Completed Event: Men's Basketball versus #7 UConn on March 29, 2026 , Loss , 72, to, 73
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Final
Men's Basketball
72
vs #7 UConn
73
Talent, Versatility & Friendships Lead Hairston to Duke
9/27/2010 12:30:00 PM | Men's Basketball
DURHAM, N.C. – It might be hard to believe, but Andre Dawkins knew that Josh Hairston would attend Duke long before Hairston himself did. In fact, Dawkins predicted it before Hairston had even considered playing for the Blue Devils.
The two future Duke players were teammates on the Boo Williams 15-and-under AAU team. They had just won the 15-and-under national title when it happened.
“Andre and I were sitting in the car and he told my Mom that he and I were going to play for Duke some day,” Hairston recalls. “I kind of laughed at him, because I was like 'Man, there's no way I'm going to Duke.' It was funny to me. I just laughed it off. Now I'm sitting in the locker room with him and putting on Duke shorts and Duke shirts every day.”
Dawkins' prediction seemed silly on two counts. First, at age 15, Hairston did not see himself as a big-time college prospect and, secondly, he was a North Carolina fan.
“Growing up, I did watch more Carolina than Duke, but I was never one of those kids [who said] 'I can't stand Duke … I hate Duke' – I was never like that,” Hairston said. “I just thought that I wasn't at that level yet. I was getting letters from schools like VCU … I had some phone calls from Maryland. But I didn't think I would ever be at that level to play at Duke.
“My mom actually brought that up the other day. She was down here for orientation … and she never would have thought I'd end up at Duke. Not that she didn't think I was good enough, but just that when you get a phone call from a legend like Coach K and he tells you he wants you to play for him, it's mind-blowing. I know I almost dropped the phone the first time he called me. I didn't believe it.”
But Hairston, who has grown into a 6-7, 210-pound forward, will be a freshman for the 2010-11 Blue Devils. The 2010 Parade All-American offers a combination of skills to a loaded Duke roster.
“Josh understands the game,” Duke assistant coach Chris Collins said. “He knows what he can do out there. He can make a face-up shot. He's a very, very versatile defender. He fits the mold of guys who have been very successful in that role – what Lance [Thomas] did, maybe a Tony Lang, a Roshown McLeod. He brings that kind of size and versatility in the forward spot.”
The Courtland Experience
Hairston was slow to pick up basketball as a youngster growing up in Fredericksburg, Va.
“My first two sports were soccer and football – soccer for the longest time,” he said.
A growth spurt when Hairston was eight years old brought basketball into the picture.
“Now, I look back at all my Parks and Rec pictures from football and soccer and see that I was easily taller than everybody on the team,” he said. “One day, my dad brought it up to my mom, 'Hey let's try basketball.'”
Hairston's father was a former football player at Appalachian State University. He became his son's first real coach.
“I credit a lot of my skills to my dad,” he said. “He was always the one out there with me in the driveway or spending extra time in the gym after Parks and Rec practice. He was a big athlete in high school. It was mostly football, but every time we go back to Martinsville, Va., and we talk to some of his friends, they say he was a bad man in basketball too. He knows a lot about the game, but he knows that football was his sport and we kind of learned the game of basketball together. He knew far more than I did, but at the same time, as I started to develop, he learned more about the game too.”
Hairston's first year in the Park and Rec league didn't go well.
“My first year at Parks and Rec, my team went 0-17 – we lost all our games,” he said. “The next year we added a couple of pieces, then we won the championship like five years in a row. That's when I found that basketball was going to be my sport.”
His love affair with soccer gradually faded.
“I played soccer a few years while playing basketball, then took a few years off, then went back to it for about a year, then realized it wasn't my thing anymore,” he said. “I credit soccer for a lot – me having my footwork. Soccer helps develop that.”
At first, Hairston's greatest asset on the basketball court was his size.
