Jaylen Blakes Is Off To Spain

Here’s a pretty cool article featuring Duke sophomore guard Jaylen Blakes, who is going to be on the road with a group called the East Coast All-Stars. They’re off to Spain to play against some hardened pros which will only help him.

He has some extensive comments on Duke’s transition from Coach K to Jon Scheyer, on Jeremy Roach. Here are comments about the transition:

“They both bring a great presence, they’re both great. I think Scheyer did a lot of learning under him. I think Scheyer’s great, he’s ready for the role. he’s a great X’s and O’s guy, he’s really smart, really personable with all the players. And learning under Coach K and playing under him for a year, he truly is the GOAT, so I think it’s going to be great...[Scheyer] is going to add his only little twists to it and just help everybody learn and be successful this year.”

And he had this to say about Jeremy Roach, with whom he will compete for minutes:

“Jeremy is a great player, a great leader, one of my best friends, So I’m just excited to play with him again. We play well off each other, we complement each other’s games. He’s just so great offensively...a great defender, we can really pressure people a lot so I was just more than excited to hear that he’s staying and playing with me.”

All of that is really nice to hear.

One factual error in this column: it says that Blakes is the first Scheyer era Blue Devil to see live action. That can’t be true since Tyrese Proctor competed in FIBA play this summer for Australia, which would obviously put him ahead of Blakes in that regard.