Assistant coach Jon Scheyer wrapped up his offseason podcast series with its 14th episode last week. The Blue Zone takes a look at some of the highlights from the last six episodes below. The full podcasts can be found here. Highlights from the first eight episodes can be found here.
Matt Jones on his expectations for the upcoming season:
My mindset is simple. I feel like once we get that first win underneath our belts, I feel we should just love that feeling, grow addicted to it, and just keep going. I know we have the talent, I know we have the work ethic, so now it’s just putting it in place where we just get addicted to being great, getting addicted to being uncommon, being killers basically, having each other's backs, not caring about what people say about us, no matter what our tactics are. I know that if we trust and believe in those, and we believe in ourselves like we do, we can do great things. So for me, it’s just being a killer.
Jayson Tatum on adjustment to life in college:
The biggest difference is just the day to day schedule. Monday through Friday, you always have something to do no matter if it’s 7:30 run or 7:30 lift, then you have to go to breakfast, you've got to go to class, then you might have study hall, then you've got a basketball workout, then you've got a meeting with the dean. More for the freshmen, we have to meet with all the new people on campus, and by the end of the night, you’re just dead tired. You've got another team meal at like 5, and I think that’s just the toughest part, really just the preparation for workouts like how everything is serious and detailed because we’re trying to do something special. It’s not like high school where you can joke around because everything is serious when you warm up for stretches—got to be everywhere 20 minutes early. I think that was the toughest part at first.
Harry Giles on his rehabilitation from a partially torn right ACL:
For me, really just staying positive [is important]. I talk to Coach Scheyer, Coach Capel, Coach K. Most of the time they check on me every week sometimes, just to make sure I’m good. I’m going through a hard time right now at the same time because I’m still trying to get back on the court because of my injury, so really just staying positive. Some drills I’ll do with the team, but at a certain point I stop because I can’t do everything yet, so really just find the motivation every day, getting up, going hard. I have tough workouts with the team, but when they leave, I still have to do rehab.
Harry Giles on his relationship with the captains:
The relationship with those guys has been great. It’s not like one of them is treating you better than the other, kind of like friends, they’re all treating you equal. It really shows you the family part of it. We’re all brothers. Whoever it is, it’s just all love the whole time. They brought us under their wings, taught us the way, still teaching us the way. Sometimes [Jayson] and I slip up, sometimes we don’t know certain things. They’ll just be honest. It’s exactly what you ask of a captain.
Harry Giles and Jayson Tatum on the personalities of the captains:
Jayson: Grayson is probably the most tenacious during workouts.
Harry: On the court he’s an animal. One word: Animal.
Jayson: Off the court, he’s quiet, he’s the nicest kid, but like on the court...
Harry: Animal. You would not expect it.
Jayson: Matt might be like a grown man, like the way he thinks.
Harry: He’s mature on and off the court. It’s not like the same, but it’s similar.
Jayson: Like somebody’s cool uncle.
Harry: He’s cool, always relaxed. He makes you feel comfortable in workouts. You never see him too excited, kind of startled in any way. He’s always just relaxed and calm, like, ‘Come on fellas, let’s go. It’s all good.’
Jayson: Amile is like the team clown character. Amile is the funniest person I’ve ever met. He’s a great leader on the court. He’s always talking and helping us out in the weight room and workouts, but off the court there’s never time where we’re not laughing. Amile is the oldest, so we joke around with him. We call him Pops.
Brian Zoubek on the final moments of the 2010 championship game:
I never really imagined that I would be the guy that would be on the free throw line at the end of the game of a national championship.... I stepped up to the line and did my routine and I knew if I could make my first one, that there was a much higher percentage chance of me making the second one.
So, I knocked it down. I had a little moment of emotion and excitement about that, then I stepped up to the line to try to make the second one... I heard [Scheyer] whisper, ‘Zoubs, look at coach!’ [Coach] mouths or whispers to me, ‘Miss it.’ I said ‘okay,' so I stepped up to the line again. Fortunately, I was able to throw it off the back of the rim and have it pop up.
I don’t know if this was strategy or not, but I happened to rush forward to see if I could tap it in but Gordon was ahead of me and he grabbed the ball and I manage to body him up and take a little time off the clock for him to get around me, and then I started running along with him. I see Kyle [Singler] get absolutely murdered by a screen, which kind of separated us, so I wasn’t able to stay with him and put any pressure on the shot or anything.