“I wasn't a dominant player at all,” he said. “I was just big and there was talk going around the area that there's the big kid in middle school and everybody was trying to find out what high school I was going to. The eighth grade was when I realized I could play college basketball – I didn't know what level, but because of my size and had been working on my abilities with my dad, I knew basketball was going to be my thing.”
That lesson was driven home when his father stopped playing him on-on-one in the driveway.
“Back in middle school, I beat him in one-on-one and we haven't played since,” Hairston said. “I think he realized I've gotten too big for him now. We used to play all the time when we were about the same height, but I've gotten so much bigger than he is, we've kind of taken a break from it. He plays my sister more now.”
A Burgeoning Star
All the speculation about the destination of the big middle-school kid was answered when Hairston enrolled at Courtland High School, a small public school that played in Virginia's 2-A league.
“My first three years at Courtland, I can describe in one word – great,” Hairston said. “I loved Courtland High School. I loved the community of Fredericksburg.”
But Courtland's low classification created problems. While Hairston became a dominant player – he was winning player of the year in the area and the region and then in the state when Courtland won the 2-A state championship his junior year, “there was a lot of talk 'Oh, he's playing double-A basketball … he's not playing anybody.
“That was really my freshman and sophomore years. So my junior year, my high school coach scheduled a couple of bigger teams – like Lancetown from Virginia Beach and Benedictine from Richmond. We ended up losing both of those games, but I had a good performance – I think in the loss to Lancetown, I still had 27 [points] and 12 [rebounds] and against Benedictine, I had 29 and 15 – so I was still showing people I could play, it didn't matter who I was going against.”
At the same time that Hairston was dominating lesser competition at Courtland, he was earning acclaim on the summer AAU circuit – first for the famous Tidewater-based Boo Williams program (where he teamed with future Duke teammate Andre Dawkins), then for the equally famous Washington-based DC Assault, where he was coached by Nolan Smith's stepfather, Curtis Malone, and played with future Duke teammate Tyler Thornton.
“My first big-time AAU team was Boo Williams 15-and-under,” Hairston said. “After that trip to the [15-and-under] Nationals, I got a phone call from Curtis Malone and I guess they heard about me. They asked me if I wanted to go out to Las Vegas with them for the Adidas Super 64 and play for their 15-and-under team. I was really hesitant about it … but a lot of the college coaches had started calling and asking if I was going to be out there. My mom and dad told me that would be a great opportunity for me, so I took advantage of it.
“That's where I met Tyler. Tyler and I clicked. I was actually surprised, they threw me right into the starting lineup and we won the first game by 40 or 50 points. Tyler and I were just connecting on everything. I tell people all the time, I had talked to Tyler maybe a couple of times before then, it was just like clockwork when we got out on the floor – he knew where I was going and I knew where he was going. It was special.”
The next summer, playing for the Assault's 16-and-under team, Hairston and Thornton were the stars of a dominant age-group team.
“I don't think we lost a single game,” he said. “We won every championship we played in. Everybody on our team was starting to get highly recruited. That was when Ohio State, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Georgetown – all those schools were starting to get interested. Bill Self of Kansas had called and offered me. That was when it really started getting big.”
That's when Duke first entered the picture.
“I remember my high school coach [J.T. Nino] called my mom and said, 'Duke called.' She didn't believe him at first. When I got home, she said, 'Josh, Coach Nino said Duke called for you.' A couple of days later, I got a phone call from them. It was unbelievable.”
Once Duke got involved, everything started happening quickly. It helped that the Blue Devils were also recruiting his best friends on the AAU circuit – Dawkins and Thornton.
“Andre has always talked about playing for Duke,” Hairston said. “We all believed that he would play for Duke because hands down, he was the best player on our AAU team. He was getting a lot of looks and Duke was one of them. He always said he wanted to play for Duke, so we figured he'd end up there.”
Hairston was less certain of his dream school.
“A lot of people thought I would end up closer to home, maybe a Georgetown or a Virginia or even a Maryland,” he said. “When I came down here for my first visit, I fell in love right away. Just the campus is beautiful … Coach K and his staff, the team … everybody makes you feel at home down here. I remember coming down on visits and I never wanted to leave … I just wanted to stay down here.”
