Duke senior duo returned together to return Devils to top
AKRON, Ohio -- Duke's quest to repeat as national champion began at the 1013 Grill.
That's where Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith discussed their futures last April.
"Twice," Smith said this week between sessions at the LeBron James Skills Academy, where he and Singler worked out with other college standouts for three days. "It's a good restaurant in Durham. So if you ever come to Durham, 1013 is the spot. They have good wings and good pasta."
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| Singler and Smith will have a lot of pressure in the chase for another title. (US Presswire) |
First Singler and Smith met individually with the Duke coaching staff.
Then they went to dinner.
They talked about things one night, then returned the next night and did it again. Smith had long decided he would let Singler make the decision for both of them. If Singler stayed, Smith would stay. If Singler left, Smith would leave, too. Why? Because he had no interest in being Duke's lone senior, that's why.
"It would've been hard to be the one senior," Smith said with a smile. "I've seen the Duke teams with one senior, and they weren't very good. If Kyle would've left me, I would've felt stranded. Me and him came in together. We want to leave together.
"So I really was basing my decision off Kyle," Smith added. "But when we sat down and talked he said, 'I want to go back.' And I said, 'Well, I'm with you. Let's go back.'"
(That scene is a lot like the final scene from the third season of LOST, the one where Jack told Kate "We have to go back!" Only difference is that Smith was much more agreeable than Kate, and she wasn't having wings or pasta. But I digress.)
So now Singler and Smith are back in school and college basketball's reigning champion is the favorite to be college basketball's next champion for the first time since Florida was the favorite to win another title in 2007 after cutting the nets in 2006. But this isn't the same deal. Oh, sure, it's the same in the sense that the Blue Devils will enter the season under a bright spotlight. ("We wouldn't want it any other way," Singler said.) But it's different in that if Duke wins back-to-back championships the Blue Devils will do it with a roster and style of play unrecognizable relative to the roster and style of play Mike Krzyzewski used to beat Butler last April. That team had three guards and lots of bigs. This team will be missing three starters from that team and be guard-heavy after to the additions of McDonald's All-American Kyrie Irving and Liberty transfer Seth Curry.
How could that change the style of play?
Consider that Singler mostly played small forward last season because there were no traditional wings on the roster. This season Singler might still start at small forward, but he'll play more of a role in the post when Krzyzewski wants to get Irving, Curry and Smith on the court together, at which point Smith, at just 6-feet-2, will likely be asked to play small forward.
"It's going to be very unpredictable; Coach is going to do what he does," Smith said. "Last year he worked with what we had, and it worked great, obviously. But this year with all the bodies we're going to have at the guard positions, we can throw a lot of different looks. ... We have a lot of options. We're all just working to be flexible and doing whatever Coach asks us to do."
What Coach -- as in Coach K -- will ultimately ask them to do will be simple: Win. Krzyzewski won't put it like that, of course, because he rarely speaks in those terms. It's always about maximizing potential and just doing your best. But the reality is that, despite the roster turnover, anything short of another title with this roster will probably mean the Blue Devils didn't maximize their potential, and it'll definitely be deemed a disappointment from the outsiders who are often quick to label Duke a disappointment.
So those are the stakes.
Everybody understands, and it's something Singler and Smith both understood when they dined on those back-to-back nights at the 1013 Grill and decided together to try to win back-to-back championships. Will it happen? We'll see. But, again, those are the expectations both internally and externally.
"I hear it every day, especially in Durham," Smith said. "People are so thankful [for last season's championship], but now they're ready for another one."
