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Mike Corey
03-07-2013, 05:37 PM
Best part of the season thus far.

Congratulations to Mason Plumlee, Ryan Kelly, Rasheed Sulaimon and Amile Jefferson on this wonderful honor (http://www.theacc.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/030713aaa.html).

At four student-athletes, Duke had more players recognized than any other school.

And of note:


Plumlee was recently named to the 2012-13 Capital One Academic All-America Division I Men’s Basketball Team, as selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) and became only the fourth player in Duke history to accomplish that feat in back-to-back seasons.

dball
03-07-2013, 05:49 PM
Best part of the season thus far.

Congratulations to Mason Plumlee, Ryan Kelly, Rasheed Sulaimon and Amile Jefferson on this wonderful honor (http://www.theacc.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/030713aaa.html).

At four student-athletes, Duke had more players recognized than any other school.

And of note:

Impressive. Really proud of those guys. BTW, check out the senior speeches on Duke Blue Planet site. Nice job done by all three. Really impressed by how confident Mason sounded.

Lord Ash
03-07-2013, 06:10 PM
Fantastic. Mason and Ryan in particular really exemplify all that it means to be a student athlete at Duke. Congrats!

Merlindevildog91
03-07-2013, 08:42 PM
Proud of all of our student-athletes, but especially impressed with this.

We had twice as many players on the Academic All-ACC team as the next closest schools (VT and GT).

weezie
03-07-2013, 10:51 PM
And we're not talking about ballroom dancing classes or Swahili guest lectures either.

God bless our young scholars, men and women. They make us very proud! :)

Deslok
03-07-2013, 11:15 PM
Kelly and Plumlee have been standouts for years - particularly Plumlee who has been an Academic All America before, but its great to see the fresh blood is just as invested in excelling on the academic side of life at Duke as well as the athletic, so big kudos to Jefferson and Sulaimon for stepping into college and impressing us on and off the court. It does make my heart glad to know that I can root for players like these without wondering if their student status is somehow farcical as it unfortunately is at too many institutions.

brevity
03-07-2013, 11:42 PM
Kelly and Plumlee have been standouts for years - particularly Plumlee who has been an Academic All America before, but its great to see the fresh blood is just as invested in excelling on the academic side of life at Duke as well as the athletic, so big kudos to Jefferson and Sulaimon for stepping into college and impressing us on and off the court. It does make my heart glad to know that I can root for players like these without wondering if their student status is somehow farcical as it unfortunately is at too many institutions.

Seniors, schmeniors.

Kudos to the freshmen for handling the adjustment to college better than most of their non-basketball-playing classmates. (And maybe their Freshman 15 refers to pounds of muscle.)

Ima Facultiwyfe
03-08-2013, 12:41 AM
I love to tell folks we have the guys we'd always rather bring home on the bus whether or not they've won a basketball game. The win is just gravy.
Love, Ima

Henderson
03-08-2013, 01:03 AM
Proud of all of our student-athletes, but especially impressed with this.

We had twice as many players on the Academic All-ACC team as the next closest schools (VT and GT).

+1 on the pride. I hope this gets the play it deserves. Interesting that we had four times as many named as State, Virginia, and Carolina combined. Interesting too that all 4 are (or have been) starters this year, not just role players. I'll bet we would have had more than 4 if the committee didn't feel the need to spread it around at least a little.

I hope Cal and the idgets at IC notice: Bigs at Duke don't just set screens. They also go to class. Real class. With real assignments and real exams (oh, and score lots of points, dish out lots of assists, grab lots of rebounds, then make big $$ in the NBA and beyond).

Olympic Fan
03-08-2013, 01:59 AM
Okay, here's the list of Duke academic All-Ameicans that I have (with number of selections):

Jay Buckley (2)
Dick DeVenzio
Gary Melchionni
Bob Fleischer
Jim Spanarkel (2)
Mike Gminski (3)
Shane Battier (2)
Mike Dunleavy
Greg Paulus
Mason Plumlee (2)

Actuaklly, I have Mason as the FIFTH Duke player to earn academic All-ACC in back-to-back years.

In all, Duke has had 10 academic All-Americans, winning the honor 16 times.

loran16
03-08-2013, 07:25 AM
This makes me unhappy - yet another terrific Duke athlete (Ryan Kelly) is graduating with the same public policy major as me despite hours playing a major sport? Not cool - makes me look like a slacker.

(I kid, I kid! Insanely impressive by both Duke Seniors).

Fish80
03-08-2013, 08:25 AM
I'm very happy for these four student athletes, and for the Duke community. And I hope this reinforces for us fans what a special senior class we have this year. Thank you seniors. Thank you Coach K. God bless America!

killerleft
03-08-2013, 08:51 AM
Superb job by all, and especially the 2 freshmen. That's gotta be some hard work, excelling in the classroom, sports, time management, etc., etc.,...

Congrats!

MCFinARL
03-08-2013, 09:14 AM
This makes me unhappy - yet another terrific Duke athlete (Ryan Kelly) is graduating with the same public policy major as me despite hours playing a major sport? Not cool - makes me look like a slacker.

(I kid, I kid! Insanely impressive by both Duke Seniors).

It was actually really interesting to look at the majors of the academic all-ACC selections. Of the 14, 8 were freshmen (which is interesting in its own right); of those, only three had declared majors--the two from Georgia Tech, both majoring in business, and one from Clemson, majoring in Parks, Recreation & Tourism Management. Logan Aronhalt of Md. is studying kinesiology (I believe as a post-grad); the VPI guys are majoring in psychology (Eddie) and Nutrition & Exercise (Beyer, a soph averaging just under 10 minutes a game); Akpejiori of Miami is majoring in Mechanical Engineering, which is impressive, but he seldom sees the court.

