Duke Blue Planet BLOG

DOWNLOAD DUKE BASKETBALL’S BRING ME DOWN BY MIKE POSNER (Opens in iTunes)

Do I leave for “the pros” or hold off and complete my senior year?  It’s a question that a number of Duke Basketball players have had to answer, including Gerald Henderson this past off-season.  However, G wasn’t the only Devil on campus facing the question.

Mike Posner, a rising star in the music industry as a producer, songwriter and singer, inked a deal with J Records (Sony) over the summer and many people in the music industry assumed the Michigan native would leave Duke to focus entirely on his music.  However, Posner opted to return to Duke to graduate, he says, “to make my parents proud.”

Posner also knows he is different, and that helps his brand.  His music is different (a unique sound that isn’t hip-hop but isn’t rock either), his story is different (a Duke student making it big in the music business) and his ambitions are different (He says, “People are going to respect me as a producer, musician and songwriter.  In the end, I wanna be — I’m going to be — one of the biggest pop stars in the world.”).

For now, he’s back on campus, leaving every weekend for concerts all over the country while still sporting a 3.5 GPA.  He has been featured in The New York Times, was meeting with Jay-Z during exams last spring, and made his first national TV appearance recently on NBC’S The Carson Daly Show.

Posner is hugely popular on campus and proud of his association with Duke, always quick to suggest that Duke’s national student body helped get his music out to the rest of the country.   His fans here at Duke include Jon Scheyer, Nolan Smith and the rest of our team.

This summer, we reached out to Mike to see if he would have any interest in producing a song for our team.  Within 30 minutes of an email sent on a Friday evening from someone who hadn’t met Mike (me), the busiest student on Duke’s campus had called back, offered to write a song just for us, invited our guys to travel with him to NYC for a performance with 50 Cent, and said he wanted to help however he could.

Over the next month, Posner wrote and produced Bring Me Down, a song we incorporated in our annual hype video that debuted at CTC and now introduces our team before games in Cameron.  The song has been a huge hit and the hype video had over 25,000 total views in it’s first week on DukeBluePlanet.com, YouTube and iTunes.

Meanwhile, this past week Posner released his second mixtape, One Foot Out the Door, also earning rave reviews.  He may have “turned pro” and signed with an agent, but this Blue Devil won’t have to worry about his draft stock.  At age 21, in one of the toughest industries to find work, Sony has already made him a top pick.

Mike challenged Nolan to some 1-on-1 after we filmed our Hype video

Hey Everyone,

My name’s Zach White and I am a senior here at Duke.  Now for most people, senior year means finishing those final school requirements, applying for jobs, and figuring out how to be a real person.  For me, senior year means one thing… this is my LAST year as a Cameron Crazie.  I only have one final season to scream my lungs out as I cheer on the greatest basketball program in the country.  So my only option is to completely make the most of it, and take advantage of every minute I have left in Cameron.

The season has already started with a bang.  Countdown to Craziness was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve seen in Cameron.  First off, the place was packed and loaded with energy.  Clearly, the fans were ready to get the season started and the opening acts were amazing.  It was when the team was introduced, however, that Cameron just exploded.  My favorite intro was a toss up between Zoubs busting out some dance moves, and Nolan coming out rockin the stunner shades.

The two scrimmages were amazing.  It was awesome to see our new guys.  Mason looked unbelievable.  He is really going to be something special for our program.  Seth Curry, Andre, and Ryan also were impressive.  We showed them some love my cheering “Spicy Curry, He’s Hot Stuff!!” and “You Forgot About Dre!!”  We’re still working on something for Ryan Kelly.  Someone near me suggested something about comparing him to R. Kelly, the singer, but fortunately we quickly vetoed that.

The end of the second game was unbelievable.  It was a tie-game, with the White Team’s ball.  The Blue team got a block with about 4 seconds left, and Nolan got fouled with hardly any time on the clock.  The White Team called a timeout to ice him.  When Nolan came back to the court it was dead silent (I think we were all surprised that he wasn’t wearing his stunner shades).  I gave him some encouraging words, and to my surprise, he winked at me and told the whole crowd that he wanted some noise.  The crowd went nuts as he hit both free throws and put the Blue Team up two points.   The White Team totally missed an opportunity to put in their coach, Christian Laettner, for the final play to see if he could reenact “the shot.”

The Dunk Contest was ridiculous, in every sense of the word.  Nolan’s shenanigans were hilarious.  Olek really impressed everyone with his dunks.  When he grabbed the mic and screamed “Are you not entertained?” I actually fell over laughing.

Afterwards, a Matt and Kim concert in Krzyzewskiville was a perfect way to end the night.

Moving on to our first chance to see the team against an actual opponent, the Pfeiffer game was undoubtedly the best Parent’s Game I’ve been to yet.

The Crazies were on their game, and our antics kept all of the guests and visitors in the building smiling and laughing.  Most of the parents joined the Crazies in jumping and shouting, and the few who stayed seated were quickly bombarded with criticism.  There was an 83 year-old grandmother standing two rows behind me who told several seated parents to, “Get up you Pansies! Our team is on the floor!”  She’s my hero.

The Crazies concentrated more on cheering on our team, rather than heckling Pfeiffer (with the exception, of course, of taking some jabs about their height).  The Plumlee brothers, with all of their rejections on the other team, have been dubbed the “SWAT Team.”  We have been calling Andre Dawkins “The Doctor,” referencing how smooth he operates, and making plenty of Dr. Dre puns.  We did our best, truly our best, to show Duke fans’ dedication to all our guests who don’t get a chance to watch as many games in Cameron as we do.  I know that I was bleary eyed after all our efforts and still have some homework to catch up on.  You can find me in the library until the Findlay game!

