Davidson releases men's basketball schedule

A home game against Vanderbilt, hosting a Bracketbuster game and road games against Charlotte, Duke and Kansas highlight Davidson's men's basketball schedule, released Thursday.

Date Opponent, Time

N5 Lenoir-Rhyne (exhibition), 7 p.m.

N11 Guilford, 8 p.m.

N14 Richmond, TBA

N18 at Duke, TBA

N21 Presbyterian, TBA

N26 at UNC Wilmington, 2 p.m.

D1 at Wofford*, 7 p.m.

D3 Furman*, 7 p.m.

D7 Vanderbilt, 7 p.m.

D10 at Charlotte, 7 p.m.

D19 at Kansas (Sprint Center, Kansas City), TBA

D22 at Umass, TBA

D29 Penn, 7 p.m.

J5 at UNCG*, 7 p.m.

J7 Georgia Southern*, 7 p.m.

J12 Western Carolina*, 7 p.m.

J14 at Appalachian State*, 2 p.m.

J19 College of Charleston*, 7 p.m.

J21 The Citadel*, 7 p.m.

J26 at Chattanooga*, 7 p.m.

J28 at Samford*, TBA

F1 at Furman*, 7 p.m.

F4 Chattanooga*, 4 p.m.

F6 Wofford*, 7 p.m.

F9 at The Citadel*, 7 p.m.

F11 at College of Charleston*, TBA

F15 Samford*, 7 p.m.

F18 BracketBuster (opponent TBA), TBA

F23 Elon*, 7 p.m.

F25 at Georgia Southern*, TBA

M2-5 SoCon Tournament at Asheville Civic Center,  TBA

All times Eastern (unless noted) and subject to change

* Southern Conference game

North Carolina headlines 2012 Maui field

The Maui Invitational has officially announced its field for 2012, headlined by North Carolina.

The tournament, hosted by Chaminade, is scheduled for Maui's Lahaina Civic Center, also includes Butler, Illinois, Marquette, Mississippi State, Texas and Southern Cal.


The 2011 tournament, held over the Thanksgiving weekend, features Duke, Georgetown, Kansas, Memphis, Michigan, Tennessee, UCLA and Chaminade.

N.C. State basketball recruit headed to Oak Hill

Forsyth Country Day point guard Tyler Lewis (12), a rising senior, already has committed to N.C. State. DIEDRA LAIRD - dlaird@charlotteobserver.com

N.C. State basketball recruit Tyler Lewis is taking a step up in competition. Lewis, one of the top point guard prospects in the country, will finish his prep career at Oak Hill Academy.

Lewis, who will be a high school senior, averaged 27.2 points and 7.4 assists last season for Forsyth Country Day in Lewisville.

Lewis, who started as an eighth-grader at Forsyth Country Day, dominated the private-school league and leaves as the school's career leading scorer with 1,927 points.

He joins the perennial prep power in Mouth of Wilson, Va., which counts ACC guards Nolan Smith (Duke), Ty Lawson (UNC), Steve Blake (Maryland) among its litany of stars in the past 25 years.

"You want to play against the best competition," Lewis said. "I think it's the best thing for me to get ready for N.C. State."

ESPN's Dave Telep rates Lewis, a 5-11 point guard, as the 73rd-best prospect in the class of 2012. He joins top prospects Jarnell Stokes (ranked No. 18 by ESPN), D'Vauntes Smith-Rivera (32) and A.J. Hammons (63) in the Oak Hill lineup.

Lewis, who committed to State last October, was one of the best players at the Bob Gibbons Tournament of Champions in Raleigh in May and has seen his stock rise on the recruiting circuit with a strong spring and summer.

"He will go down as arguably the greatest basketball player in [school] history and his efforts on the court will be hard to duplicate," Forsyth coach Craig Dawson said.

-- J.P. Giglio

McKillop Receives NABC Honor

Davidson's Brendan McKillop has been named to the Honors Court by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, a recognition of his academic performance during his senior season.

McKillop graduated in May with a 3.29 cumulative grade point average and a degree in sociology. He started all 32 games he played in and
averaged 9.5 points, 2.3 rebounds and 2.3 assists as a senior. His 216
career 3-pointers made ranks fourth in school history and his 254 career
assists ranks 16th.

McKillop finished his career with 831 points, 254 assists, 215 rebounds and 70 steals in 117 games.

