On the eve of the biggest decision in his young life, J.J. Redick wasn't home.
He wasn't sitting by the telephone-in fact, he was intentionally avoiding all phone calls-and he wasn't lying restlessly in bed trying to get those few extra hours of sleep so he would be well-rested for this afternoon's 2 p.m. press conference.
Instead, at 10 p.m. the night before the high school junior was set to declare which college basketball program had landed the premier shooter in his class, J.J. Redick was doing what he knows how to do best.
He was up late, standing in the deserted gym at Cave Springs High School, shooting basketballs to expend the nervous tension that had overtaken him the night before his much-speculated announcement.
"He is just kind of a ball of energy this evening," Redick's father, Ken, said last night from the family's home in Roanoke, Va.
With his own personal key to his high school gym, J.J. Redick had taken his basketball to escape the visitors, the e-mails, the phone calls, all of which demanded an answer to the same question.
"Where's it going to be, J.J.?"
And though Redick, a 6-foot-5, 190-pound pure shooting guard, wasn't home to field that query, the answer is all but certain.
As his father said yesterday, the star sharpshooter-known on his championship AAU summer league team and throughout his high school as a life-long Blue Devil fan-simply decided on the one place he had always envisioned himself playing. With pursuers like N.C. State, Wake Forest and homestate schools Virginia and Virginia Tech hot on Redick's trail, he opted to make his selection a year before most of his peers-thus bypassing the interviews, the official visits and everything else that had him hiding out in his high school gym last night.
"There's really just two reasons why J.J. decided so early," Ken Redick said. "One is he is choosing the college of his dreams.... The other is the recruiting process had stepped up considerably starting Sept. 1 with the mail and the phone calls and everything. It was overwhelming. Some kids enjoy that; he didn't."
Redick's mind was all but cemented after an unofficial visit to Duke last weekend, during which he hung out with the basketball players at the football game against Clemson and met with the coaching staff.
Although members of the basketball program cannot comment on future recruits, every analyst agrees that the one thing that struck Mike Krzyzewski and his assistants most was Redick's tremendous ability as an outside shooter. In guiding his AAU team to a summer league championship, Redick showed the nation that there isn't a spot on the floor he's afraid to shoot from. He also showed there isn't a spot on the floor he can't hit from.
"You could compare him to Trajan Langdon, although he is a little taller than Trajan was during his high school days," said All Star Report analyst Bob Gibbons, who hosted the self-entitled Southern Invitational at which Redick earned MVP honors.
"He is a pure shooter like Langdon, he is very skilled and he is very smart. He is one of the top five high school juniors in America, period. He is definitely a Duke-type player."
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