Nov. 9, 2007
THE HERALD-SUN: Eagles make Division I debut in loss to Duke
By BRYAN STRICKLAND : The Herald-Sun
bstrickland@heraldsun.com
Nov 10, 2007 : 12:36 am ET
Seconds after Duke and N.C. Central players shook hands following Friday night's season opener for the neighboring schools and the Division I opener for the Eagles, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski got both teams together to pose for a picture at midcourt to commemorate the moment.
Several feet above the teams' heads, the Cameron Indoor Stadium scoreboard told of Duke's 121-56 victory, but the scene below told the rest of the story.
"I've never been beat by 50 before and then they take your picture, but that's because Coach K is a good man, and that will be something to remember," N.C. Central coach Henry Dickerson said. "We appreciate Duke University and Coach K for giving us an opportunity to open our Division I schedule here, across town.
"It's a historic moment for our university and for our players."
Before the clock struck zero, the Eagles undoubtedly wished their performance on the court could had been more memorable, but they had no answers for a Duke team that put seven players in double digits even while playing no one more than 24 minutes.
But while Krzyzewski said he was pleased with his team's effort and unselfishness, he seemed even more pleased to be able to take part in a special night for the Blue Devils' neighbors.
"Really it's an honor for us to be in this game with them, for their first game in Division I," Krzyzewski said.
"For me the best thing was after the game and us being able to take a picture together. That will stay there for the rest of time, just like the great relationship like Duke and North Carolina Central have.
"We had more depth and height and talent, but we didn't necessarily have more heart than they did. They played hard the whole time."
Krzyzewski's team opened by the season by showing that it will have more depth and talent than a lot of teams on its schedule. The Blue Devils set the tone right away, with each of their first five scoring plays coming from a different starter as Duke ran out to an 11-2 lead.
By the time Duke built its lead to 24-5, all nine Blue Devils that had played had scored.
"I liked the way we shared the ball tonight," Krzyzewski said. "For me the best thing in basketball is the pass -- that's the beauty of our game. When you connect on a play, whether it's on a break or in the halfcourt, you don't really know who scored -- you just know the team scored.
"I love that part of the game more than anything."
In the end, the Blue Devils' three freshmen found themselves at the top of an impressive stat sheet, one that saw Duke match the sixth-highest scoring game in school history and the fourth-largest margin of victory at 65.
Taylor King poured in a game-high 20 points on the strength of a 5-for-7 showing from 3-point range, Nolan Smith scored 16 points, and Kyle Singler scored 15 to match sophomore Gerald Henderson.
"My teammates got me open a lot," King said. "We just moved the ball well today, and I just got open shots and knocked them down.
"It was fun. I definitely enjoyed myself, and we played well as a team. The offense we have is bound to score a lot of points. It's a run-and-gun offense, and it's a fun way to play."
Already leading 48-21 late in the first half, Duke further broke it open behind a pair of 3-pointers from King in the final minute to start a 16-0 run that continued after halftime for a 64-21 cushion. King made 3 of 4 from long range in the first half while the rest of the team made just 3 of 11, but in the second half -- jumpstarted by two Henderson 3-pointers after the break -- the Blue Devils drilled 10 of 13 from beyond the arc.
NCCU played its best basketball in the seven minutes that followed, with the Eagles' one returning player in guard Bryan Ayala (18 points) and football standout Charles Futrell (17 points) actually helping the Eagles outscore Duke for a while.
But with Duke leading 83-43, the Blue Devils finished strong with 18 unanswered points, capped by a dunk from Smith with 6:09 left to put the Blue Devils over the century mark.
"I feel like we took it to another level," Smith said. "The exhibition games were fun and the fans were crazy, but I feel like the whole arena took it to another level tonight.
"Being our first real game, it was very exciting."
And, despite the final score, it was exciting for the Eagles as well.
"I think it's just great," Dickerson said. "I think the series should continue. Hopefully we will get better and get more competitive, and maybe when we do play Duke will get more out of it."
NOTES -- Duke sophomore Jon Scheyer, who started all but one game as a freshman, came off the bench and added 13 points and a game-high six assists. * Senior DeMarcus Nelson and junior Martynas Pocius scored 10 apiece and sophomore Lance Thomas had nine points and a game-high four steals. Pocius left the game late after catching a forearm that left him with a bloody nose, but Pocius said he would be fine. * Duke walk-on Jordan Davidson, who scored two points all of last season, came in for Pocius and matched that with a runner in the lane. * NCCU freshman Marius Vaskys, a 6-9 prospect from Lithuania, didn't make his debut because of a minor knee injury. * Duke returns to Cameron to take on New Mexico State on Monday at 7 p.m. on ESPN2. NCCU next plays at Rutgers on Monday at 7:30 p.m.