Wake's Tabb, Walker suspended

Wake Forest's quest to improve on a disappointing 2010-11 basketball season ran into an obstacle Monday with the announcement that Melvin Tabb and Ty Walker were suspended indefinitely for unspecified violations of athletic department rules.

Walker, a 7-foot senior center, played in 32 games with nine starts last season. He averaged 3.6 points, 3.5 rebounds and 2.5 blocked shots per game.

As a freshman last season, Tabb played in 14 games and averaged 1.6 points and 2.0 rebounds per game.

Ken Tysiac

Thom Becomes Davidson Hoops Director Of Operations

Billy Thom is the new director of operations for Davidson basketball, head coach Bob McKillop announced Wednesday.

Thom graduated from Davidson in May and has been a part of the Wildcats' basketball program since his freshman year. A native of Cold Spring, N.Y., Thom began as a student manager and became student director of basketball operations as a junior and senior. He worked as video coordinator for the Wildcats and helped with travel and scouting.

"Billy came to Davidson with aspirations of becoming a basketball coach as his father is a prominent high school coach in New York," said McKillop.
"He knows our system inside and out, carries Davidson basketball in his heart and is one of our own. I¹m very pleased he has joined our staff."

Nix Joins Wake Forest Basketball Staff

Wake Forest basketball coach Jeff Bzdelik has tapped into his long-time NBA connections to land Jeff Nix as the Deacons' new director of men's basketball operations.

Nix spent 15 years in the New York Knicks organization with responsibilities ranging from assistant coach to assistant general manager and director of scouting.

“We hit a home run in the hiring of Jeff Nix as our director of basketball operations,” said Bzdelik in a statement. “His loyalty, integrity, knowledge and experience takes a backseat to no one. He will be a great asset to our basketball program and the entire Wake Forest University community.”

Bzdelik and Nix worked together for one season with the Knicks in 1994-95 under Pat Riley.

Nix was a member of the Knicks’ coaching staff for the organization’s Eastern Conference Championship teams in both 1994 and 1999. Nix served as an assistant under three Knicks head coaches, including Pat Riley (1992-95), Don Nelson (1995-96) and Jeff Van Gundy (1996-2000).

Duke mourns ex-basketball captain Emma

Thomas Emma, a Duke basketball team captain in 1982-83 who ushered the Blue Devils through a difficult transition after coach Mike Krzyzewski took over for Bill Foster, is dead of an apparent suicide.

Emma was 49. Police say he plunged from the 12th floor of the New York Athletic Club in Manhattan. His body was found at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday on a second-floor landing of the building on Central Park South.

Former teammates reacted with shock.

“This one’s especially tough,” said Jay Bilas, a freshman on the 1982-83 team, “because I didn’t know he was that bad off.”

Emma (No. 22, above, in January 1983) was drafted by the Chicago Bulls but never played in the NBA. He was a high-scoring high school standout in Manhasset on Long Island and enrolled at Duke in 1979, before Foster’s final season.

A 6-foot-2 guard, Emma started three seasons under Krzyzewski, scored 784 career points and made perhaps his most lasting contribution to the program as a captain during his senior season.

In 1982-83, Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson and Bilas arrived and immediately took over starting roles as one of the most anticipated freshman classes in school history in Krzyzewski’s third season.

The captain and lone senior starter, Emma prevented discord by accepting a less prominent role as Dawkins and Alarie, respectively, were Duke’s top two scorers.

“He did not play as much as he should have because. . .the players who were considered the future of Duke basketball were going to be given playing time,” Alarie said. “He was unbelievably gracious in accepting that role of captain and also, I call it ‘transition facilitator.’ ”

Bilas said Emma had a great sense of humor and kept everything light while he displayed extreme tenacity on the court. One day before practice Emma gathered the team to say that day’s session would be especially grueling and that a fight might break out if they didn’t keep their cool.

Emma cautioned his teammates to remain calm, but a fight did break out. Emma was right in the middle, and his teammates teased him about it afterward.

“Tom had a pretty good feel for the fact that with us coming in with all this hype and No. 1 recruiting class and all that, that there could be some tension between the older players and us,” Bilas said. “He made sure that there wasn’t.”

Emma (right) was drafted in the 10th round by the Bulls, and later became president of Power Performance, Inc., a company devoted to training young athletes.

The New York City medical examiner will determine the cause of his death.
Alarie said he kept in touch with Emma, reviewing a book he wrote called “Basketball Player's Comprehensive Guide to Strength Training," and talking about the good, old days when they were teammates at Duke.

“It’s really come as a shock to everybody,” Alarie said. “No inkling that there was a problem with depression or any issues like that. So it’s really a shocker.

