Tre Jones on Vernon Carey: "Pretty Much Unstoppable"

Jones discusses freshman big man's transition to becoming a post player

Vernon Carey Jr. has been Duke’s top scorer and rebounder as a freshman, despite playing center, a role he never had in high school.

Tre Jones has been impressed with the big man so far this year.

“Probably just how hungry he is, how he continues to post up inside, continues to dominate inside,” he said. “I know a lot of people questioned how he was as a center, back to the basket, things like that coming into college. I mean just transitioning from floating around at the arc, things like that, to being back to the basket and pretty much unstoppable, unless you get him in a double team.”

The transition wasn’t that difficult for Carey, at least as Jones saw it in the preseason.

“Throughout practice, there’d be practices where he’d start floating around, not really establishing himself down low,” Jones said. “But as we continued to practice and the season approached, he became more dominant down low.”

Jones also gave a preview of what Duke needs to do against visiting Wake Forest on Saturday.

“I think we’ve just got to take them out of their transition, to start out with,” he said. “They like to get out in transition and get easy buckets that way. Just controlling their guards and perimeter.”

Jones also noticed that the Duke students were busy outside the arena, erecting tents in what will soon become Krzyzewskiville, the annual campout for tickets to the UNC game, this year starting 57 days before the March 7 showdown.

“It’s very exciting for us (the ones) that have seen it and have been through it,” he said. “But it’s really exciting for the guys who haven’t seen it yet. It’s something new. It’s just something that’s so crazy, you can’t even really think about how crazy that is.”