There was a time when Duke was known as Point Guard U.
It’s easy to see why. The NCAA career assist leader. National player of the year, ACC players of the year, retired jerseys, consensus All-Americans, a couple of Final Four MOPs, first pick in the NBA draft, rookie of the year, NBA all-star, Olympics.. Virtually every starting point guard at Duke since the mid-1970s either became a coach, an NBA player, a national announcer or a combination of the above.
Team success has followed.
Duke has won five NCAA titles and the point-guard contribution to those titles has been pretty significant.
1991-Bobby Hurley, 11.3 ppg, 7.4 apg
1992-Hurley, 13.2 ppg, 7.6 apg
2001-Jason Williams, 21.6 ppg, 6.1 apg
2010-Jon Scheyer, 18.2 ppg, 4.9 apg
2015-Tyus Jones, 11.8 ppg, 5.6 apg
That’s a pretty good track record. And it’s not just those five teams. Steve Vacendak (1966), Tommy Amaker (1986), Will Avery (1999) and Chris Duhon (2004) all quarterbacked Duke to the Final Four with outstanding play-making skills. Even Quin Snyder, who wouldn’t make anybody’s short list of great Duke players averaged 5.7 and 6.2 assists in 1988 and 1989 respectively.
Duke doesn’t have a guard on this team who is going to average 6.2 assists per game.
Case closed?
Well, maybe not. Jim Spanarkel led Duke with 3.7 assists per game in 1978. Grant Hill led Duke with 5.2 assists per game in 1994. Wendell Moore led Duke with 4.4 assists per game in 2022. Assists weren’t an official stat in 1963 but if they had been, I’m pretty sure Art Heyman would have led Duke in that category.
All four of these teams made the Final Four. Heyman, Spanarkel and Hill are three of the best players in Duke history. Moore wasn’t a great player but he was All-ACC in 2022.
Back to the present, or near present at least. Tre Jones was Duke’s most recent elite point guard. The 2020 ACC Player of the Year, Jones averaged 16.2 points and 6.4 assists that season. Since then some combination of Jordan Goldwire, Jeremy Roach, Trevor Keels, Jaylen Blakes, Tyrese Proctor, Caleb Foster and Sion James have manned the point-guard spot for Duke.
None have averaged more than 4.0 assists per game over a season.
Heavens to murgatroyd. What’s going on here?
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