Hairston committed during a visit to Duke in September of 2008 – just as he was starting his junior season at Courtland. Thornton, who was visiting at the same time, committed five minutes later.
“Tyler was actually recruited before me,” Hairston said. “They were interested in Tyler before they had given me a phone call. I think they had offered Tyler before they had even started recruiting me. A lot of people don't know that because Tyler and I committed about five minutes apart. I think I committed first and he committed about five minutes later.”
Despite their close relationship and their near simultaneous commitment, Hairston denies that he and Thornton were a package deal.
“A lot of people thought that,” he said. “Tyler and I talked about playing with each other. Ever since playing in 15-and-under out in Las Vegas, we knew it would be a possibility. We really didn't think it would happen. But we knew it was possible because a lot of the same schools were recruiting us and offered us at the same time. I had told him the night before what I was going to do. When I texted him and told him I was going to do it, he texted back and said he was going to do it too. “
Committing to Duke completed the transformation of the former UNC fan into a fervent ambassador for Duke on the recruiting trail. Hairston, Dawkins and Thornton teamed up to bring more talent to Durham.
“We were all over it,” he said. “Kyrie [Irving] – I'm not going to take all the credit, but Andre, Tyler and I were all over Kyrie at NBA camp. So we're doing a little recruiting of our own.”
Preparing for Duke
But Hairston's primary goal after committing to Duke was to prepare himself for the challenge of playing college basketball at the top level.
It was that concern that led the Fredericksburg native to leave his comfortable spot at Courtland and pursue a tougher senior challenge.
“After the state championship, I sat down with my parents the next day,” he said. “I told them we had to talk. Just to prepare myself to come here and play here – I wanted to be one of those players who comes in and makes an impact right away. I knew that I was going to have to change schools. I didn't know where, but I knew that I was going to have to.”
Hairston called a friend – Justin Anderson of Montrose Christian Academy in Rockville, Md.
“I asked him about the program up there,” Hairston said. “He gave me one of the assistant coaches' number and it so happened that I was getting ready to call that assistant coach and he called me and asked if I would be interested in coming up there. I went up and talked to Coach [Stu] Vetter and the moment I finished talking to him, I knew that's where I was going to go. Just, his reputation for developing players – Coach Nate James played under him in high school. I talked to Coach Nate about him and he said he gets you ready. It's a strict program and it prepares you for college. I talked to Coach Vetter the other day and I thanked him because I'm so prepared.”
Hairston got another chance to develop his game – and to get to know a future teammate – when he was selected to play for the USA 18-and-under national team in the world championships in San Antonio.
“It was an honor, first of all, just being able to put on the USA jersey and represent my country and win a gold medal,” he said.
Hairston didn't put up big stats during the tournament (5.2 points; 2.4 rebounds), but he started and played a key role for Team USA. Most importantly, he got to play with – instead of against – future teammate Kyrie Irving.
“I had never played with Kyrie, I had played against him,” Hairston said. “There were a couple of times – it's going to come when you have so many great players on one team – the ball wouldn't be moving or you wouldn't get the touches you think you deserve or you do get the touches and when you shoot the ball, you miss it … I had a couple of those days when I was down on myself and Kyrie picked me up and told me it would be alright and to move on to the next one. That's when I found out that Kyrie was going to be special. I knew Kyrie was great and has a great future ahead of him in basketball. My experience with him out at USA, experiencing him as a teammate, just made our relationship grow even more. Now, he, Tyler and I consider ourselves brothers. We stick together through everything. We have our moments when we get on each other's nerves, but we still love each other.
“All three of us are in the same room. We call ourselves The Trio and we do everything together.”
There was a time when Hairston thought that he – and Thornton – would be sharing a room at Duke with Dawkins. But the prognosticator who saw Hairston's eventual arrival actually accelerated his own timetable and came to Duke a year early. Dawkins is – as he once predicted – Hairston's teammate at Duke, but as a sophomore, he's no longer a classmate.
