2, but how much does that mean?
I wasn't disagreeing with you. We aren't going to recruit guys out of the top 100 though if we can get the Redicks and Singlers of the world.