Wheat,

It makes no sense to quote career stats to show progression. Compare Abdelnaby's freshman stats to his senior stats. Meek averaged 2/5/1.2 as a freshman, 10.3/8.3 as a senior. No improvement there?

Newton went from 1.1/1.3 as a freshman to 12.2/8.2 as a junior and was ahead of those stats as a senior before he imploded. Sanders was 1.8/1.2 to 4.6/5.2. That's a lot more improvement than demonstrated by Hansbrough from his freshman season to his senior season.

Want to discount Ferry, Laettner, et. al.? Fine. We'll do the same with Mitch Kupchak, Tom LaGarde, J.R. Reid, Rasheed Wallace, and consensus top-five recruit Eric Montross.

I don't know what we do with prep All-Americans turned college scrubs Geoff Crompton, Pete Budko, Chris Brust, and Matt Wenstrom. Guess the Smith/Guthridge magic didn't quite work there, did it?

C'mon admit it, the Duke-doesn't-develop-big-men is a pernicious myth, no more deserving of mention than Duke-doesn't-develop-NBA players myth.

Especially on a Duke board.