“Now, instead of us being the same age brothers, it's almost like he's an older brother,” Hairston said. “At AAU tournaments, we always roomed together. We were planning on coming in together and learning at the same time. Now he's doing the teaching. I've learned a lot from Andre – just as far as how everything operates here. If have any questions, I go to Andre and he answers them. He doesn't get mad when we ask him stuff because he knows he was there too.
“He pushes me too … we were running sprints the other day and he told me to come over and run with him. He said, 'I want you to stick with me.' I stuck with him the whole time and I've never been pushed like that. It's a great experience.”
Hairston cherishes such experiences. He's under no illusions about his game. He understands that to be a force at Duke, he's got to keep developing and improving.
“I need to develop at everything,” he said. “I'm not particularly good in any facet of my game. I'm okay, but I'm still looking to grow. Definitely, the main thing I need to get better is my strength. Just because I am going to be down low. I need to be able to bang with the big guys in the ACC. The ACC is one of the toughest conferences in the country and I need to play down low and I need to be able to rebound. I credit Coach Will [Stephens], because I've definitely gotten stronger since I've been here. I'm finding myself battling with Miles [Plumlee] down low and Miles is an ox down low. He pushes me and forces me to get better.
“As far as shooting, dribbling, passing … I just need to get better at everything.”
Hairston expects to start out playing a post position, but he also expects to expand his game to eventually play on the perimeter. That's what Coach Collins was getting at when he linked the young forward with former Duke standouts Lang and McLeod.
“I've heard of both of them,” he said. “The main thing I heard about both of them is that they were very versatile. That's what I've really been working on in the open gym. If you were to come in and watch open gym, sometimes you'll see me on a guard. Sometimes you'll see me on Miles. It just depends. I can switch off on guards. If me, Kyrie and Tyler are on the same team, all three of us switch. I could guard Nolan or I could be guarding Seth or Kyrie or Tyler, Mason, Miles … it doesn't matter. I can guard a lot of positions.
“I think that's what I want to do to help this team out. I want Coach to be able to put me in to guard anybody. My dad, he stresses defense the most. He believes in offense, but he's a defensive man. He said that's how you get on the floor, locking your man down and making sure he doesn't touch the ball or score.”
Josh Hairston might not have expected to end up at Duke, but now that he's here, he's going to make the most of his opportunity.
The two future Duke players were teammates on the Boo Williams 15-and-under AAU team. They had just won the 15-and-under national title when it happened.
“Andre and I were sitting in the car and he told my Mom that he and I were going to play for Duke some day,” Hairston recalls. “I kind of laughed at him, because I was like 'Man, there's no way I'm going to Duke.' It was funny to me. I just laughed it off. Now I'm sitting in the locker room with him and putting on Duke shorts and Duke shirts every day.”
Dawkins' prediction seemed silly on two counts. First, at age 15, Hairston did not see himself as a big-time college prospect and, secondly, he was a North Carolina fan.
“Growing up, I did watch more Carolina than Duke, but I was never one of those kids [who said] 'I can't stand Duke … I hate Duke' – I was never like that,” Hairston said. “I just thought that I wasn't at that level yet. I was getting letters from schools like VCU … I had some phone calls from Maryland. But I didn't think I would ever be at that level to play at Duke.
“My mom actually brought that up the other day. She was down here for orientation … and she never would have thought I'd end up at Duke. Not that she didn't think I was good enough, but just that when you get a phone call from a legend like Coach K and he tells you he wants you to play for him, it's mind-blowing. I know I almost dropped the phone the first time he called me. I didn't believe it.”
But Hairston, who has grown into a 6-7, 210-pound forward, will be a freshman for the 2010-11 Blue Devils. The 2010 Parade All-American offers a combination of skills to a loaded Duke roster.