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Duke Sports Information
November 9, 2007
Duke 121, N.C. Central 56
DURHAM, N.C. -- Taylor King tossed in five three-point baskets and scored a game-high 20 points as 13th-ranked Duke opened the season with a 121-56 win over N.C. Central on Friday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Duke made 16 three-point baskets in 28 attempts on the night to match the sixth-best single-game performance in school history, falling two shy of the record of 18. The 121 points also equaled the sixth-highest single-game effort in Duke hardwood history.
The Blue Devils have now won eight straight season-openers and are 79-24 overall and 26-2 under head coach Mike Krzyzewski in campaign lid-lifters. Friday's game also marked the first on the hardwood between the two Durham-based institutions.
Duke never trailed in the contest, jumping out to an 11-2 lead in the first four minutes of action. After Calvin Wright's bucket pulled the Eagles to within 11-4, the Blue Devils used a 15-1 run to claim a 26-5 lead on a dunk by Lance Thomas with 12:40 remaining in the opening half. The spurt also included dunks by Kyle Singler and Gerald Henderson along with a three-pointer from Jon Scheyer.
Six other Blue Devils joined King in double figures as Nolan Smith carded 16 and Gerald Henderson and Kyle Singler added 15 points each. Jon Scheyer came off the bench for 13 points while Martynas Pocius and DeMarcus Nelson chipped in 10 apiece.
King was seven-of-nine from the floor while sinking five-of-seven three-point attempts. He added one foul shot along with six rebounds, three assists and two blocked shots in 19 minutes. Scheyer was three-of-four from three-point range and dished out a game-best six assists against zero turnovers.
Brian Zoubek brought down a game-high nine rebounds as Duke outboarded the Eagles, 49-24, on the evening.
The Eagles were paced by Bryan Ayala's 18 points while Charles Futrell posted 17 points and six rebounds.
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WRAL·COM
Mixed Colors Illuminate Historic Tapestry
Posted: Nov. 12 10:50 a.m. / Updated: Nov. 12 3:00 p.m.
There was more than passing irony in the photograph taken the other night at Cameron Indoor Stadium, more than passing symbolism in the friendly mixing of blue and white with maroon and gray following the game, N.C. Central's first as a Division I basketball team.
Not long ago, it was other colors that defined the relationship -- or rather the lack of one -- between Duke University and its Durham neighbor.
John McLendon, a Kansas disciple of basketball inventor James Naismith, directed the NCCU basketball program from 1940 through 1952. The Hall of Fame coach once asked to attend a game at Duke. Come along, he was told, but only if you wear a waiter's garb.
The snub was par for the course throughout the country, particularly the South. Rules written and enforced by whites maintained racial separation and second-class status for blacks in every aspect of life from athletic facilities to movie theaters, restaurants to public transportation, cemeteries to hospitals, bathrooms to parks, home sales to ambulance rides.
African-American coaches such as McLendon, Bighouse Gaines at Winston-Salem State, Cal Irvin at North Carolina A&T State, and Harvey Heartley at St. Aug's won handsomely but in obscurity, their achievements at historically black universities largely ignored by the mainstream media.
The game last Friday, which Duke won handily, 121-56, was a small step toward raising awareness of the rich traditions at schools like NCCU.
Come March, a four-hour documentary by noted filmmaker Dan Klores, entitled "Black Magic," will further illuminate the world of black basketball prior to integration. That should help fulfill a wish by the late Gaines, who said, "I think we need to let (today's players) know the hardships, the guys who set the stage for them."
Klores, whose films include Crazy Love, Viva Baseball!, and The Boys of 2nd Street Park, says McLendon and Gaines are among the central figures in his documentary, which will be shown on ESPN prior to the NCAA tournament. "We all found it quite riveting," Eric Hamilton, archivist for the production, said of examining basketball within the suppressed universe of black society prior to 1970. "It's hard to do justice. We found the story got bigger and bigger."
A central role for McLendon is only fitting. Gaines learned the nuances of basketball from the innovative McLendon, whom Irwin calls "a brilliant coach, a brilliant tactician, a brilliant mind."
