A couple of former Duke Blue Devils are engaged in posteason play this week.
One is a wily veteran, with a long and successful record of post-season success in her sport, a crucial component of her team’s title hopes.
The other is a rookie, playing for a team with little recent post-season experience and with no guarantee he’ll even see the field.
Yet, Chelsea Gray and Bryce Jarvis have something in common. Both had unsatisfactory endings to their Duke careers, for very different reasons.
Let’s start with Gray, arguably the WNBA’s best pure point guard. Gray suffered significant knee injuries in both her junior and senior seasons at Duke. But she’s more than recovered. She was a WNBA first-team selection in 2019 and second team in 2017 and 2023. She started this season’s all-star game. Gray averaged 15.3 points, 4.0 rebounds and 7.3 assists per game this season for the Las Vegas Aces. She was third in the league in assists per game, ninth in steals, seventh in 3-point percentage (42.1) and fifth in free-throw percentage (89.7).
Brief aside. Gray wasn’t the only former Blue Devil to receive post-season honors. Elizabeth Williams of the Chicago Sky was named All-Defensive second team after averaging 1.5 blocks and 1.3 steals per game.
Back to Gray. He clutch skills make her special. The Aces won the 2022 WNBA title and Gray was named the playoffs’ most valuable player. The Aces are 5-0 in the 2023 postseason and Gray has again keyed the way with 16.0 points and 6.4 assists per game.
Gray’s coach is the legendary Becky Hammon. I talked to Hammon earlier this season about Gray and Hammon described an almost perfect point guard.
“Her intelligence is a separating factor for her. She’s big [5-11 170]. She has vision that you can’t teach. By vision I mean her ability to read the defense. She’s reading her defense and her ability to kind of dissect it. If you take this away, she’s going to do that. If you take that away, she’s going to do this. Whatever the read is, she gets the ball into the right people’s hands.”
The Aces will meet the New York Liberty for the title, a best-of-five series starting this Sunday. The Liberty were the story of the off-season after adding Breanna Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Courtney Vandersloot to go along with holdover Sabrina Ionescu.
Stewart and Jones are former MVPS and Ionescu was the number one pick in the 2020 draft.
The WNBA’s first super-team? Well, they did go 32 and 8 and Stewart won her second MVP award, edging Connecticut Sun forward Alyssa Thomas a three-time ACC Player of the Year at Maryland.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the coronation. It turns out the Aces are still pretty good, with Gray, A’ja Wilson, Kelsey Plum and Jackie Young. Las Vegas won 16 of their first 17 games and ended the season with a league-best 34-6 mark, thus guaranteeing them home-court advantage throughout the playoffs.
I asked Gray this summer if the Aces felt disrespected over the off-season attention that went to the Liberty.
She didn’t take the bait.
“We’ll be able to prove what type of team we are through our play. It’s pretty simple.”
Head-to-head? The Aces and Liberty played five times with New York winning three.
Must watch TV.
On to the National Pastime.
Bryce Jarvis didn’t have any season-ending knee injuries at Duke. Instead COVID-19 ended his final Duke season.
You may remember the right-handed pitcher for the perfect game he threw against Cornell early in the 2020 season. I’m convinced this is the best team Chris Pollard has had at Duke, so far, at least. And Jarvis was the star. He was 3-1, with a minuscule 0.67 earned run average when the season ended prematurely, 11 hits and two walks allowed in 27 innings.
The Arizona Diamondbacks drafted Jarvis 18th in the 2020 MLB draft and he’s worked his way up through their minor league system.
Jarvis made his major league debut on August 15th of this season. He pitched 11 times, all but one in relief, winning twice, losing once, with a 3.04 ERA.
And, oh, yes. Arizona made the postseason, as a wildcard, edging out the Cubs by a game.
If you bet the mortgage back in April on the D-Backs making the postseason, while the Yankees, Mets, Padres and Red Sox stayed home, you’d be buying your retirement villa about now.
Arizona opens tonight against Milwaukee, best two of three.
There’s no guarantee Jarvis will see the mound.
Then again, there’s no guarantee he won’t. Arizona had to max out its best arms to squeeze into the Wild Card round and we’re talking about a guy with a WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched) of 0.97, which is borderline elite.
And hopefully, more to come.
Chelsea was one of my favorite Duke WBB players, right after Alana Beard. Her injuries robbed her and the team of what could have been one of Duke's all-time (with Elizabeth Williams). So glad to see her tearing up the league and not her ACLs. I'm a huge Jarvis fan and have been following his MiLB and now MLB career and think he has a bright future.
Remember, he also pitched brilliantly against Rocker's Vandy team, who also had Jack Leiter. Bryce's career trajectory has surpassed them both.