He launches up the shot and I’m not anywhere close to contesting him, so I run along and I keep going and by the time it hits the back of the rim and bounces off, I’m right in front of the foul line, so I’m probably the closest person in the world to see how close that was. It was just pure shock on my face, and I run over to [then-assistant coach Steve Wojciechowski] and give him a hug, but it was nothing like that feeling because the whole game, there was no point where you could relax. It came down to the very last second.
Jeff Capel on his experiences this summer as an assistant coach for Team USA:
I remember riding over to a workout one day. We were in Oakland, and we had a driver, and it was me, Carmelo Anthony, [Kevin Durant] and DeMarcus Cousins. We started talking about recruiting, and I was asking them like, ‘Melo, where else did you consider,’ and he’s telling me about his recruitment. KD is telling me about his, Demarcus is telling me, and then they’re like, ‘If I had known what Coach was like, I mean, he’s completely different from how I thought he was.’ KD was talking about how he grew up in Maryland and he grew up to not like Duke because of Maryland, but if he had known back then what he knows now about Coach, he would have strongly considered Duke.
Quinn Cook on how he first met Nolan Smith:
We played on the same AAU team. It was different names, but it was the same kind of family... We went to nationals in Memphis, and we stayed in the same hotel. I was just drawn to him, and one day, I can just remember him coming up to me and was like, ‘You’re my little brother.’ And I can remember the older guys would come mess with the younger guys, and he’d make sure no one would mess with me... Nolan always made sure nothing would happen to me, and ever since then we’ve kind of been together. It happened when I was 8 years old.
Quinn Cook on his development as a player at Duke:
My first three years here, I struggled. Glimpses of me almost crossing the bridge, trying to lead, and when stuff was going well I would be the best leader, I’d try to do everything the right way. But when stuff wasn’t going well, I would revert back to my old self, and I just never changed... The summer going into my senior year, I called Coach a lot. I was always bugging Coach. I can just remember me always wanting to talk to him. I just had put two words in my mind for my senior year: No regrets. I just wanted to look in the mirror every night like, 'We won today, I gave everything I had.' In my first three years, I didn’t do that. I just always banked on me being young—I’m not going to lead right now, I’m a freshman, I’m not going to lead, I’m a sophomore. I started to feel sorry for myself, I stopped working, and then my senior year I just had no regrets, and we got it done.
Quinn Cook on the turning point in his Duke career:
When we lost to Mercer my junior year, I can remember getting on that bus back to the hotel in Raleigh, and I just had in my head like I have one more year... Seeing guys lose in the tournament that year crying as seniors, I didn’t want that to be me that next year.
Tony Romo on his time watching Duke’s practice and game preparation:
What I really like is the overall structure and philosophy that Coach K sends with the locker room, and the preparation. A lot of it is your attitude, it’s your approach, it’s how important this is to you. It’s being a Duke basketball player and the commitment to excellence and going to be the best version of yourself day in and day out. I think that resonates as much as anything when you’re around just to see how important it was to everybody from the head coach down to the players down to the equipment staff, to the trainers, to the waterboys. Everybody knew their job was important and that was a pretty neat thing to see. I was pretty proud and excited. It just made me like it even more.
Grayson Allen's and Matt Jones' team superlatives
Cleanest Locker: Luke Kennard
Messiest Locker: Nick Pagliuca
Talks the Most: Harry Giles
Funniest Teammate: Harry Giles & Chase Jeter
Most likely to win “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”: Brennan Besser
Hardest to ref in practice: Amile Jefferson
Grayson Allen and Matt Jones' all-time team draft
Allen's team: Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Larry Bird, Shaquille O'Neal, Tracy McGrady
Jones' team: LeBron James, Ray Allen, Grant Hill, Tim Duncan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jamal Crawford
Grayson Allen and Matt Jones' all-time Duke team draft:
Allen's team: Kyrie Irving, Jay Williams, Shane Battier, Sheldon Williams, Christian Laettner, Mike Dunleavy
Jones' team: Bobby Hurley, J.J. Redick, Grant Hill, Danny Ferry, Elton Brand, Jabari Parker
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