Few realize the extent to which McLendon influenced the game.
To this day, TV folks tout the ACC Tournament, founded in 1954, as the nation's oldest. Perhaps a nod goes to the Southern Conference tournament, which is far older. But most everyone forgets, or probably never knew, that eight years prior to the ACC's advent, McLendon and several others inaugurated a postseason tournament in the Central (formerly Colored) Intercollegiate Athletic Association.
McLendon is seldom give proper credit for devising the basic alignment UNC's Dean Smith later made famous as the Four Corners. "Depends on who's telling it," Brooklyn T. McMillon, senior archivist at NCCU, notes drily.
An article written by McLendon, published in the 1957 Converse Yearbook, outlined his "Two In The Corner" offense, meant, he wrote, to create "the illusion that the ball is to be withheld but at the same time offering a constant threat and effort to score." (Sound familiar?)
McLendon also is credited by some with devising the matchup zone, and he most certainly was an early advocate of fastbreak basketball.
"Coach Mac" also became the first coach to win a national championship in integrated competition with an all-black squad, capturing NAIA titles from 1957 through 1959 at Tennessee State in Nashville.
And McLendon was not afraid to defy the racial norms of his time. Gaines recalled that he and his mentor purposefully broke barriers within the coaching profession. "Places we weren't supposed to go as blacks, we kept going," Gaines said. "We went places, we joined, and once they found you were competent, they accepted you. It was a matter of professionalism."
Competition is another great equalizer. Interracial play was frowned upon, if not forbidden, in many states, North Carolina included. That did not stop McLendon from countenancing a game in March 1944 between an all-white medical school squad from Duke and the starting five at what was then the North Carolina College for Negroes.
The game was played on a Sunday morning, the Duke contingent ducking down in their cars to avoid being seen as they entered the African American section of Durham. The whites covered their heads with jackets as they entered the Old Women's Gym, a nondescript brick building that sits on a campus promontory and today is reconfigured as a warren of offices devoted to student services.
During "the secret game" -- as it was called by historian Scott Ellsworth in a 1996 article revealing perhaps the first organized, integrated college basketball competition in the South - the gym doors were locked. No spectators were allowed, although a few students did peek through the frosted glass windows.
"We were a bunch of out-of-shape guys who got together on weekends to play whoever we could find," David Hubbell, now a retired physician, said of the medical school team in a 1996 newspaper interview. "We didn't have a coach. We didn't practice. We were very loosely organized."
That did not lessen the unorthodox nature of the competition. McLendon arranged for a referee, and time was kept. The first game on the black floor with white lines saw the Eagles double the score on the squad from Duke. Then the players intermingled, and played a game of shirts and skins.
That day at Central will be featured in Klores' film, which should further raise awareness among today's players.
A random sample of Blue Devils following the win over NCCU found neither blacks nor whites had ever heard of the contest that defied racial norms 10 years before the Supreme Court mandated equal opportunity in education in Brown vs. Board of Education, 20 years before Maryland signed the ACC's first African-American basketball players.
McLendon and most of the players from the 1944 contest are dead. But they, more than anyone in attendance, surely would have appreciated the game the other night, when Duke and N.C. Central met as equals on the Cameron court.
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Featherston: Duke-N.C. Central Share A Rich Tradition 11/08/2007 - Al Featherston, GoDuke.com
DURHAM, N.C. - When Duke opens the 2007-08 season Friday night against North Carolina Central University, it will be the first official basketball game ever played between the two Durham schools.
But be sure to put the emphasis on the word "official" - Duke and NCCU have a long history of competition that includes three recent exhibition matchups, a long series of summer pickup skirmishes and a "Secret Game" played more than half a century ago, when Durham was still a racially divided city.
It's that history between the two schools that makes it appropriate that North Carolina Central should make its debut as a Division 1 program against Duke.
"I'm really proud that both of us understand that and understand the relationship between the two schools," Blue Devil coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "Both programs felt that for their entrance into Division 1 ... for our community and to show the great relationship we have had between North Carolina Central and Duke, it's really the only matchup you could have for that."
While Duke basketball fans are justly proud of their school's basketball heritage, they need to understand that across town, the historically black institution has had a rich legacy of its own.
That legacy started in 1937, when a young Kansas graduate named John B. McLendon arrived on campus to start work as an assistant to William F. Burghardt, who coached both basketball and football for what was then known as the North Carolina College for Negroes.
