5 Ways Losing Andre Dawkins for the Season Affects the Blue Devils
When Andre Dawkins decided to take a redshirt year to be with his family, the first thought of every Duke fan was to hope that his time away from the stresses of college basketball afforded him the opportunity to deal with the emotional trauma that he has suffered. As fanatical as fans can be, it was clear that this issue was of greater importance than any game Duke will play this year.
Though he will be missed, as a player and as a person, his absence is understood and the Duke community will certainly keep Andre Dawkins and his family in their hearts and minds.
As Duke fans hope to welcome back Andre Dawkins next year, the team this year will have to carry on without his substantial contributions. Here are five areas where Andre Dawkins’ absence will affect Duke.
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Duke’s SG Andre Dawkins Sitting out 2012-13; Will He Play Another CBB Game?
Duke SG Andre Dawkins is not redshirting.
Early reports indicated that the 6’4″ SG was going to sit out this season’s games.
But CBSSports.com’s Matt Norlander blogged Monday that Dawkins is completely withdrawing from active participation with the Blue Devils’ 2012-13 team as he continues to grieve his sister’s passing.
Norlander confirmed that “Dawkins will attend Duke this academic year as a basketball player on scholarship—but that’s it. No practices. He wasn’t even a part of the 2012-13 team picture.”
Laura Keeley of the Newsobserver.com said that Dawkins’ father maintains that “his son does still plan on returning to the team and playing the 2013-14 season.”
Dawkins’ place on the roster seems to be 100 percent secure, but his place on the depth chart remains to be seen.
If he returns next season, he will battle Rasheed Sulaimon (unless he blows up this year and leaves for the NBA draft) and then Class of 2013 recruit Matt Jones.
Racking my brain, I honestly don’t remember a player taking a sports sabbatical like this.
A year from now, I want to write about Dawkins’ full-fledged return to the program and his establishing himself as the starting shooting guard on the 2013-14 Blue Devils.
But I fear that his last game in a Duke uniform might be the first-round fiasco last March against Lehigh, where he scored five points on 2-of-9 shooting (1-of-5 from beyond the arc).
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Duke Basketball: Ways the Blue Devils Can Replace Andre Dawkins
In this day and age of college athletics, it’s almost unheard of for a healthy upperclassman to redshirt a season. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening to senior Duke shooting guard Andre Dawkins.
Legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski confirmed that Dawkins would redshirt this season in late June, saying “it’s time for him to step away (from the program).”
The most likely reason (although all we can do is speculate) that this is the time for the sweet-shooting Dawkins to step away is to deal with the devastating loss of his sister, who was tragically killed in a car accident during Dawkins’ freshman season.
With Dawkins away from the team this upcoming season, Coach K will have to come up with some ways to replace Dawkins’ on-court contributions. For starters, here are a few.
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Projecting the 2012-13 Duke Blue Devils Rotation Without Andre Dawkins
It is great to be a Duke Blue Devil, unless, of course, your name is Andre Dawkins. Dawkins is officially going to be redshirted for his senior season with Duke. So what will the rotation look like without him?
Although Dawkins won’t really be a part of the Blue Devils this year, Duke still has plenty of talent on the court to compete for a national championship, which is the case every year for Duke.
Read on to see what the 2012-2013 Duke Blue Devils rotation will look like without Dawkins.
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Projecting the 2012-13 Duke Blue Devils Rotation Without Dawkins
It is great to be a Duke Blue Devil, unless, of course, your name is Andre Dawkins. Dawkins is officially going to be red-shirted for his senior season with Duke. So what will the rotation look like without him?
Although Dawkins will not really be a part of the Blue Devils next year, Duke still has plenty of talent on the court to compete for a national championship, which is the case every year for Duke.
Read on to see what the 2012-2013 Duke Blue Devils rotation will look like without Dawkins.
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Darryl Dawkins rocks N.J. Nets celebration in pink suit
Ever since Darryl Dawkins named his dunks, he has been a fan favorite.
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Duke Basketball: Would Andre Dawkins Sitting Out Have a Negative Impact?
Andre Dawkins is not leaving Duke but he is considering sitting out the Blue Devils’ 2012-13 men’s basketball season, Jeff Goodman of CBSSports.com reported on Friday.
Steve Wiseman of the Durham Herald Sun reported:
His father, Andre Dawkins, said Friday that his son could need a break from playing college basketball and that Duke’s coaching staff is fully supporting him. “Everything is positive,” Andre Dawkins Sr., said. “Redshirting may be an option for Andre this fall because he came in early from high school.”
While Dawkins has shown at times in his first three years as a Blue Devil that he can shoot as well as just about anyone in college hoops, he has never demonstrated the long-term consistency that would launch him into the national spotlight.
You might be thinking, “Dawkins shot a respectable 39.2 percent from the arc this past season, didn’t he?”
Yes, but after scoring 22 points (in 21 minutes of playing time) to help the Blue Devils defeat Florida State on the road on February 23rd, Dawkins only scored 8 points in the final six games of the season, shooting 2-for-17 (an arctic 11.7 percent) from downtown.
