One day after leading her high school team to the championship title at the Merril Lynch Tournament in Walpole, Mass., one of the nation's best high school shooters is on her way to Durham to see if No. 7 Duke can clinch sole possession of the ACC regular-season championship.
Junior Nicole Wolff, who is considered the most dangerous pure shooter in the class of 2002, will make an unofficial visit to campus today. Duke coach Gail Goestenkors, who has strung together some of the nation's best recruiting classes for several consecutive years, will have as her primary challenge convincing the Massachusetts native to pick Duke over local suitors Connecticut and Boston College.
In the months before she makes her final decision, Wolff said she plans on developing her strength and ball-handling skills, which she tagged as two potential weaknesses in her game. Her game may not be perfect, but in less than three years of high school, Wolff has dazzled nearly everyone who has seen her play. Like her favorite player, UConn's two-time All-America Svetlana Abrosimova, Wolff has displayed an unreal scoring ability that prompted All-Star Girls Report to rank the left-handed sharpshooter as the No. 2 guard in her class.
"I'm really happy about that, but it's just a ranking," Wolff said. "It's nice that people think that because it means that all my hard work has paid off, at least a little bit."
Most analysts agree that Wolff is an extremely competent ball-handler on the court, where her sound fundamentals and soft shooting touch have the coaches of the nation's elite programs all jockeying for her services. Wolff attributed much of her court awareness to her father, Dennis, who currently coaches the men's basketball team at Boston University.
"He's always telling me ways to improve and what I need to do to become better," Wolff said of her father, who averaged slightly more than eight points per game in 1977-78 as a guard at UConn.
Despite her longtime connections to Connecticut, Wolff denied that Huskies coach Geno Auriema had a leg up on the competition. One considerable factor working in Goestenkors' favor will be the lure that attracts many of Duke's student-athletes: Before mentioning the team's success or the players or coaches or anything else, Wolff, who is an outstanding student at Walpole High School, pointed to Duke's academic excellence as the primary reason she is interested in the Blue Devils. Wolff also knows that Goestenkors' emphasis on athletic versatility complements the agile guard, so Wolff's decision on whether or not she fits in at Duke will come down to one thing.
"Right now it's just basically how I get along with the team and the coaches," she said. "Pretty much I know all the rest."
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