Captain Jack White plays like he’s auditioning to coach

[BandAlum83]

Here is a really great article on our fearless Captain Jack. Well worth the short read!

Captain Jack White plays like he’s auditioning to coach

Here is a short excerpt:

The Duke basketball freshmen garner most of the attention, but whatever this team ends up accomplishing, their junior co-captain — the sixth starter — will deserve a fair share of the credit...

But he obviously didn’t come to Durham from Australia with an expectation to quickly earn a ticket to the NBA. No, he came to better himself. He came with an inner dialogue that evidently includes the following four words set on auto-repeat: I think I can.

It's nice to see him get some well deserved credit for what he's done thus far this season.

[kAzE]

I'm so proud of this kid. He's been making me look pretty smart with my "Jack will be a rotation player by year 3" prediction 4 years ago, but even I never imagined him being at this level. He's such a wonderful fit on the court with those 4 freshmen stars, but most of all, he's just a winner, who makes winning plays.

I love Jack White.

[HereBeforeCoachK]

If he coaches, with that accent, he'll be awesome recruiter, and all the moms will LOVE him.

[BandAlum83]

I'm so proud of this kid. He's been making me look pretty smart with my "Jack will be a rotation player by year 3" prediction 4 years ago, but even I never imagined him being at this level. He's such a wonderful fit on the court with those 4 freshmen stars, but most of all, he's just a winner, who makes winning plays.

I love Jack White.

I think we ll love us some Jack White.

His work ethic, hustle, spirit remind me of a bigger, more athletic Wojo.

[Clocktower]

My family is getting tired of the loud "JACK WHITE!" that I blurt out every time he does something good. So proud of that kid, mostly for the qualities discussed in the article.

Small thing I noticed in the IU game: Jack got fouled and was at the free throw line preparing to receive the ball from the ref, glanced over to his right at Zion on the blocks and gave a little tug down low on his own jersey. Zion promptly tucked in his shirt. Showed me that Jack is a good leader and truly respects the details on the court to make us a better team.

Go JACK WHITE!!

[flyingdutchdevil]

If he coaches, with that accent, he'll be awesome recruiter, and all the moms will LOVE him.

Pretty sure they'd love his hair more than his accent.

And Kaze - I gotta give you credit. I was convinced internationals don't work out at Duke. I was wrong (and yes, I do realize RJ is Canadian. But it's Canada. I live 5x closer to Canada than I do to Durham).

[HereBeforeCoachK]

Pretty sure they'd love his hair more than his accent.).

Oh, in the spirit of another thread..."I beg to differ." But he's got good hair. Good eyes too. But he's got a GREAT accent. Lots of women LOVE British/Aussie/NZ/S African accents.
But the hair doesn't hurt. (I was blessed with the hair, not the Aussie accent...)

[Kedsy]

I said this in another thread, but Jack so far this season has reminded me of sophomore Luke Maye. He might actually be a little better than sophomore Luke Maye, though nowhere close to junior Luke Maye (yet -- who knows what we'll see next season?). In any event sophomore Luke Maye was a key contributor to a national championship team, so here's hopin'.

[wavedukefan70s]

The irony
I'm gonna fight 'em all
A seven nation army couldn't hold me back
I'm a fan of both jack whites.

[Troublemaker]

Pretty sure they'd love his hair more than his accent.

And Kaze - I gotta give you credit. I was convinced internationals don't work out at Duke. I was wrong (and yes, I do realize RJ is Canadian. But it's Canada. I live 5x closer to Canada than I do to Durham).

Who are the international players that haven't worked out at Duke? I'm asking earnestly, as I really can't remember.

[CDu]

Who are the international players that haven't worked out at Duke? I'm asking earnestly, as I really can't remember.

Well, Pocius is one. Ast, Boateng, Czyz are others. Ignoring the Canadians per the Dutchman's previous post.

Of course, there were also successes: Abdelnaby and Deng being obvious ones.

[devildeac]

Who are the international players that haven't worked out at Duke? I'm asking earnestly, as I really can't remember.

Guess that'll depend how the bolded above is defined (and you know readily/easily we agree on things like that here on DBR ). Two come to mind initially: 1) Greg Newton says eh (though he may have "borrowed" that expression) and 2) Daniel Meagher spits in you face .

[Troublemaker]

Well, Pocius is one. Ast, Boateng, Czyz are others. Ignoring the Canadians per the Dutchman's previous post.

Of course, there were also successes: Abdelnaby and Deng being obvious ones.

Who are the international players that haven't worked out at Duke? I'm asking earnestly, as I really can't remember.

Guess that'll depend how the bolded above is defined (and you know readily/easily we agree on things like that here on DBR ). Two come to mind initially: 1) Greg Newton says eh (though he may have "borrowed" that expression) and 2) Daniel Meagher spits in you face .