Dawkins simply didn’t “look right” down the stretch. He is the kind of player who, when his shot isn’t falling, has trouble contributing much in other areas of the game.
And overall, his game can be a little one-dimensional. He only had 20 assists (in 34 games) for the entire season. Miles Plumlee had 18. Nuff said?
Even after Austin Rivers decided to enter the 2012 NBA Draft after one season in Durham, Duke’s backcourt looks to be congested going into next season.
Senior SG Seth Curry is the Blue Devils top returning scorer (13.2 PPG).
Incoming freshman guard/McDonald’s All-American Rasheed Sulaimon has had a fantastic run in the high school all-star game circuit. He claims that he has been told that he will see time at both backcourt positions next season.
Part-time PGs Tyler Thornton and Quinn Cook will be fighting for every available minute of possible playing time.
If Dawkins decides to play the 2012-13 season, I hope that he is able to regain his confidence and shooting touch, as well as develop some of the other parts of his game (defense, passing, rebounding) in order to spur the Blue Devils’ success.
If he decides to sit out, the Blue Devils should have more than enough firepower in the backcourt to make life miserable for many of the teams on their schedule.
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NIT 2012 Scores: Dawkins Solidifies Head Coaching Credibility with Championship
Since Johnny Dawkins left his job as an assistant at Duke to take the reins at Stanford, it’s been unclear whether he had the chops to succeed as a college basketball head coach.
But Thursday’s 75-51 win over Minnesota in the NIT championship game cleared up any misconceptions.
Dawkins, who was an All-American at Duke, played professionally for nine seasons before joining the Blue Devils in 1996 as an administrative intern in the athletic department and an on-air analyst during home games. He joined Mike Krzyzewski’s coaching staff in 1998 and was promoted to associate head coach in 1999.
Then, in 2008, he took the leap and accepted a job as head coach at Stanford.
Dawkins’ four years with the Cardinal haven’t been smooth sailing. Tasked with rebuilding the team in the wake of Trent Johnson’s departure, he went 20-14, 14-18 and 15-16 during his first three seasons, and even before this postseason began, the 2011-12 season was a disappointment.
In a weak year for the Pac-12, the Cardinal finished in seventh place with a 10-8 league record. Despite starting off the year 15-3 and 5-1 in conference play, Stanford stumbled mid-January and never fully recovered.
Until now.
It’s hard to keep a young team motivated when it starts losing, particularly after it has achieved some success. But even after a January streak in which the Cardinal went 1-5, Dawkins coached his team to five wins in its final eight games en route to the NIT.
And most importantly, he refused to allow his players to buy into the hype that winning the NIT doesn’t matter.
Stanford, which faced Syracuse in the NIT preseason tournament championship and fell 69-63, used its disappointment over that early-season loss to fuel its postseason championship run. Dawkins told the Associated Press:
We talked about this experience and how much we have grown: You know, to show we have grown, we’d have to win this tournament. And our kids, I think they rallied around that.
In some ways, coaching a team to a victory in the NIT is just as hard as coaching a team in the NCAA tournament. It’s harder to keep the team focused because often, the players are bitter about being left out of the Big Dance, and it shows in their performances. Some of them would rather play in no tournament than play in the “Nobody’s Interested Tournament.”
It’s the coach’s job to keep the team motivated, despite the disappointment over playing in a second-tier tournament. Despite the fact that it means you’re not quite good enough to be one of the best. It’s a challenging job, and Dawkins succeeded.
He told the News & Observer‘s Caulton Tudor:
Having gained this experience throughout this tournament, I think will bode well going into the future. I think this will help us understand how to win games in this type of atmosphere, which will make us a better team in the future.
As he said, his team proved how much it has grown, and Dawkins proved how much he has grown, too. He’s not just a Duke assistant anymore.
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2012 NIT: Why Johnny Dawkins’ Stanford Cardinal Will Win
Believe it or not, Stanford, which finished a lowly seventh in the much-maligned Pac-12 conference, is one of only eight college basketball teams still standing in the NIT. The 24-11 Cardinal take on UMass at MSG on Tuesday in the NIT semifinals.
How on earth has coach Johnny Dawkins’ team, which won just one game between mid-January and mid-February, managed to find its way to the Big Apple?
1. Looks deceive
Stanford earned its invite to the NIT. While the Cardinal played only .500 ball in January and February conference play, they had a decent enough 20-10 regular-season record.
Stanford turned heads last November with an impressive showing in the preseason NIT, where it led Syracuse in the second half of the title game before bowing to the Orange by 69-63.
Stanford also had some of the best regular-season wins in the Pac-12, twice blowing out conference champ Colorado (84-64, 74-50) and defeating the league’s other March Madness representative, Cal, by 75-70 in the regular-season finale.
2. Late-season hot streak
The Cardinal finished strong, winning five of their last eight regular-season and conference tournament games, with the three losses by a total of 13 points.
