You remember Kyle Singler.
You may remember him as the next Mark Alarie or the next Dirk Nowitzki or the next Larry Bird, to name one of his two favorites. The other, Pistol Pete Maravich, played a shorter, slicker and more self-absorbed game in another basketball lifetime.
The comparisons never quite fit reality anyway. There's never another Michael, never another LeBron, never another identical twin for a one-name comet. But everyone got the ballpark picture.
At 6-8, Singler could rebound better than any Duke teammate, handle the ball better than other forwards, square up with those square, ashen shoulders and flick a better 3-pointer over any backcourt defender. As his junior season neared, Singler stood out as a potential man among college boys, a certain lottery pick before the next Independence Day, the ACC's obvious MVP-in-training and everybody's All-America.
A strange thing happened on the way to Singler's long-distance, 30-point explosion during Duke's 86-67 victory over Georgia Tech last night. He stopped making shots, which meant that he stopped expecting to make every shot. His name slid off some All-America checklists.
Senior Jon Scheyer bolted into the early lead for individual honors. Singler performed broad duties, yet he no longer floated around as The Man. He was one of three stars, shoulder to shoulder with Scheyer and Nolan Smith.
Singler sprained his shooting wrist against Wake Forest. In the 10 games before last night, he converted 16 of 54 3-point attempts, a shade under 30 percent. A writer for the student paper, The Chronicle, advocated benching Singler, which irritated Coach Mike Krzyzewski enough to provoke a public outburst.
In January, Singler went 2 for 8 with nine points during a loss at Georgia Tech, and last Saturday he made 4 of 14 shots in a stinker at Georgetown. Instead of wallowing in what's-wrong theories, Krzyzewski emphasized two messages during three hard practices.
Message No. 1: "Whatever you've done, forget. It's what you're going to do." Message No. 2: A larger dose of motion offense -- a free-flowing sequence of unpredictable movements and spontaneous screens -- should produce better outside shots.
"For him," Krzyzewski said, "I thought he hasn't been catching it strong. By running motion, it helped him catch it strong. Then, whatever his talents are, they should take over. And, he took over. That is not coaching. That is him."
Singler started innocuously enough. With a minute left in the foul-bedeviled first half, Singler slammed his taped right wrist into an opponent's knee. He grabbed the right hand, doubled over and retreated to the bench. The trainer stepped in. Krzyzewski worried.
About 30 seconds later, Singler returned. He hit a 3-pointer from the right corner, staking Duke to a 12-point lead. "A silent kind of dagger," Singler said.
In his loud second half, Singler celebrated one bomb by twirling in the air and pumping a fist toward the students and smiling wildly -- something that happens about twice in a sweet year. He made all 6 3-point attempts in the 20-point half and 8 of 10 overall.
"It was probably the first game all year I shot the ball well from the floor, so I was happy," he said. "I just got into a rhythm.... I was ready to shoot the ball just because I knew if I shot it, it had a good chance of going in."
Scheyer (21 points, seven assists) had watched Singler connect like that in practice and figured that he was bound to break out sometime. "You especially know he was feeling good when his shots were barely hitting the rim," Scheyer said. "It was crazy to see it go in like that."
Everyone suddenly remembered the movie. They had seen it before, a long time ago.
lrawlings@wsjournal.com.
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