Defending national champ Duke more talented?

By Carroll Rogers

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

CHARLOTTE -- With his team coming off a national championship, coach Mike Krzyzewski said something that might make Duke-haters cringe.

“We have more talent than we did last year,” he said Wednesday at ACC Media Day, where his Blue Devils were picked to finish first in the ACC.

The Blue Devils graduated Jon Scheyer, Brian Zoubek and Lance Thomas. But none was especially athletically gifted, and Scheyer went undrafted.

But they return national player of the year candidate Kyle Singler, who is 18 pounds heavier than he was this time a year ago, to help with his transition back to power forward. And Duke brings in highly touted point guard Kyrie Irving, about whom Krzyzewski had this to say: “He has a chance to develop into a very special guard. He’ll be a pro player, and he’ll be a really good one.”

The Blue Devils are deeper on the perimeter and better suited to run a fast-paced offense to take advantage of athletic inside duo of brothers Mason and Miles Plumlee. Duke won’t be the half-court, methodical offense of last season.

“I have an Escalade and my daughters say ‘Dad you shouldn’t put trash and carry your lawn equipment in your Escalade,’” said Krzyzewski of last season’s offense. “It’s what I got.”

Now with the kind of backcourt athleticism he can build on, Krzyzewski said what this group lacks is experience, toughness and leadership.

“We won because of those last three things,” he said. “We have to development our talent and these other things along the way.”

UNC back to old conditioning program

After North Carolina coach Roy Williams failed to make the NCAA tournament for the first time in 21 years (including his last 14 years at Kansas), he went back to a tried-and-true offseason workout plan.

It was one he used as an assistant coach to Dean Smith at UNC.

“The program we did this year was the exact same except for two rain days I did in the fall of 1981 with James and Michael and Sam,” Williams said.

That would be James Worthy, Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins of the 1981-82 national championship team. It worked pretty well for them. As for this crew, which lost Ed Davis to the NBA, but returns John Henson and adds talented small forward Harrison Barnes?

“With a couple exceptions I was ecstatic with what they did,” Williams said of the offseason. “And in the four practices so far, I went wacko only one time. In four practices, that’s pretty good.”

Good fit at Clemson

It’s easy to see how Clemson senior point guard Demontez Stitt might have a hard time trusting a new coach.

When Oliver Purnell left Clemson suddenly for DePaul last spring, Stitt learned about it from a 3 a.m. text message from a teammate. It was confirmed for him on ESPN, and when he walked into a team breakfast the next morning and didn’t see Purnell. He hasn’t talked to him since.

So when Brad Brownell was hired from Wright State and introduced to the Tigers in a team meeting, Stitt had a right to be skeptical. But it was the 45 minutes he and fellow senior Jerai Grant spent with Brownell afterward that made the difference.

Stitt seems to have a stronger relationship in a few months with Brownell than he had in three years with Purnell. He said Brownell encourages players to drop by his office simply to talk about non-basketball topics.

“I can come in and talk about a movie date that I just had with a girl,” Stitt said.

So what did Brownell say in that midnight meeting?

“Sometimes new coaches come in and don’t really want to embrace the kids,” Brownell said. “They want to wait until their recruits come in. I just talked to him that we wouldn’t do that. He was our player, and I felt a strong obligation for him to go out his senior year the way he wants to go out.”