It’s not every day a group of college students get to take on a seven-time NBA All-Star.
On a night dedicated to the commencement of their senior year, a squad of 13 members of Duke’s Class of 2015 took on a team of faculty members coached Blue Devil alum and two-time NCAA champion Grant Hill Tuesday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium, defeating their elders 43-31.
“The students, they showed why they’re the best class,” Hill said. “They came out and took it to us. We tried our best. We threw everything we could at them, and they still managed to beat us.”
As part of the Senior Class Kickoff organized by the Class of 2015’s class council, the Student vs. Faculty game tipped off after a series of remarks from senior class president Bret Lesavoy, senior class vice president Kenai McFadden, Hill and the student team’s coach, University President Richard Brodhead, as well as a video message from men’s basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski.
For Brodhead, the win came as sweet vengeance.
Last year, in the inaugural Senior Class Kickoff, the president’s team lost to Hill’s team of students in a trivia contest.
Despite Hill’s trash-talking in the pregame festivities, Brodhead’s squad came out of the gates undaunted, starting the game on a 10-2 run.
“Last year the contest was a little more intellectual and so I was at more of a disadvantage,” he said. “But I think today we had a fantastic display.”
Brodhead also benefited from his experienced assistant Mike Sotsky, a senior who serves as a manager for the men’s basketball team.
“Having Mike Sotsky as an assistant manager was definitely a big boost for the student team,” Lesavoy said.
In their efforts to staff the event—which included reaching out to Hill’s mother Janet in the summer—Lesavoy and McFadden made sure to provide Hill with a top-notch assistant as well.
Sotsky’s fellow men’s basketball manager and senior classmate, Derek Rhodes, served on the other end of the floor, helping coach the faculty squad.
“I was conflicted initially when contacted about coaching the faculty,” Rhodes said. “But I had figured they had done so much for me over the past three years that I could root for them one last time.”
The 12 faculty members, selected for the team from among 100 senior nominations, took great measures to defend Hill’s crown.
Dr. Chris Roy, the associate director of undergraduate studies for the chemistry department, began warming up a whole hour prior to tip-off, Lesavoy said.
Still, the student team pushed the break to build an eight-point lead on their professors.
Hill, coaching from Cameron Indoor's away team bench, gave his best Jim Boeheim impression midway through the first half, pulling off his jacket as he stormed onto the court, earning himself a swift technical foul call from Dean Sue Wasiolek, who refereed the game.
“Hill was a lousy coach, , tonight,” Wasiolek said of the sequence. “His team wasn’t even close. He just deserved in general a technical.”
Down 18-10 at the half, Hill looked to provide a spark for his team by taking a page out of legendary NBA big man Bill Russell’s playbook.
Entering the game as a player-coach—and still in his suit—the 6-foot-8 forward returned to the hardwood of Cameron and immediately made an impact. Receiving a feed in the high post, Hill hit Roy right in the numbers on a backdoor cut for a layup.
The spark didn’t last as the students exploited the fast break for two easy buckets in a row.
“It felt weird being a player-coach, especially when you’re wearing a suit,” Hill said. “I think my presence on the court actually worked against us. They went on a nice run so clearly that strategy backfired.”
Checking out with 12 minutes to go and his team down double digits, Hill soon resorted to some other strategies.
But senior Grace Han kept the faculty from ever getting too close.
“They went zone to start the second half, which actually threw us off for a couple possessions,” Sotsky said. “But then, when we put on Grace, she started sinking threes, took them out of the zone.”
“She was fantastic,” Brodhead added. “Look at her—a natural talent.”
To stop the bleeding, Hill tried some tactics his old college coach never would have.
He first sent six players onto the court, seeing how far he could push the bounds, then expanded to seven.
Hill avoided getting a second technical for having too many players on the floor, and now down 37-18, opted for putting his whole 12-man roster into the game, to which a few Cameron Crazies responded, “You can’t do that” (clap, clap, clap-clap-clap).
“We tried it all,” he said. “We got down in a pretty big hole and so we were a little unconventional in terms of our approach. Sometimes thinking outside the box works. Sometimes it doesn’t. It clearly didn’t today but we had fun.”
Failing to get improved results from his 12-person offense, Hill received some help from the officiating crew that had been so strict with him in the first half.
Benefiting from a series of in-bounds violations against the students, the faculty team scored three straight layups without the students ever touching the ball in-bounds, cutting the lead to 37-24 with less than five minutes to go.
“At some point in the game, your heart takes over,” Wasiolek said. “Your head has been ruling the whole game and then suddenly your heart kicks in, and I just felt so sorry for the old people.”
The 6-0 run, however, would not prove enough to engineer a comeback for Hill, the quarterback of Christian Laettner's famed game-winning 1992 jumper against Kentucky and his faculty squad.
Another triple from Han buried the teachers once and for all, sealing the victory for the Class of 2015 on their first night in Cameron.
“It means that we’re going out in style,” Rhodes said of his classmates,” the way the Class of 2015 should be remembered: as winners.”
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