Jeff Goodman has been spending time this week in Basketball Paradise, aka the Triangle, and spent some time checking out Quinn Cook, who he calls the key to Duke's season.
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He's probably right about that. Where he's missing the boat is in his expectations of Cook. Look, we won't beat around the bush on this: though he struggled last year in the wake of his lengthy recovery from knee surgery, if he's good to go, the guy showed flashes of absolute brilliance last year.
He's especially good - we'd go so far as to say possibly unusually good - at getting in the lane and causing the defense to collapse, only to find an open shooter like Ryan Kelly.
He's also a superb passer, a fact touched on in Barry Jacobs' Fan's Guide To Duke Basketball 2012-13. He is highly reliable and smart, but that can't convey the sense that he just knows how to do it. Not every point guard does. Some guys are just cooly competent and often that's enough, particularly if your last point guard was a bit of an idiot. That's not the case here.
Seeing this guy healthy and with a year of maturity under his belt is going to be a revelation. We say that with very little hesitation.