McLendon, who had learned the game of basketball directly from the game's inventor, Dr. James Naismith, became the head basketball coach in 1940. That was the first real step in what would become a remarkable career - McLendon later became the first black coach to win a national championship, leading Tennessee A&I to the 1957 NAIA title; the first black professional head coach when he guided the Cleveland Pipers from 1961-63 in the ABL; and the first black coach at a historically white institution, when he took over the Cleveland State program in 1966.
McLendon, inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1979, is also regarded as the father of fast-break basketball. He developed his racehorse game in Durham, becoming one of the first coaches to take advantage of the new rule change in 1938, eliminating the center jump after every basket.
In 1941, when Duke was winning its second Southern Conference championship, McLendon's fast-breaking Eagles finished 19-5 and, according to Milton Katz's recent biography of McLendon, were tabbed the "Negro National champions."
A year later, North Carolina College played a groundbreaking game in Washington, D.C., against Brooklyn College - beating the predominately white school 37-34. The Eagles would have loved to have faced off against their more heralded white neighbors.
"We could have beaten Duke and Carolina in the same day - one in the morning and one at night," NCCU historian Alex Rivera told Katz.
Unfortunately, the Jim Crow laws in the South at that time prevented athletic competition between whites and blacks. Just a few years earlier, Duke football coach Wallace Wade had enraged racists when he agreed to play at Syracuse in 1938 and allow the Orangemen to use their black quarterback, Wilmeth Sidat-Singh. It was common practice at that time for integrated Northern schools to hold their black players out when playing schools from south of the Mason-Dixon line. Indeed, Syracuse had left Sidat-Singh at home earlier in the 1938 season, when the Orangemen faced Maryland in Baltimore.
Thanks to the legally endorsed racism of the time, we'll never know how Gerry Gerald's 1944 Southern Conference championship team - a powerful squad built around Durham High School teammates Bob Gantt, Gordon Carver and the Loftis brothers, Cedric and Garland - would have fared against McLendon's 1944 Eagles.
North Carolina College finished 19-1 that season, losing only a thriller in New York to unbeaten Lincoln College in what was billed as the "Negro National Championship Game."
But while the Blue Devils and Eagles could not meet that season, a team from Duke did take on McLendon's powerful Eagles.
Scott Ellsworth, a Duke graduate and an oral historian, uncovered evidence of the game more than half a century after it was played. Ellsworth first reported the game in a 1996 article for the New York Times Sunday magazine. He learned that a strong intramural team from the Duke Medical School, containing a number of former varsity players from various schools, met McLendon's team on the morning of March 12, 1944.
Ellsworth admits that he hasn't been able to verify how the game was arranged. He suspects that contacts between members of the YMCA chapters at Duke and North Carolina College led to the game. He tracked down several members of the two teams. One was Jack Burgess, a member of the Duke Med School team, who had started for the University of Montana as an undergraduate. Burgess produced a letter written to his parents in 1944, describing the Secret Game.
It had to be secret because Durham's laws at the time forbid such interracial athletic competition. The Duke players snuck onto the North Carolina College campus on a quiet Sunday morning and played the game behind locked doors - although apparently news of the game leaked out and a number of curious North Carolina College students scaled the outside walls in an attempt to watch the competition through the narrow windows just below the roof.
All of the participants agree that McLendon's squad routed the Medical School team, 88-44. But there were no hard feelings. In fact, when the game was over, Ellsworth reports that the two teams did something even more radical - they split up into integrated teams and played a shirts-and-skins pickup game.
Pickup games involving players from Duke and North Carolina Central (as the school was renamed) became common in the 1970s and 1980s. There was a good deal of athletic contact between the two schools during that era.
Actually, as far back as 1956, North Carolina Central track and field coach Dr. Leroy Walker, who had once been a basketball assistant under McLendon, brought his star hurdler Lee Calhoun to Duke to work out with Blue Devil star Joel Shankle - Calhoun would win the gold in the Melbourne Olympics, while Shankle claimed the bronze.
Over the years, Walker brought a number of his track stars to work out at Duke. In the process, he forged a strong friendship with Duke track coach Al Buehler. Together, the two men brought a number of major international track meets to Durham in the late 1970s. There were other contacts in that era. The North Carolina Central football team played at Wallace Wade Stadium at least twice in the 1970s - meeting Grambling in Duke's stadium for the 1972 Pelican Bowl; once taking on archrival North Carolina A&T at Wallace Wade. NCCU's previous head football coach, Rod Broadway, was an assistant at Duke from 1981 to 1994.