All of these guys deserve a lot of credit, and the freshmen get a special nod for adjusting to the demands of college and D1 sports simultaneously. But to be doing this 3 times, while pursuing traditional academic majors and playing major minutes, as Mason and Ryan have is really, really impressive.

Mike Corey
03-08-2013, 09:33 AM
A guess as to why there are many freshmen: your cumulative GPA must exceed 3.0 to be eligible for this distinction.

chrishoke
03-08-2013, 09:46 AM
Congrats to all. If I'm remembering correctly, 40% of the ACC All Academic Team in football were Duke football players. Just outstanding!

Devil in the Blue Dress
03-08-2013, 10:16 AM
A guess as to why there are many freshmen: your cumulative GPA must exceed 3.0 to be eligible for this distinction.

And one must remain enrolled as a full time student... early exists for job opportunities are drop outs in the context of this honor.

AsiaMinor
03-08-2013, 10:25 AM
I love to tell folks we have the guys we'd always rather bring home on the bus whether or not they've won a basketball game. The win is just gravy.
Love, Ima

Seconded and Thirded. I think of this all the time. Of course, I also think I'd like to be in the locker room when things aren't going too well just to listen to Coach K "teach" - : )

Bluedog
03-08-2013, 11:13 AM
It was actually really interesting to look at the majors of the academic all-ACC selections. Of the 14, 8 were freshmen (which is interesting in its own right); of those, only three had declared majors--the two from Georgia Tech, both majoring in business, and one from Clemson, majoring in Parks, Recreation & Tourism Management. Logan Aronhalt of Md. is studying kinesiology (I believe as a post-grad); the VPI guys are majoring in psychology (Eddie) and Nutrition & Exercise (Beyer, a soph averaging just under 10 minutes a game); Akpejiori of Miami is majoring in Mechanical Engineering, which is impressive, but he seldom sees the court.

All of these guys deserve a lot of credit, and the freshmen get a special nod for adjusting to the demands of college and D1 sports simultaneously. But to be doing this 3 times, while pursuing traditional academic majors and playing major minutes, as Mason and Ryan have is really, really impressive.

Yeah, Pub Pol major for Ryan is quite impressive much like Paulus was for Poly Sci - definitely not easy majors, particularly considering how much time they dedicate to basketball. The time management skills of excelling in these programs is really off the charts and impressive. Psychology is a bit easier and more common among athletes who have major time commitments (this coming from somebody who minored in Psychology at Duke, so I'm not judging it as I love the discipline and think it's certainly a worthy major). Almost everybody on Georgia Tech's football team majors in Management / Business, so that's not very uncommon. I remember The Chronicle got in trouble for having an infographic of how many football player's on Clemson's team majored in Parks, Recreation & Tourism Management, haha. It did come off as a bit judgmental, though, but I found it a bit humorous.

Kinesiology is a somewhat funny discipline in that it can sometimes be a training/nutritional/sports exercise major or can be more bio/physiology-centric. At Michigan, football players used to all major in kinesiology, but they changed the curriculum to make it more bio-focused a few years ago, and thus now "General Studies" is the popular one...Rasheed attended the Duke TIP program, so he's been academically-oriented (and introduced to Duke) for quite some time now apparently killing the SAT math in 7th grade:

http://sports.chronicleblogs.com/2011/02/11/new-recruit-sulaimon/
(Should have also recruited the guy on the right as a Center!)

Congrats to all the Duke guys (and others)!

MCFinARL
03-08-2013, 11:24 AM
A guess as to why there are many freshmen: your cumulative GPA must exceed 3.0 to be eligible for this distinction.

Oh, good point. So if you have a 3.0 average in your last semester, as a freshman, you would quite probably also have a 3.0 cumulative average (with the possible exception that, if you had taken summer classes those would also factor in). And at least theoretically, a lot of freshman-level general education type courses should be a bit less challenging than upper level courses.

What's not clear to me is whether there is any basketball requirement involved in this selection process, other than being on the roster of an ACC team. Could a redshirt get this honor? Could someone who, for whatever reason, was on the roster but played almost no minutes (like, for example, Todd Zafirovski?) Or is there a minimum game participation cutoff?

Bluedog
03-08-2013, 11:34 AM
Oh, good point. So if you have a 3.0 average in your last semester, as a freshman, you would quite probably also have a 3.0 cumulative average (with the possible exception that, if you had taken summer classes those would also factor in). And at least theoretically, a lot of freshman-level general education type courses should be a bit less challenging than upper level courses.

What's not clear to me is whether there is any basketball requirement involved in this selection process, other than being on the roster of an ACC team. Could a redshirt get this honor? Could someone who, for whatever reason, was on the roster but played almost no minutes (like, for example, Todd Zafirovski?) Or is there a minimum game participation cutoff?

I believe there is some "on the court" achievement cutoff for Academic All-ACC. There is not, however, for the ACC Honor Roll Selections, which also have the 3.0 cutoff. Jordan Davidson and Steve Johnson (players seeing very limited action) made the Honor Roll, but never Academic All-ACC, likely due to the on the court criteria. Likewise, last year, Zafirovski, Murphy, and Marshall were named to the Honor Roll (in addition to Mason and Ryan). Don't think there is a hard set "cutoff" for on the court criteria for Academic All-ACC, though - more like up to the discretion of the ACC....

http://blog.dukeblueplanet.com/tag/acc-honor-roll/
http://blog.dukeblueplanet.com/2009/08/08-09-devils-were-acc-champs-off-court-too/

devil84
03-08-2013, 01:18 PM
So proud of our guys. I think Mason's accomplishments are undersold in that article, though. He's listed as a psychology major in the link, when he's really a double-major in psych and cultural anthropology. Outstanding.