With some exceptions, Stanford played well enough on defense all season (65.7 points per game allowed), no surprise given the team’s athleticism and Coach Dawkins’ 11-man rotation.
The offense, however, sputtered at times. However, in recent weeks it has exploded, scoring more than 75 points in the team’s last six games, highlighted by NIT wins by 76-65 over Cleveland State, 92-88 in OT over Illinois State and 84-56 over Nevada in the quarterfinals.
Twelve players have scored in double figures this season, and four have season-high games of more than 20 points, a reflection of the scoring talent assembled by Coach Dawkins.
3. Frontcourt
Stanford has an athletic and dynamic frontcourt that has jelled in March after being maddeningly inconsistent for part of the season.
Two of Stanford’s big men, senior forward Andrew Zimmerman and sophomore forward Dwight Powell—who had played inconsistently—have come to life of late.
Zimmerman, he of the memorable facial hair, scored a career-high 22 points against Cal in the Pac-12 tourney and has continued to contribute points, rebounds and defense in the NIT. He’s playing the best ball of his college career.
Powell has length and hops, ala former Cardinal stars Landry Fields and Josh Childress, with double-double skills.
Zimm and Powell are joined by the team’s leading rebounder, powerful 6’8” senior power forward Josh Owens (honorable mention All-Pac-12, 12 PPG, 6.0 RPG), and the kinetic 6’7” sophomore Josh Huestis, who can score, rebound and defend.
Dawkins gives major minutes as well to 6’9” senior Jack Trotter, 6’9” sophomore sharpshooter John Gage (six games in double figures off the bench) and 6’11” Stefan Nastic, giving the Cardinal as deep and imposing a front line as any of the remaining NIT teams.
4. Backcourt
Chasson Randle is the best freshman guard that no one east of the Pacific Time Zone has heard of. Named to the All-Pac-12 freshman team, he’s averaged nearly 14 points per game and played both PG and SG. Randle has scored in double figures 25 times this season and displayed the ability to be Stanford’s best guard since Brevin Knight.
Randle is complemented by sophomore Aaron Bright, who torched Illinois State for 29 points in the second-round NIT victory. Bright leads the team with 127 assists. Both Randle and Bright have shot over 43 percent from beyond the arc.
The 6’6″ sophomore Anthony Brown is another player who has emerged in March, with a 15-12 double-double in the NIT opener against Cleveland State. Long-armed 6’4” senior Jarrett Mann can defend, and penetrate.
5. Coach Dawkins
Coach Dawkins has shown quite a bit of patience with his players, and it has paid off with the team’s collective momentum. He’s used 15 different starting lineups in an effort to maximize the production from his 11-man rotation.
The Cardinal’s late-season surge gave Dawkins his first winning conference record in his four years on The Farm and will lead to Stanford’s first postseason championship since it won the NIT back in 1991.
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Duke vs. Wake Forest: Andre Dawkins Makes It Rain in Win
Less than a month ago I wrote a piece about a disappearing devil. I was highly critical if not over critical of Duke’s long-range bomber Andre Dawkins. The Hampton Roads, Virginia native has had a roller coaster career at Duke, but has appeared to be nothing more than a streaky shooter most days.
That may be the case, but this sniper is on fire! Dawkins has now tallied double-digit points in three straight games, has bumped the ACC’s best freshman (Austin Rivers) to the bench and is primed to help this team compete for the conference title.
Last night Duke welcomed Wake Forest to Cameron Indoor in what some saw as a possible trap game. In the win, Dawkins and the Devils controlled the game throughout, making sure they didn’t overlook the average at best Deacs.
Sounds from the old school NBA Jam rang throughout the stadium as Dawkins was “On Fire!” As the Crazies chanted “Dre all day,” Dawkins kept shooting and kept hitting. As he carried Duke by hitting seven threes in the first half, Duke pulled away, putting this one just out of reach.
Assisting Dawkins on the night of solid play was Ryan Kelly and Rivers as they both tallied 20 points. Kelly helped Dawkins in the first half as Rivers stepped up in the second half.
The re-emergance of Dawkins is much needed for Duke. While the team has only lost twice on the year and us undefeated in conference play, they have been without a true superstar or go-to guy on the season. Duke typically has an ace in the hole that can carry the team, but without one this team has had trouble finding an identity.
Finding an identity as a top-five team and a record of 16-2 is impressive, but don’t forget—this is Duke.
The key takeaway from this game isn’t that Dawkins had a good night, but that the shooters and Plumlees didn’t put it all together. If this team is to make a strong push they need both to happen at the same time. Yes, Duke scored 91 last night, but they need an inside-outside threat. They need to be able to use the Plumlee family to both control the boards and allow the shooters to shoot.
Up next for Duke is a battle against the Tarheel Toppers of Florida State. No one thought this game would have any importance so soon, but after FSU’s hot start in league play, this one has a little extra clout. After winning three straight, a win over Duke would all but put the ‘Noles into March Madness.
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