I'm going to do you one better and actually disagree on the definition of "international" player. So, yes, CDu is technically correct with his list, but several of those guys played high school ball in the United States. Pocius, Boateng, and Czyz definitely did and as a result received recruiting rankings and offers from high majors. Jack, on the other hand, came straight from Australia, and only 1 recruiting service (247) as far as I know even made an unwise attempt to try to rank him since obviously he never got a chance to play against American high school recruits, in either high school ball or AAU ball. (More on Jack's ranking later on in this post). With guys like Pocius, they had already made the adjustment to the United States and had played well enough in high school to get recruited by Duke!

So, I can't see why the "internationalism" of guys like Pocius, Boateng, and Czyz were why they didn't succeed at Duke. This is a classic case of a confounding variable (aka third variable) being the thing that is really influencing the outcomes, not the players' "internationalism." What is the confounding variable? Recruiting ranking. All of those players were rated as 4 or 3 star players, and it's really those lower-rated recruits that historically have not done well at Duke and with Coach K's short rotation. A top-5 recruit like Deng? As CDu noted, Luol excelled.

Back to Jack's recruiting ranking, as promised. Kedsy - I think the reason you compare him to Luke Maye (#155 HS rank [247]) is because of Jack's recruiting ranking (#226 per 247), correct? If so, I have to disagree. Jack's recruiting ranking should've been disregarded, and I remember arguing the case against a couple of you guys at the time. Not only was the recruiting service only outright guessing (again, no direct comparison against American HS players was possible), but only one service even gave him a rank. That's too small a sample. The power of RSCI is in the wisdom of crowds, the averaging of a bunch of services.

Jack isn't really the case of a lowly rated recruit overcoming his ranking to become a significant player at a blueblood. Jack is the case of a complete wildcard unknown -- he could be a 5 star or he could be a 2 star -- happening to work out for Duke, which happens sometimes in high variability cases. Jack is also a victory for youtube scouting, and we youtube scouts will take those victories where we can get them.

[Troublemaker]

Back to Jack's recruiting ranking, as promised. Kedsy - I think the reason you compare him to Luke Maye (#155 HS rank [247]) is because of Jack's recruiting ranking (#226 per 247), correct? If so, I have to disagree. Jack's recruiting ranking should've been disregarded, and I remember arguing the case against a couple of you guys at the time. Not only was the recruiting service only outright guessing (again, no direct comparison against American HS players was possible), but only one service even gave him a rank. That's too small a sample. The power of RSCI is in the wisdom of crowds, the averaging of a bunch of services.

Jack isn't really the case of a lowly rated recruit overcoming his ranking to become a significant player at a blueblood. Jack is the case of a complete wildcard unknown -- he could be a 5 star or he could be a 2 star -- happening to work out for Duke, which happens sometimes in high variability cases. Jack is also a victory for youtube scouting, and we youtube scouts will take those victories where we can get them.

Now, with that said, Jack's ranking is actually great propaganda for Duke.

For example, I actually will not disregard his ranking if he happens to outplay Luke Maye head to head this season. (Not impossible). "Our 226th ranked recruit kicked your 155th ranked recruit's butt" sounds good to me.

[devildeac]

I'm going to do you one better and actually disagree on the definition of "international" player. So, yes, CDu is technically correct with his list, but several of those guys played high school ball in the United States. Pocius, Boateng, and Czyz definitely did and as a result received recruiting rankings and offers from high majors. Jack, on the other hand, came straight from Australia, and only 1 recruiting service (247) as far as I know even made an unwise attempt to try to rank him since obviously he never got a chance to play against American high school recruits, in either high school ball or AAU ball. (More on Jack's ranking later on in this post). With guys like Pocius, they had already made the adjustment to the United States and had played well enough in high school to get recruited by Duke!

So, I can't see why the "internationalism" of guys like Pocius, Boateng, and Czyz were why they didn't succeed at Duke. This is a classic case of a confounding variable (aka third variable) being the thing that is really influencing the outcomes, not the players' "internationalism." What is the confounding variable? Recruiting ranking. All of those players were rated as 4 or 3 star players, and it's really those lower-rated recruits that historically have not done well at Duke and with Coach K's short rotation. A top-5 recruit like Deng? As CDu noted, Luol excelled.

Back to Jack's recruiting ranking, as promised. Kedsy - I think the reason you compare him to Luke Maye (#155 HS rank [247]) is because of Jack's recruiting ranking (#226 per 247), correct? If so, I have to disagree. Jack's recruiting ranking should've been disregarded, and I remember arguing the case against a couple of you guys at the time. Not only was the recruiting service only outright guessing (again, no direct comparison against American HS players was possible), but only one service even gave him a rank. That's too small a sample. The power of RSCI is in the wisdom of crowds, the averaging of a bunch of services.

Jack isn't really the case of a lowly rated recruit overcoming his ranking to become a significant player at a blueblood. Jack is the case of a complete wildcard unknown -- he could be a 5 star or he could be a 2 star -- happening to work out for Duke, which happens sometimes in high variability cases. Jack is also a victory for youtube scouting, and we youtube scouts will take those victories where we can get them.

