Healthy Gray brings big game for Duke

Freshman star Chelsea Gray is day-to-day with an ankle injury—but if she regains her health, Duke could go far.
Freshman star Chelsea Gray is day-to-day with an ankle injury—but if she regains her health, Duke could go far.

In the popular card game Spades, players are allowed to pass cards to their partners before each hand. But the process is blind­—you can’t look at your partner’s hand before you pass them the cards—and as a result, passing is rare.

Freshman point guard Chelsea Gray has popularized the game among her teammates, but fortunately for them, her passing on the basketball court is a lot more common and far less blind.

“I’ve never seen a passer like Chelsea in terms of her seeing the entire floor,” head coach Joanne P. McCallie said, comparing Gray’s vision to that of NBA great Magic Johnson. Gray is second on the team in assists, despite playing some 350 minutes less than Jasmine Thomas, who leads the squad.

It was not surprising that Gray, the charismatic point guard with the constant smile, brought her freshman class together, in basketball and spades alike.

“She’s been key in making sure the five of us are a unit, that we stick together as a class,” fellow freshman Haley Peters said. “She has a unique relationship with everybody.”

Gray’s relationship with her teammates off the court is just as productive on the hardwood.

The guard opened the season coming off the bench, but quickly earned her way into the starting lineup after posting a combined 28 points and 11 rebounds in back-to-back road games against James Madison and Wisconsin. She broke double digits in scoring in her first three starts, and dished out 12 assists in those games before a pair of scoreless contests against Xavier and Temple saw her lose her starting spot, if not her playing time.

She got back into the lineup after just a two-game absence, though, and became a mainstay. She is the team’s best 3-point shooter at 39.4 percent, and despite ranking fourth on the team in minutes played, she sits in second behind only Jasmine Thomas in points per game, assists and steals.

Gray takes full advantage of Thomas’s presence.

“You couldn’t ask for a better role model to model your game after,” Gray said. “[I] only have this year with her, so that just means a lot of learning.”

Learning has been the theme of the season for Gray, even if her numbers suggest a fully mature player. In addition to everything she’s tried to sponge from Thomas, she’s had to adjust to adversity brought on by injuries. She missed a game against Maryland with the flu, and then sprained her ankle just three minutes into a contest against Virginia Tech Feb. 20.

“It’s been great to see her challenge and taking on the rehab process, the not-so-exciting parts of being a basketball player,” McCallie said. “I think that will really help her in the long run, even though in the short term it’s not been a lot of fun.”

Gray has yet to return to full strength from that injury, and McCallie said she remains day-to-day. It’s unclear whether she’ll take the court in the ACC tournament, but the feisty mentality that she brings to practice every day should be an asset to the Blue Devils for some time to come.

“If a coach gets on her for something, she’ll take it, but it doesn’t affect her confidence one bit,” McCallie said.

If Gray’s to ascend to stardom for Duke, she’ll need every ounce of that confidence. But fortunately for the Blue Devils, she has it­—in spades.

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