NOTHING BUT The Truth

Sporting News, The, March 15, 1999 by Gregg Doyel

WILLIAM AVERY, the latest in Duke's procession of point guards, shares little in common with his predecessors. But behind his understated demeanor burns an intense, predatory playmaker.

The ones who came before, they were crazy, man, they were just crazy.

You had stocky Steve Wojciechowski, playing defense like his room and board depended on it, little legs pumping up and down the court, face red and angry, the effort exacting such a terrible toll on his body that once, after the 1998 ACC championship game, he collapsed in the shower and needed IVs to get going again.

You had Bobby Hurley, the hollow-eyed ghost of a point guard who played 140 feisty games in college, once with an acute attack of diarrhea.

You had Quin Snyder, the hyper kid from the Pacific Northwest with incredible amounts of energy on the court and off; after college, he obtained his law degree and his master's in business.

And you had Tommy Amaker, the one who started this glorious line of Duke point guards and smothered the intricacies of the position not with athletic ability but with the round-the-clock work habits of a coach, which he became, last season, at Seton Hall.

And now, William Avery. He is the latest in the Duke point guard procession, a 6-2 sophomore who outwardly shares little in common with those who came before him, other than the royal blue of his jersey. Maybe that's why there were so many questions, so many doubts, entering this season about whether the indifferent-looking Avery could run Mike Krzyzewski's motion offense and be the focal point of Krzyzewski's bludgeoning, man-to-man defense.

"William is ..." Krzyzewski starts, pauses, and finally stops. Then he starts again. "William is a little different than the other kids we've had at that position."

Avery is the polar opposite of Wojciechowski, the anti-Wojo. Before tipoff, Wojo looked at the opposing point guard like a lion measuring a wounded gazelle. Avery doesn't look at the other point guard at all as he stands behind the center circle, weight shifting from foot to foot, looking at his shirt as if there might be lint on it. The mechanical Wojo performed every task--every dribble, every defensive stance--with muscles flexed and sweat flying. Avery is so sleepy smooth, he looks relaxed even as he is covering more ground on defense and getting into the lane faster on offense than any of his predecessors did.

But the questions? Oh, there were questions. With Wojciechowski gone but eight former high school All-Americans returning from last season's 32-4, Elite Eight team, Avery appeared to be the only potential roadblock between the Blue Devils and the 1999 Final Four. Could Avery, more of a scorer than a playmaker last season, rein in his offense enough to get everyone else involved? Could he curtail his occasionally futile forays into the lane, which often ended in a missed shot or a charging call, sometimes both? Could he do everything he would be asked to do on offense, and still have enough left for 94 feet of man-to-man defense?

"William was obviously so talented last year, but he needed to learn to play more under control," Duke senior guard Trajan Langdon says. "Nobody really knew what William was going to do. No, let me take that back. William knew what he was going to do."

Not really. The assists, yes; Avery knew he'd get the assists. And the shooting, yes; Avery knew he'd shoot this well. But this often? On a team with preseason All-Americans Langdon and Elton Brand?

"If you'd told me I was going to score almost 15 a game, I'd have been like, `I don't know, I have two players-of-the-year candidates. I've got to get them the ball,' "Avery says. "I didn't think there'd be this many shots for me."

There has been enough for everybody. Langdon and Brand see-sawed for the ACC scoring lead throughout the season, literally exchanging it on a shot-by-shot basis during a game at Virginia, and Brand finished as the regular-season leader at 17.7 points a game (Langdon was fourth, behind Georgia Tech's Jason Collier and Clemson's Terrell McIntyre, at 17.4).

To all that offense, Avery has added 14.6 points a game and 5.5 assists. He has shot 49.2 percent from the field, 40 percent on 3-pointers and 81 percent from the foul line. Often impatient on offense as a freshman, when he averaged 8.5 points but shot only 29.6 percent on 3-pointers and averaged one turnover for every 1.45 assists, Avery this season has been a model of self-control. His 2.25-to-1 ratio of assists to turnovers is third in the ACC.

"They've had a lot of great point guards over there at Duke," Maryland coach Gary Williams says. "And Avery certainly fits in well with all of them."

Maybe better than that. Wojciechowski was more of a hound dog on defense, but he never scored like Avery, and never created like him, either; his best season for assists was his junior year, when he averaged 5.3 per game. Snyder and Amaker matched Avery in the assist category, but neither scored at such a clip. Hurley did it all--he is the NCAA career leader with 1,076 assists and he scored 1,731 points, 14th on the Duke charts--but even Hurley didn't match Avery's current scoring average until his senior year, when he averaged 17 points after three previous seasons of 8.8, 11.3 and 13.2.