However, until Mike Krzyzewski's arrival in 1980, there was little formal contact between the Duke basketball office and its counterpart at Central. That changed as Coach K reached out to his Durham neighbor.
Greg Jackson, who was at NCCU for 16 seasons as an assistant and head coach, talked about the relationship that was formed in 2005, at an NCAA press conference just before Duke met Jackson's Delaware State Hornets in the first round in Charlotte.
"He's obviously the best coach in the country, bar none, but he's a better person than he is a coach," Jackson said of Krzyzewski. "He told me, `Don't ever sacrifice your morals or values for winning or losing.'"
Three years ago, when North Carolina Central's McDougald-McLendon Gym was undergoing renovations, NCCU moved practice to Duke's Card Gym. And Coach K said that the Eagles will work out in Cameron three times before Friday's opener.
The Duke-North Carolina Central rivalry might have taken off years ago, except for the Eagles' decision in 1980 to remain a Division II school when a majority of teams in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference elected to make the jump to Division 1.
The Eagles enjoyed considerable success since making the decision, winning a Division II national title in 1989 under head coach Mike Bernard and reaching the 1993 Division II Final Four under Jackson. But the school also suffered in several ways - for instance its traditional rival, North Carolina A&T, did elect to go Division 1 in basketball (and 1-AA in football), giving the Aggies a huge edge in a rivalry that's every bit as heated as Duke-Carolina.
By remaining at Division II, NCCU was able to take advantage of a 2004 NCAA rule change that allowed Division I schools to schedule two exhibitions each year against lower division schools. Krzyzewski was quick to call NCCU coach Henry Dickerson and arrange an exhibition game between the two schools.
"I thought it would be good for our area," Krzyzewski said at the time. "I think they'll be good. Their coach is a solid coach, and right now we can only play four-year collegiate schools who are not Division I."
Duke played NCCU in an exhibition game before each of the last three seasons, winning all three games by comfortable margins. Last year's Eagle team, which would go on to finish 13-15 in the school's final Division II season, lost 92-63 to a Duke team that would finish 21-11 in Division 1.
Both teams are very different this season. Dickerson's Eagles will have four new starters for their Division 1 debut after losing 11 lettermen from last year's squad.
Junior guard Bryan Ayala is the team's only returning starter. Dickerson has three transfers and six freshmen integrated into his rotation, along with one surprise - 6-6 Charles Futrell, a four-year star at wide receiver for NCCU's football team, is back after sitting out last season with an injury and will be focusing on basketball.
It's not going to be an easy transition for the Eagles. They face a four-year probationary period before they'll be able to compete for a spot in the NCAA Tournament. Central will operate as an independent this season, but has applied to rejoin the MEAC - renewing rivalries with old rivals such as North Carolina A&T, Delaware State, South Carolina State, Morgan State and Howard. That could happen as early as next season.
This year's schedule is brutal. The Eagles open with five straight road games, following the cross-town trip to Duke will be longer journeys to Rutgers, Florida, North Dakota State and Wake Forest. After a home game with Tennessee Tech, NCCU hits the road again for 10 more games away from home. Overall, Dickerson's team will play seven home games, 21 road games and one game on a neutral court in Iowa.
"We are a young team and most of these guys don't know the magnitude of what we are going into," Dickerson recently told reporters. "They don't have a clue. And sometimes that is good. We have to find an edge that some of the teams we are playing do not have. We are going to have to find that edge."
History suggests that NCCU will find that edge - maybe not this season. But in the years to come, the school that nurtured one of the great coaches in basketball history and produced players of the caliber of Hall of Famer Sam Jones will find a way to compete.
Duke should benefit from that competition. It's only right that Durham's two basketball giants should finally be competing on the same level.
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Duke University Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski
On his impressions of the season opener against N.C. Central:
"Our guys played really hard and very unselfishly. I thought N.C. Central played really hard too. We have more depth, height and talent, but we didn't necessarily have more heart than they did. They played hard the whole time and kept trapping. Really, it's an honor for us to be in this game with them, for their first game in Division I. I can't say enough about the great relationship that North Carolina Central and Duke have had. The best thing was after the game and us being able to take a picture together."