Good info/discussion. I thought of a couple of the other "international" while/after posting and kinda/sorta eliminated them as they had played HS MBB in the US but the 2 Canadian players came to mind first. We should all be ashamed no one included Nick Horvath in our initial postings. I also thought of Semi Ojeleye (after all, he *did* play hoops at Ottawa HS ).

[gus]

Well, Pocius is one. Ast, Boateng, Czyz are others. Ignoring the Canadians per the Dutchman's previous post.

Of course, there were also successes: Abdelnaby and Deng being obvious ones.

We also had this kid born in Australia who was really hyped coming in, but only played in 11 games and was gone after his freshman season.

[CDu]

I'm going to do you one better and actually disagree on the definition of "international" player. So, yes, CDu is technically correct with his list, but several of those guys played high school ball in the United States. Pocius, Boateng, and Czyz definitely did and as a result received recruiting rankings and offers from high majors. Jack, on the other hand, came straight from Australia, and only 1 recruiting service (247) as far as I know even made an unwise attempt to try to rank him since obviously he never got a chance to play against American high school recruits, in either high school ball or AAU ball. (More on Jack's ranking later on in this post). With guys like Pocius, they had already made the adjustment to the United States and had played well enough in high school to get recruited by Duke!

Oh I totally agree with you on this. I don't think there is/was any sort of international bugaboo for Duke. Almost as many of the guys that were foreign-born/raised were successful as not, and almost all of them also had at least some time in the US in high school anyway. No reason to assume those misses were due to anything more than the fact that not everyone makes it. Boateng's "miss" was no different than Michael Thompson in my mind; Pocius' "miss" was not really different than, say, Marty Clark. Czyz no different than, say, Carmen Wallace.

As for White, I think I compared him to Olek Czyz based on his high school tape and was thus on the "only if we're really short on recruits/depth could he make the rotation". I stand by that assessment: both were athletic, energetic, underheighted PFs with limited offensive skill sets coming out of high school. So, given where Czyz was rated (top-100 but not top-50), I tend to agree with you that his 200+ rating seems/seemed too high. Still, I wouldn't have pegged him as a sure-fire rotation player at any point given where he probably should have been rated (~75-100ish) and given Duke's general recruiting prowess.

But White has worked really hard to improve his shooting touch from 3. And at just the right time, he has found himself in the perfect situation for playing time: due to the earlier-than hoped entry of some guys (Kennard, to a lesser extent Frank Jackson), transfers (Thornton, Jeter), and slower skills development (DeLaurier) we entered this season with a dearth of depth, shooters, and role players.

As a result of the roster missing a few of the top-50 guys, there was an opening for a guy willing to scrap off the ball and able to hit wide open 3s from the SF/PF spot. And White has put himself in a position to fill that role. To his credit, he worked hard and expanded his game in ways that Czyz did not (in fairness to Czyz, he took a different route and transferred to a smaller program where his skill set was sufficient to star), and as a result he found himself in position to take advantage of that gap in the rotation. He's absolutely a success testament to hard work and patience.

[Kedsy]

Kedsy - I think the reason you compare him to Luke Maye (#155 HS rank [247]) is because of Jack's recruiting ranking (#226 per 247), correct?

Recruiting ranking was certainly part of my comparison, but only part. Maye is 6'7" 225; White is 6'7" 215. Both players came/come off the bench and they play the same position, as somewhat undersized PFs. Neither is super-athletic, but both are more athletic than people give them credit for. And, yes, both were lightly regarded recruits. Their stats are very similar:

Player		PER	FG%	3p%	tS%	eFG%	OR%	DR%	asst%	to%	stl%	blk%	usg	oRtg
Luke Maye (SO)	18.6	47.9%	40.0%	53.6%	52.8%	12.3%	17.5%	13.7%	14.2%	1.7%	1.6%	19.3%	115.9
Jack White (JR)	18.5	47.2%	37.9%	65.5%	62.5%	7.2%	17.1%	5.2%	4.6%	1.4%	4.4%	10.2%	153.0

Maye handled the ball more (more assists and more turnovers), and Jack blocks more shots. Maye had much higher usage, but that could be explained by coaching and by how much firepower played around them. But the two have almost identical numbers in PER, FG%, 3pt%, DR%, and steal%. To me, that plus the non-statistical stuff adds up to pretty similar players.

[Neals384]

Jack has turned into an absolute ball magnet. If there is a long rebound and 3 guys go after it, Jack always seems to come out with the ball. He has a knack for timing his jump just right. And once he gets the ball, no one's going to steal it.

[HereBeforeCoachK]

Jack has turned into an absolute ball magnet. If there is a long rebound and 3 guys go after it, Jack always seems to come out with the ball. He has a knack for timing his jump just right. And once he gets the ball, no one's going to steal it.

All of that is true about Jack...who is also a good leaper to boot, which helps. The hands part is so key. I don't think we ever said that about, say, Tony Lang? Casey Sanders? (weak hands always been a special pet peeve of mine - Jack and Zion really make me smile on this issue).