POPULAR GUY
Freshman Barrett is warmly welcomed back to Mississauga for exhibition matchups
TORONTO — Maybe it’s a mystique. Maybe it’s a cult. But there is no denying that, no matter what you want to call it, there’s just something about Duke basketball.
A couple of hundred fans sat in the stands of the Paramount Fine Foods (formerly Hershey) Centre in Mississauga on Tuesday morning, watching an iconic coach put a group of teenagers through a nondescript practice, and half of them stuck around to cadge an autograph from Blue Devils freshman R.J. Barrett long after the proceedings had ended.
Organizers expect sellout crowds of close to 10,000 for exhibition games between the Blue Devils and Ryerson on Wednesday night and Duke and the University of Toronto on Friday, numbers unimaginable for most Canadian university basketball events.
The games?
Well, Duke has a roster that includes the first-, secondand third-ranked NBA draft prospects in Mississauga’s Barrett, man-child Zion Williamson and the injured Cam Reddish, so there’s every chance they will win and win easily.
Barrett is sublime. Williamson, at six-foot-six and about 260 pounds, is crazy good and his dunk from the foul line to end practice Tuesday was jaw-dropping. Reddish is no slouch, but he won’t even play.
It is an embarrassment of collegiate riches.
“No, no, it’s an opportunity,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said about coaching his talentladen roster. “Challenges are when you have to pay rent and you don’t have a job. Coaching these guys, that’s not a challenge. The word challenge in athletics, I think is used too much. There are many opportunities, so it’s a great opportunity to coach these guys.”
Whatever happens, the final score of any of the games — Duke will close out the three-game series against McGill in Montreal on Sunday — won’t really matter to many of the spectators and lifelong Duke fans who just seem to bask in the glory of being near the teenage players and legendary coach.
The game isn’t the thing. The Blue Devils are the thing.
“We are just going to see how hard we can play with the lights on and in front of a crowd,” Krzyzewski said after the two-hour session was complete.
“We are going to have a great crowd. They have done an unbelievable job of branding the events and I think we are supposed to have capacity crowds these two games, so it will be a neat environment and maybe we will see something in our kids, or in an individual kid, that we wouldn’t have seen if he were just in summer school.”
The appearance by a school of Duke’s stature — and it captures the imagination of casual fans even more than alumni — is just another step in the evolution of the game here and the ability of Canadian schools to attract marquee opponents.
NCAA rules allow schools to take one foreign trip every four years that gives them an early start on the season. Many go to far more exotic locations in Europe or Africa or the southern hemisphere.
Duke’s in Mississauga and Montreal.
It’s part recruiting and part continuing to build the brand with one eye toward future recruiting possibilities.
It’s all part of the mystique. Or the cult.
“We haven’t played, so our guys will be nervous and excited,” Krzyzewski said.
“We are going to try to play everybody, too. We are not in regular-season conditioning. We don’t have a whole system in. We are just going to see how hard we can play with the lights on and in front of a crowd.”
An adoring crowd, without question.