Catching Up With Chris Collins

This week I got the chance to speak to associate head coach Chris Collins about the especially busy off-season for the Blue Devils coaching staff. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation on Wednesday afternoon:

Taylor Doherty: With Gerald Henderson being selected in the lottery of the NBA Draft and Elliot Williams deciding to transfer due to family medical issues, it has certainly been a summer filled with news for Duke Basketball. Do you see this summer so far as a significant one for this program?

Chris Collins: Sure, I mean. For us, losing Gerald was not a surprise. We knew coming into the year it was his goal to have a great year and put himself in a position to be a lottery pick. Once we thought that that was the information, and that’s kind of where he was, we fully supported and expected him to leave.

And obviously in Elliot’s case, it was very disappointing because we loved Elliot and Elliot loved being at Duke. It was just the circumstance that was unforeseen and, you know, those things happen in life. Certainly we want him to be with his family and be with his mom as she goes through a tough time. And with his desire to be close to home, we weren’t going to stand in the way of that because obviously as much as we would have loved to have him and he would have helped us and been a big part of what we are doing, sometimes family comes first.

TD: Next year, will it be difficult going into the year with nine scholarship players on the roster? One thing I was thinking about was whether or not there was an effort made to convince Marty Pocius come back for one more year?

CC: Well Marty was ready to go back and become a pro in Europe. He signed with an agent as soon the season was over. He was able to graduate in his four years, and that was very important to him and actually he is very sought after in Europe to play with the different clubs over there. We knew at the end of the year he was wanting to get back home and to become a pro and start that process. It never really got that far along with trying to get him to come back.

Certainly, we tried to recruit a couple of guards in the 2009 class, but we weren’t able to get them to come on board so with Elliot and Nolan [Smith] and Jon [Scheyer] and Kyle, we felt with those four guys and Jordan Davidson then as a fifth we thought that would be plenty. Because really if you look at the college landscape, most teams, your rotation especially once you get to tournament time becomes eight, nine deep. We felt that with having our big guys and having those four guys, before we knew that Elliot was not going to be with us, that that was going to be plenty and we had plenty of talent to be really successful.

TD: Besides moving Singler to the perimeter, are there other adjustments that you will need to make to account for this different style of play?

CC: With having less guys on the perimeter we have to be smart about the way that we play, keeping guys out of foul trouble, keeping guys fresh as the season goes along and utilizing the strengths that we do have.

We’re going to be big, we’re going to be long and we are going to try to use those things as advantages especially as Kyle becomes a bigger small forward. We will try to play to our strengths and just like anything we’ve always been a team and a program that tries to coach to our personnel and not have a set system each and every year. Just like the last couple of years we were a little more undersized and guard heavy, so we played to a style that would be successful for that kind of team. Now, it’s going to be just a little bit different [playing a with a bigger team].

We still feel that we have enough talent and enough guys to be very successful with the landscape of college basketball today.

TD: And how will the rotation work with the guards?

CC: I think that will work itself out. Coming into the year I would think that Jon, Nolan and Kyle would be the starters there based on experience and talent and that they’ve been starters. Obviously we will need Jordan to be in the position to be a ball-handler to give us some minutes off the bench. We feel one of the reasons that we did redshirt him is that we feel he is talented enough to be a back-up and to give us some minutes.

I think also that guys like Lance Thomas and Kelly, Mason and Plumlee, those guys will have to help us with ball-handling. Lance especially will have to be able to guard other teams’ wing players, really the way we’ve defended the last couple of years with a lot of switching…. More defensively, you’ll see that Lance and Kyle have to guard more perimeter guys and then there’s no question that Jon and Nolan will have to be in the kind of shape to log a lot of minutes and take a lot of our ball-handling responsibilities and our guard duties.

TD: I talked to Scheyer, Zoubek and Thomas last week about the freshmen coming in and I get the impression that they are mobile big-men that like to play on the perimeter a fair amount. Is that an accurate assessment?

CC: Yeah, there’s no question. They are both really skilled, they both have good ball-skills. They can handle the ball, they can pass, they both have range to the three point line, they can both move. With Ryan being 6’10 and Mason being 6’11 they’re long-armed, they’re big bodies and they are very mobile big men.

TD: Though recently much of the media has focused on depth at the guard positions, over the past few years Duke has received a significant amount of criticism for lacking a strong, dominant player down low. Is the criticism this program receives for failing to gain certain commitments—Greg Monroe, Patrick Patterson, Brandan Wright and Jon Brockman are sometimes mentioned—is to some extent fair, or do you see it as unjustified?

CC: I don’t really get into all of that. Certainly, everybody would like to have all of those guys, but you’re not going to get every guy that you recruit. Mason Plumlee and Ryan Kelly are two of the better big men in this class. We feel that getting two McDonald's All-Americans at 6’10 and 6’11, we are very happy with where our frontline is. We feel Miles Plumlee is going to be an outstanding post-player, and we feel that Brian Zoubek as a senior is going to have a great year. Certainly, we would have loved to have everyone one of those guys that you mentioned, they are all outstanding players, but it doesn’t work like that. If you went through every school in America, I can guarantee you that I can come up with a list at least that long of the guys that they didn’t get that they wanted.

Everybody is going to look to point and say you want this and you want that, but the fact of the matter is that you have to try to do your best to bring in the guys that fit what we are looking for not only as players but on and off the floor and the character and try to see if we can continue to play at a high level. There weren’t too many programs this year that won 30 games and won their conference tournament. We are on the right path, we are doing well, we’ve been successful, we’ve got great guys and we’ve just got to keep that going.

TD: Yesterday Krzyzewski announced that he was definitely staying at Duke for the rest of his coaching career, effectively putting to rest any rumors of considering taking the Lakers coaching job if Phil Jackson decides to retire in July. Had you spoken with Krzyzewski before that about that matter, or did the story never even really get that far?

CC: It was never anything that was ever really discussed just because the job is not open, first of all. It never really got to the point of having to discuss that it was something that he was looking at. He loves Duke, and he’s going to be at Duke. For him, having the chance some of the greats with Kobe [Bryant] and LeBron [James] and all of those guys with the U.S. Team, that kind of fills his curiosity of what it would be like to coach at that level. He has been able to do it, do it well and have a lot of fun with it. I think that he knows that his place is at Duke. That’s where his heart is, that’s where he wants to continue to be. I don’t think any of us worry about that or any of the speculation or rumors that come out.

TD: In 2004, it was widely reported that Krzyzewski did take a serious look at the Lakers coaching position at the time. Do you think that him turning that chance down firmed up the expectation that he would finish his coaching days at Duke?

CC: I do. I think that it was something that was intriguing because they recruited him so hard. He has such a great respect for Kobe having recruited him and gotten to know him since he was a high school player. There is always a part of everyone that you want to see how you would do as a coach on the highest level, to coach those guys in a different setting. I think once he took at look at all of those factors, he knows he belongs where he is. He loves being at Duke, and I know he’s going there until the day he decides to stop coaching.