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Tag: Duke Blue Devils

  • Jabari Parker To Make His NBA Decision On Wednesday

    Whether or not Jabari Parker will leave college basketball after his freshman season for the opportunity to play in the NBA was a hot topic of discussion throughout the NCAA tournament, and continue to be since the season has ended.

    Jabari Parker was one of the top players in the country at the beginning of the season, and while he lost all of he player of the year awards to Creighton’s Doug McDermott, he could still go as the No.1 draft pick, if he decides to enter.

    The decision on whether to go to the NBA or not will be based on where he feels that he can grow the most. He will meet with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski when he returns to Durham, N.C., on Tuesday.

    As of right now, Jabari Parker says that “I don’t know where that is right now. I’ll talk to coach about it and lay out my options, but I’m just really glad I get the best of both worlds.”

    He was one of the standout players on an outstanding Duke tea, and just received the Wayman Tisdale Award as college basketball’s top freshman. He was with his parents in Oklahoma City to accept the award, and the Parker family is originally from the Chicago area.

    As any fan of college basketball knows, it is an honor to play for someone like Coach K., and perhaps Parker will want more time as a member of the Duke Blue Devils.

    While he may be a good fit for the NBA right now, another year or two at Duke could also help him develop more as a player. Willie Cauley-Stein, the center for the Kentucky Wildcats, declared that h would return for his junior year on Monday.

    Jabari Parker was the highest-scoring freshman in Duke history, averaging 19.1 points per game, and he was also the first freshman to lead the Blue Devils in both scoring and rebounding.

    Imagine the power lineup if JabariParker stays w/ #Duke one more year? With their incoming class it should be an incredible 2014-15 season.

    — Captain (@PicardDeltaOne) April 15, 2014

    During this year’s NCAA tournament, the Duke Blue Devils were delivered perhaps the biggest upset of the tournament from No.14 seed Mercer, but that does not take away from the excellent year that Parker had over the course of his freshman season.

    Image via Youtube

  • Duke’s Loss Defies Harris Poll Results

    Duke’s Loss Defies Harris Poll Results

    One of the great things about sports is popularity doesn’t mean much. Teams don’t win by being popular. They win because of a rare mix of talent, luck and execution. Whether or not the rest of the world approves does not factor into the equation. Most non-large market champions, especially in professional baseball, understand this simple fact.

    That being said, team popularity can be a boon, especially if it’s a college sport where much of a program’s success depends on how much talent can be recruited. Naturally, being a popular entity would help here. Maybe that’s why Duke does as well as it does when it comes to recruiting basketball players. According to one of the latest Harris polls — Just in time for March Madness!!! — the most popular team in land of college basketball is the Duke Blue Devils.

    Before we continue, a simple question: Did Duke win? Oh, wait… Well, if Coach K can’t find some solace after losing to Arizona, perhaps he can find some in Duke’s popularity.

    The poll reveals that while four of the original Sweet 16 are in the top 10, teams like the Kansas Jayhawks, the Arizona Wildcats, the Florida Gators — they were actually second in eBay’s “sales equal popularity” March Madness data crunch — and the Florida State Seminoles are not represented.

    While the absence of FSU and Arizona might not be surprising, KU and Florida’s certainly are. Harris’ top ten:

    Top Teams
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    The top four — Duke, North Carolina, Ohio State and Kentucky — come as little surprise, however, seeing teams like Pittsburgh and Syracuse show up before the aforementioned Gators and Jayhawks is odd.

    Apparently, everyone Harris polled believed the hype about the Big East being the best conference in college basketball. As for Duke’s latest college basketball win, it’s just business as usual for Harris Interactive. According to the Marketing Charts blog post:

    Duke was also ranked #1 in 2008, with current #2 UNC tying for first last year and coming in first in 2009 and second in 2008.

    I take what I said above back, because it seems like the only people Harris asked were residents of Durham and Chapel Hill… Maybe they ESPN’s array of on-air college basketball analysts, too.