The Cameron Crazies wanted to help their team in any way possible during Sunday's game against UCLA.
Mission accomplished.
Besides cheering the men's basketball team and bothering the Bruins, the Crazies also gave Duke's recruiting efforts a boost. With high-school phenom Brett Nelson sitting behind the Blue Devil bench, the crowd chanted "We want Nelson," a cheer it repeated later in the game.
"It was awesome," said Nelson, a 6-foot-3 junior point guard from St. Albans (W. Va) High School. "It met all my expectations. I've seen it on TV, but they're crazier in person."
Nelson has already visited UCLA, Kentucky and UNC, but said he did not receive the type of welcome from those schools' fans that he got at Duke. He is also considering Florida, which recruiting analysts have touted as the school to beat for his services.
After the weekend, though, Nelson said he rated Duke "right at the top right now. I like them a lot."
He received a lesson in contrast over the weekend, having attended North Carolina's 86-74 loss to N.C. State on Saturday. He found the fans at the Dean Smith Center slightly less, well, crazy than their Duke counterparts.
"I like this crowd better, just because they weren't talking all the time," Nelson said. "They were always cheering."
The crowd was far from the only part of Duke that impressed Nelson, his family and his high-school coach, Tex Williams. The foursome also toured the campus, watched the Blue Devils practice and spent time with the Duke coaches.
During the Duke-UCLA game, they looked into the Blue Devil huddles and watched Krzyzewski and assistant coaches Quin Snyder, Johnny Dawkins and David Henderson giving instruction to players.
"What impressed me most of all was the total team character that I really witnessed in seeing the team react-how they react to every timeout, every move on the floor," said Williams, a veteran coach. "The attention that those guys get, each of them, when they come out of the game, they seem so pleased just to be on the team."
Like Nelson, Williams was also blown away by the Duke fans.
"I've been attending college basketball games all my life, and I have never heard anything that convincing and genuine," he said. "It's one of those things that you feel like there's family and character throughout, and that's really important when it comes down to what winning is all about.
"I did not imagine that they would focus in on a recruit like that."
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