Unproven talent?
(11/13/98 5:00am)
Imagine being Elton Brand. It seems appealing enough.
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Imagine being Elton Brand. It seems appealing enough.
If at times it seems like two similar teams are playing in Cameron Indoor Stadium tomorrow, it's probably not an illusion.
When women's basketball coach Gail Goestenkors calls her team's schedule one of the toughest in the country, she sure isn't kidding.
Disappointment and optimism don't usually mix together too well. One doesn't really fit with the other, and they are often mutually exclusive.
A week off is almost always a good thing for a football team. And that's mostly the case for Duke, who received a much-needed opportunity to heal several key injuries as it prepares for a noon home game against Maryland this Saturday.
For the second time in three weeks, the men's basketball team will get a visit from a coveted recruit for its exhibition game tomorrow night. This time the targeted player is 16-year old Carlos Boozer, a 6-foot-9 forward from Juneau, Alaska, who is generally regarded as one of the top five high school seniors in the country. Boozer, who will watch the Blue Devils take on Australia in Cameron Indoor Stadium, has narrowed his list of colleges to Duke, UCLA and St. John's. "He's got the tools to be a truly elite player," said recruiting analyst Brick Oettinger of The Sporting News. "He has the handling ability of a wing forward and the athleticism and size to be a power forward." Duke, which already has commitments from three high school seniors and is waiting to hear from a fourth, 6-7 Mike Dunleavy of Portland, Ore., could be on the verge of locking up the nation's premier recruiting class. Boozer, with 20.4 points and 9.2 rebounds per game, was a consensus state player of the year last season, leading Juneau Douglas High School to its second-straight state championship. He has been called one of the two best players ever to come out of Alaska, with Trajan Langdon the other. "He's definitely the best I've ever coached-we've never had a kid like that in Juneau," said Douglas coach George Houston, who will accompany Carlos and his parents to Durham this weekend. "He's the only one besides Trajan who's received that kind of notoriety out here." As for the question of which player is better? "That's for someone else to decide," Houston said. "We played against Trajan and he was fantastic. Something I've tried to challenge Carlos with as motivation is that Trajan won three state titles." Boozer has shrugged off speculation that UCLA, where several friends from his AAU summer team currently play, has been his first choice from the start, just as he's ignoring suggestions that he should follow in Langdon's footsteps to Duke. "I'm thankful that [Langdon] went before me, because he opened a lot of doors for me," Boozer said. "He made a lot of people start looking here at Alaska. But just because he went to Duke, I'm not necessarily going to Duke." Boozer has insisted all along that he will not sign a national letter-of-intent until April, when the spring signing period begins. He is keeping tight-lipped on his current preferences and has plans to visit St. John's next weekend and UCLA in early December. But his coach thinks that an early commitment might still be a possibility. "It wouldn't surprise me," Houston said. He pointed to strong in-home visits with Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and St. John's coach Mike Jarvis. "Coach K was so good that we didn't even have to ask the questions we had planned on asking," Houston said. "He had already answered them all." That's important to Boozer, who has said all along that one of the main factors in his decision will be a strong relationship with the coach. He said he particularly liked the honest, straightforward attitudes of both Jarvis and Krzyzewski. Talk of bypassing college and declaring for the NBA draft surfaced this summer, but that speculation has all but subsided and Boozer admits that "right now I'm focusing on just colleges." "One of the most intriguing things about Carlos is that he's only 16," Houston noted. "I think in talking with some coaches he's come to realize he's got some improving and some maturing to do." If, as Houston suggests, Boozer still has room to improve, the prospects could be frightening. At 6-9, 230 pounds, he can play solid post defense, but his offensive range extends to the three-point line. "He is still very young, but he has a highly developed offensive game," Harris said. "He can shoot, and because he is so explosive, he can get to the basket in a hurry. I don't think it really matters if he fits in because he is very versatile and conceivably could be the centerpiece of [any] team." Duke has commitments this fall from two top-20 players: 6-11 center Casey Sanders and point guard Jason Williams. Nick Horvath, a post player rated in the top 100, has also verbally committed. That leaves Krzyzewski with two scholarships, and he's hoping to use them on Dunleavy and Boozer, completing a class which would match the superb group of two years ago, widely considered the best recruiting class in school history. Dunleavy, who visited Duke on Oct. 24 and North Carolina last weekend, is expected to announce his decision in the near future. Along with Duke and UNC, he is still considering Stanford.
Exhibition games against Team Fokus aren't supposed to be full of surprises. And last night's 118-65 win for the men's basketball did not have many of them.
NASHVILLE - Had things ended up just a little differently, Sims Lenhardt and Scottie Montgomery would have both looked back on Saturday as a remarkable day for both themselves and their team.
NASHVILLE - On a bizarre afternoon of football at Dudley Field Saturday, the football team had a chance to record one of its biggest wins of the decade.
The new Curriculum 2000 proposal has been publicized as an opportunity for the University to raise the level of its academic standards.
At the end of the year, this one might not look pretty but it will still count as a win .
Kenan Holley said that he always knew this chance would come. For a fifth-year senior who has spent the past few years backing up Eric Jones at free safety, that opportunity didn't seem too likely a few weeks ago.
Perhaps the first sign that the women's basketball team has made it to the nation's elite came last spring.
Back in July, Fred Goldsmith was understandably hesitant when he talked about the possibilities of a true freshman playing for his veteran football team this fall. He mentioned that there was an extremely talented cornerback, a local kid, who might push his way into the rotation, but Goldsmith didn't want to set any expectations.
Tonight, at a closed midnight practice in an empty Cameron Indoor Stadium, the men's basketball team will begin a voyage that it hopes doesn't end until the players walk off the court in Tropicana Field in late March.
Through the first two-thirds of the season, the field hockey team has shown that it's capable of beating any team in the country but susceptible to being beat by almost anyone.
Joe Alleva's main objectives have not changed a whole lot since he took over as Duke's athletic director late last winter. And with last week's detailed description of the athletic department's involvement in the Campaign for Duke, those objectives could be moving a lot closer to fruition.
That frontcourt keeps on getting deeper.
Timing is everything in sports.
After a rough four-game start to the season that included two games against teams ranked in the top five in the country, the field hockey team finally returns home tonight to open both its home and ACC schedule.