Miles Plumlee and Ryan Kelly Named Captains

Duke Basketball announced today that Ryan Kelly and Miles Plumlee were voted by both their teammates and coaches as captains of the 2011-12 team.  Miles, the lone senior on the team, and Ryan, one of four juniors, will be anchors of a deep front line featuring four players over 6’10″ tall.

Captains lead in different ways, as we saw with Kyle Singler (by example) and Nolan Smith (vocally) last season.  Ryan has spent the last three summers on campus working to transform his body and has shown a strong work ethic since stepping foot on campus.

“It’s a huge honor to be voted to this position by my teammates and the coaching staff,” Kelly said. “It’s something I aspired to be when I came to Duke. I’m going to use it to help my team and do whatever I can to lead. We’re obviously going to ask for leadership from all the players on the team, but I look to be somebody who all of my teammates can look to and say ‘He’s always playing his hardest, and we can always count on him.’”

Miles took some time this summer to work as an intern on Wall Street but has clearly dedicated himself in his final season on the Gothic Campus. 

“Being named co-captain is something really special to me,” Plumlee said.  “I have played under a lot of great leaders, I’ve seen what they’ve done for me  and now it’s my turn. I want to really step up and do that for the young guys this year. It just commemorates a lot of hard work for me. I’m really proud of the accomplishment and I want to make the most of it.”

Both guys were inserted into the starting lineup for this most recent foreign trip, which was somewhat surprising given the high expectations placed on Mason Plumlee going into this season.  Seemingly, there was a bigger leadership push going on from Miles and Kelly behind the scenes than was evident from the outside as Duke looks to replace Nolan and Kyle from last year.

Taken another way, Coach K made comments before the trip that he was expecting Seth Curry to step up and assume some of that leadership as he is taking over the starting point guard spot.   Even after the Devils returned, the head devil made it sound as if Seth had done just that, “On any team, you’d hope there would be some level of separation at least initially,” Krzyzewski Wednesday. “Like Nolan (Smith) and Kyle (Singler) were separated from our team (last year) and then Kyrie (Irving) was there. And then people have to catch up. If you’re always together, you might have a socialistic type of team. But you’re not going to win. There has to be somebody who the other guys chase and who you can count on all the time. And Seth really did that.”

Maybe Duke’s insistence that they will look to the post more this year means more than just more entry passes and a switch to an inside-out offense. Coach K has once again shown his ability to mold his team’s strategy around the players’ strengths that are at his disposal.

• Besides Ryan and Miles, only two players over 6’10″ have been captains at Duke over the last 10 years: Nick Horvath in ’03 & ’04 and Josh McRoberts in ’07.

Thanks to DukeUpdate.com for the information!