“He just had a never-say-die, never-give-up attitude when he was on the floor, and we all respected him and admired him for that, and that’s why he was a captain, because he had that attitude, that kind of fight and competitiveness in him. He was a great teammate.”

The Associated Press contributed.

Ken Tysiac

Krzyzewski prefers 16-game ACC schedule

DURHAM – Mike Krzyzewski knows little about what kind of system Duke will run next basketball season.

Instead, the Blue Devils’ coach will wait until after the team’s trip to play exhibition games in China and Dubai in August to form a rotation and a system of play after losing first-team All-ACC seniors Nolan Smith and Kyle Singler from last season’s team.

“We have so many new guys,” Krzyzewski said Wednesday during a media opportunity at the beginning of his yearly K Academy fantasy camp.

Krzyzewski has a firm opinion, though, on the ACC’s great scheduling debate. After the ACC got just four of its 12 teams into the NCAA tournament last season, school and conference officials discussed in April the idea of increasing the conference schedule from 16 to 18 games beginning in 2013-14.

The Big East, Big Ten and Pac-10 all play 18-game conference schedules. Krzyzewski doesn’t want the ACC to follow their lead. He would prefer the ACC schedule to remain at 16 games to allow teams to continue playing high-profile opponents from outside the conference without making the schedule too strong.

Krzyzewski would like ACC teams as a group to schedule stronger outside the conference while keeping the 16-game league schedule. According to realtimerpi.com, the ACC had just the sixth-best schedule strength among the nation’s conference last season.

Just two teams in the ACC – Duke and North Carolina – played a top-25 schedule.

“Part of our problem is that as a conference, we have not scheduled nonconference wise hard enough to promote a good enough RPI which would benefit everyone,” Krzyzewski said. “If we could still keep 16 games and each team takes it upon itself to schedule stronger, I think we need that.”

Krzyzewski also is pushing for the ACC and its television partners to develop regular slots for nationally televised games to entice audiences to develop consistent ACC basketball viewing habits.

He suggested slots on Wednesday night and Saturday afternoons.

“Our conference has been built on people turning radios on, in little towns and big cities throughout the mid-Atlantic region,” Krzyzewsk said. “And they knew at a certain time there was going to be an ACC basketball game on, and things like that, where we as a conference need to do that.”

Last week, ACC commissioner John Swofford said he was impressed with the way the basketball coaches conducted themselves with the league’s best interests at heart at the conference’s yearly spring meetings.

Just four of the ACC’s basketball coaches have been working in the conference for more than two seasons. Swofford sounded encouraged with the way the coaches interacted.

“They’re very bright, very engaged, very knowledgeable and appreciative of our conference’s history and tradition in basketball and are proud to be part of it,” Swofford said.

Krzyzewski echoed those comments.

“The group of coaches we have in here are really smart,” he said, “and I think they look at it as a conference. I think for a little, the last few years, I think sometimes we’ve gotten too territorial about individual programs and not looked collectively on what the conference needs to do.”

Regarding his own team, Krzyzewski said it will take time to figure out how to play in 2011-12. Duke has just one senior, Miles Plumlee, next season and loses 52.8 percent of its scoring off a 2010-11 team that finished 32-5.

He will keep things simple on the trip to China and watch to see which players emerge as contributors and leaders before making any decisions.

“We have very good talent, and we’ll have good depth,” Krzyzewski said. “But we don’t have anybody coming back who for a whole year, you knew he was that [key] guy. So the China trip, we’ll keep it simple. We’ll get to know our guys.”

Ken Tysiac

N.C. State picks up preferred walk-on

Broughton grad to walk on at N.C. State: Staats Battle, a 6-foot-5 basketball standout at Broughton, is going to N.C. State as a preferred walk-on. Battle, who averaged 13.7 points last season for the Caps (22-6), will graduate this spring and enroll at N.C. State in the fall.

He made a school-record 61 three-pointers during his senior season at the Raleigh high school.

“He is a tremendous three-point shooter,” said Broughton coach Jeff Ferrell. “I think he is going to do a great job at State. He plays well with other people, and he plays within his capabilities. He is very much a team player. Staats is a person of great character.”

Ferrell also coached former State player Will Roach, who went to State as a walk-on and played for four years.

“Will and Staats are different in their physical characteristics, but as far as the way they play with a team and with being people of great character, they are similar,” Ferrell said. “They are both just very good people.”

-- Tim Stevens