“Josh understands the game,” Duke assistant coach Chris Collins said. “He knows what he can do out there. He can make a face-up shot. He's a very, very versatile defender. He fits the mold of guys who have been very successful in that role – what Lance [Thomas] did, maybe a Tony Lang, a Roshown McLeod. He brings that kind of size and versatility in the forward spot.”
The Courtland Experience
Hairston was slow to pick up basketball as a youngster growing up in Fredericksburg, Va.
“My first two sports were soccer and football – soccer for the longest time,” he said.
A growth spurt when Hairston was eight years old brought basketball into the picture.
“Now, I look back at all my Parks and Rec pictures from football and soccer and see that I was easily taller than everybody on the team,” he said. “One day, my dad brought it up to my mom, 'Hey let's try basketball.'”
Hairston's father was a former football player at Appalachian State University. He became his son's first real coach.
“I credit a lot of my skills to my dad,” he said. “He was always the one out there with me in the driveway or spending extra time in the gym after Parks and Rec practice. He was a big athlete in high school. It was mostly football, but every time we go back to Martinsville, Va., and we talk to some of his friends, they say he was a bad man in basketball too. He knows a lot about the game, but he knows that football was his sport and we kind of learned the game of basketball together. He knew far more than I did, but at the same time, as I started to develop, he learned more about the game too.”
Hairston's first year in the Park and Rec league didn't go well.
“My first year at Parks and Rec, my team went 0-17 – we lost all our games,” he said. “The next year we added a couple of pieces, then we won the championship like five years in a row. That's when I found that basketball was going to be my sport.”
His love affair with soccer gradually faded.
“I played soccer a few years while playing basketball, then took a few years off, then went back to it for about a year, then realized it wasn't my thing anymore,” he said. “I credit soccer for a lot – me having my footwork. Soccer helps develop that.”
At first, Hairston's greatest asset on the basketball court was his size.
“I wasn't a dominant player at all,” he said. “I was just big and there was talk going around the area that there's the big kid in middle school and everybody was trying to find out what high school I was going to. The eighth grade was when I realized I could play college basketball – I didn't know what level, but because of my size and had been working on my abilities with my dad, I knew basketball was going to be my thing.”
That lesson was driven home when his father stopped playing him on-on-one in the driveway.
“Back in middle school, I beat him in one-on-one and we haven't played since,” Hairston said. “I think he realized I've gotten too big for him now. We used to play all the time when we were about the same height, but I've gotten so much bigger than he is, we've kind of taken a break from it. He plays my sister more now.”
A Burgeoning Star
All the speculation about the destination of the big middle-school kid was answered when Hairston enrolled at Courtland High School, a small public school that played in Virginia's 2-A league.
“My first three years at Courtland, I can describe in one word – great,” Hairston said. “I loved Courtland High School. I loved the community of Fredericksburg.”
But Courtland's low classification created problems. While Hairston became a dominant player – he was winning player of the year in the area and the region and then in the state when Courtland won the 2-A state championship his junior year, “there was a lot of talk 'Oh, he's playing double-A basketball … he's not playing anybody.
“That was really my freshman and sophomore years. So my junior year, my high school coach scheduled a couple of bigger teams – like Lancetown from Virginia Beach and Benedictine from Richmond. We ended up losing both of those games, but I had a good performance – I think in the loss to Lancetown, I still had 27 [points] and 12 [rebounds] and against Benedictine, I had 29 and 15 – so I was still showing people I could play, it didn't matter who I was going against.”
At the same time that Hairston was dominating lesser competition at Courtland, he was earning acclaim on the summer AAU circuit – first for the famous Tidewater-based Boo Williams program (where he teamed with future Duke teammate Andre Dawkins), then for the equally famous Washington-based DC Assault, where he was coached by Nolan Smith's stepfather, Curtis Malone, and played with future Duke teammate Tyler Thornton.