Zach

Dear fans of the Blue Devils and The Blue Devil… Yes, all you Cameron Crazies and Crazie hopefuls or usedtobes; you Iron Dukes both ancient and young; and last and certainly least, you Blue Devil haters (you know who you are… the guy who watches every Duke game, frequents websites such as this one, and even attends games in Cameron but rationalizes it to both yourself and your anti-Duke cohort by wearing a UNC or Maryland tee… by the way, don’t forget to erase your browsing history so as to not reveal your adulterous Duke Basketball love affair).  Anyway, to all of you, I would like to announce my entrance into the blogging world! (cue band: Devil With a Blue Dress On)

Welcome to the Blue Devil BLOG, THE TRIDENT

CRAZY, BUSY WEEKEND

After 3 bags of IV fluid and three days of rest, I think I’m ready to recap last weekend before we jump to this weekend.   Though it was one of the busiest, it was an awesome weekend for Duke Athletics.

First of all, how ‘bout Duke Football!!   I’ve sown blood, sweat, and tears (mostly just sweat) into the program, trying to help get us a win, and it seems like we’re really starting to reap the rewards.   Thanks to all you diehards that weathered the torrential downpour with me to see us get our second consecutive ACC win… something that hasn’t happened since 1994.  It was so great that not even waterlogged shoes and a drenched 30lb cape could wipe the smirk off of my face.

The Pfeiffer game was a great time as well.  It was a good second look at the team.  I hope our big men (Zoubs, the Plumlees, Ryan Kelly, et al) can continue to hold it down inside.   I regret to say that on Saturday I found out that the new LED media table means I can no longer jump up there.  But don’t worry, I’ll find other ways to get the Crazies going and another surface to do backflips off of.

WHAT’S ON MY MIND

You guys have probably noticed I always have a message taped on my head since I can’t speak.  For the game this weekend, I made a simple suggestion to Pfeiffer as to how they may want to spell their school name: FIFER.  For the Countdown to Craziness, I went with “3, 2, 1…CRAZIE.”

MASCOT CODE

My trident/pitchfork is made of solid iron, and was crafted by a Durham Metalsmith.

Ramses better think twice before picking any fights.   I am the strongest mascot and I have a solid iron pitchfork.  Game over.

ASK THE DEVIL

Toughest thing about being The Blue Devil: Communicating without words since I can’t talk.  When in doubt, clap twice and point!

How I stay in great shape: Before last season I got all beefed up and lost some weight (especially in the head).   To keep up with that I do some cardio, a whole lot of plyometrics, some gymnastics, and I make sure to keep myself well hydrated.

BLUE DEVIL’S DOMAIN

Favorite color: Duke Blue

Favorite song: AC/DC’s Hells Bells

Favorite Duke Tradition: Besides winning, surfing on the band

FAVE PHOTO

I love meeting young fans, interacting with them, and possibly converting the youngsters into Duke fans.  At the Pfeiffer game, I met this young lady during a break in the action…

Thank you for checking out my first blog.  I hope to see you Saturday at Virginia.

GO DUKE

BD

Hey Duke fans!  This is Kyle and Casey hanging out watching some baseball at our off-campus apartment, and we thought it would be a good time to write up our first blog.  We’re pumped about the S&P 1253 on Blue Planet and just to get this all started we are going to introduce each other a little bit.

Casey: Kyle, in my opinion (and in the opinion of a lot of experts around the country), is the best player in college hoops this year, and is by far the most competitive person I have ever met.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a big-time basketball game or a casual game of ping-pong, he is going to bring it.   K-Y as a lot of us call him wears #12 for us as you all know, but off the court he is just as talented as he is on the court, which is going to make for a lot of fun throughout the year on the blog.

Kyle: Casey wears #53 for us, and as some of you might know was a manager for us for his first two years here at Duke.  Case is an awesome teammate, and we have become really close friends throughout our three years here at Duke (and I even got to show him a little bit of what my hometown South Medford, Oregon is all about last summer).  Casey and I have spent a lot of time in the gym together, but some of our best times also happen when we are away from the court.

It is pretty clear that Duke fans are simply some of the best in the world.  Obviously you guys get to see what we do out on the court with the Crazies intimidating the other teams, but what we want to do is to give our Duke fans a more behind the scenes, personal feel about what we do in our time when we are not playing, and basically open it up to talk about our day to day stories, and what we like to do as college students.  Throughout the season we’re going to obviously be talking a lot of basketball too, but like we said we want to open it up to what we are doing throughout the day, even away from Cameron, like if we found a new food spot that we really like, if we’re starting up a pretty cool new art project, or if someone actual beat Jon in a video game!

We are going to try and update our blog as often as we can, hopefully at least every week, but we also would love to hear from you all, and we definitely will answer as many questions or respond to any ideas that you guys have for us!  Also, in addition to all that, we are going to do a weekly section where we talk about our predictions for what’s hot and what’s not for the coming week, in something we’re going to call “Buy and Sell” (hence the title’s spin off on the S&P 500 stock index).  A little insider trading tip, definitely BUY Nolan Smith this year, stock is sure to jump up big time!!

Anyway, I hope you all are as excited for the coming season as our whole team is!  Like Coach has said, we are much different than a lot of Duke teams of the past, and we all believe that we have the potential to make this an incredibly special year!!  We are looking forward to getting our blog underway with you guys, so like we said, all questions and comments are cool.  Until next time Crazies…KY and CP

In this edition of BP Passport, Coach K discusses the Pfeiffer game, our new style of man-to-man defense, his guys in the NBA as the 2009-10 season kicks off, the team poster and what he likes to do to unwind.  Congrats to Mark Baden, who was selected as the winner of the best sign at the Pfeiffer game.  Mark will receive a pair of tickets behind Coach K at our next home game (November 3rd against Findlay).