Sports radio host TJ Walker offers insight on new Duke assistant Jai Lucas
TJ Walker, a sports radio host focusing on Kentucky sports, spoke with Bull City Hoops about Duke's newest assistant coach, Jai Lucas.
Duke basketball has a different look today than it did just over a month ago.
Two prominent faces are gone from the bench in Mike Krzyzewski and Nolan Smith. Jon Scheyer moved over one seat, and Chris Carrawell took on sole responsibilities as the associate head coach. Amile Jefferson was promoted and Mike Schrage, a familiar name at Duke, returned to the program.
Those are all changes that will take time for Duke fans to get used to, most notably Krzyzewski’s absence.
That’s clearly stating the obvious, but Duke fans have been preparing for this new look since last June. As a result, it likely won’t be as jarring.
One change to the Duke bench, though, brings something different to the table that Blue Devils fans are not accustomed to: someone outside of The Brotherhood. When Nolan Smith left Duke for Louisville, Scheyer was left to fill a hole in the staff that he was not expecting.
Then Scheyer sent shockwaves through college basketball when he hired Jai Lucas away from Kentucky. Lucas, who is widely considered one of the hottest young assistant coaches in the country might have been a surprise hire, once you begin to learn more about him it quickly becomes obvious why he is such a good fit at Duke.
Lucas has ties to Durham, as many family members live in the area. He has the energy to personality that will connect with most everyone at Duke — fans, faculty, administrators, players, recruits — you name it.
He has an infectious personality and his transition to the Duke staff should be pretty seamless. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll spend more time introducing Lucas through his own words, but today we turned to T.J. Walker, host of Kentucky Roll Call on Big X Sports Radio.
Walker, who has covered University of Kentucky sports for more than a decade, took some time to offer his insights on Duke’s newest assistant coach.
Bull City Hoops: Can you provide a general sense of the type of coach Jai Lucas is — what’s he bringing to the Duke bench?
T.J. Walker: It’s an overused phrase in sports, but Jai is the epitome of a players’ coach. College basketball is getting younger, but even still Jai can relate to the college basketball grind better than most coaches because he was in the thick of it more recently. He’s personable and players are drawn to him.
As a coach he’ll help develop guards, especially chemistry between guards and bigs.
BCH: What do you see as his ultimate strength as a coach?
T.J. Walker: Jai’s strengths as a coach are equally important on-and-off the court. He’ll be the coach players go to with problems and concerns, which is valuable to a head coach so they can focus on more important things.
But as I mentioned, on the court Duke’s guards will become more efficient with Jai’s coaching.
What I haven’t mentioned, but is obvious, is his sociability helps him on the recruiting trail. Calipari has been at Kentucky nearly 15 years and he would rank third all-time in the Cal era in assistant recruiting ability (behind now UofL head coach Kenny Payne and current assistant Orlando Antigua). Given more time he could have moved to number one or two. Duke’s really been hurting on the recruiting trail but luckily Blue Devil fans have one of the top young assistants in the game (note the sarcasm).
BCH: Duke has to replace the energy, and infectious personality that Nolan Smith brought — is Jai Lucas a guy that can fill that type of void?
T.J. Walker: Jai isn’t a “Duke guy” like Nolan Smith, so you could make a case that it won’t “mean as much” to him, but some fresh air will be good for the Blue Devils. Jai will be a great recruiter for Duke and he’ll match Nolan’s energy.
BCH: You talked about it some, but again, how do you perceive him as a recruiter?
T.J. Walker: I’ve touched on this already, but he’s one of the best young recruiters in college basketball. He’s good at identifying talent, establishing relationships and when not going head-to-head against Duke, he closed some big time recruits.
UK recruiting isn’t going to drop off losing Jai, and Cal has pressure on replacing him, but there’s currently a gap between Duke and UK. The Cats are trying to close it but at the moment it’s going in the wrong direction.