“My first big-time AAU team was Boo Williams 15-and-under,” Hairston said. “After that trip to the [15-and-under] Nationals, I got a phone call from Curtis Malone and I guess they heard about me. They asked me if I wanted to go out to Las Vegas with them for the Adidas Super 64 and play for their 15-and-under team. I was really hesitant about it … but a lot of the college coaches had started calling and asking if I was going to be out there. My mom and dad told me that would be a great opportunity for me, so I took advantage of it.
“That's where I met Tyler. Tyler and I clicked. I was actually surprised, they threw me right into the starting lineup and we won the first game by 40 or 50 points. Tyler and I were just connecting on everything. I tell people all the time, I had talked to Tyler maybe a couple of times before then, it was just like clockwork when we got out on the floor – he knew where I was going and I knew where he was going. It was special.”
The next summer, playing for the Assault's 16-and-under team, Hairston and Thornton were the stars of a dominant age-group team.
“I don't think we lost a single game,” he said. “We won every championship we played in. Everybody on our team was starting to get highly recruited. That was when Ohio State, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Georgetown – all those schools were starting to get interested. Bill Self of Kansas had called and offered me. That was when it really started getting big.”
That's when Duke first entered the picture.
“I remember my high school coach [J.T. Nino] called my mom and said, 'Duke called.' She didn't believe him at first. When I got home, she said, 'Josh, Coach Nino said Duke called for you.' A couple of days later, I got a phone call from them. It was unbelievable.”
Once Duke got involved, everything started happening quickly. It helped that the Blue Devils were also recruiting his best friends on the AAU circuit – Dawkins and Thornton.
“Andre has always talked about playing for Duke,” Hairston said. “We all believed that he would play for Duke because hands down, he was the best player on our AAU team. He was getting a lot of looks and Duke was one of them. He always said he wanted to play for Duke, so we figured he'd end up there.”
Hairston was less certain of his dream school.
“A lot of people thought I would end up closer to home, maybe a Georgetown or a Virginia or even a Maryland,” he said. “When I came down here for my first visit, I fell in love right away. Just the campus is beautiful … Coach K and his staff, the team … everybody makes you feel at home down here. I remember coming down on visits and I never wanted to leave … I just wanted to stay down here.”
Hairston committed during a visit to Duke in September of 2008 – just as he was starting his junior season at Courtland. Thornton, who was visiting at the same time, committed five minutes later.
“Tyler was actually recruited before me,” Hairston said. “They were interested in Tyler before they had given me a phone call. I think they had offered Tyler before they had even started recruiting me. A lot of people don't know that because Tyler and I committed about five minutes apart. I think I committed first and he committed about five minutes later.”
Despite their close relationship and their near simultaneous commitment, Hairston denies that he and Thornton were a package deal.
“A lot of people thought that,” he said. “Tyler and I talked about playing with each other. Ever since playing in 15-and-under out in Las Vegas, we knew it would be a possibility. We really didn't think it would happen. But we knew it was possible because a lot of the same schools were recruiting us and offered us at the same time. I had told him the night before what I was going to do. When I texted him and told him I was going to do it, he texted back and said he was going to do it too. “
Committing to Duke completed the transformation of the former UNC fan into a fervent ambassador for Duke on the recruiting trail. Hairston, Dawkins and Thornton teamed up to bring more talent to Durham.
“We were all over it,” he said. “Kyrie [Irving] – I'm not going to take all the credit, but Andre, Tyler and I were all over Kyrie at NBA camp. So we're doing a little recruiting of our own.”
Preparing for Duke
But Hairston's primary goal after committing to Duke was to prepare himself for the challenge of playing college basketball at the top level.
It was that concern that led the Fredericksburg native to leave his comfortable spot at Courtland and pursue a tougher senior challenge.
“After the state championship, I sat down with my parents the next day,” he said. “I told them we had to talk. Just to prepare myself to come here and play here – I wanted to be one of those players who comes in and makes an impact right away. I knew that I was going to have to change schools. I didn't know where, but I knew that I was going to have to.”
Hairston called a friend – Justin Anderson of Montrose Christian Academy in Rockville, Md.
“I asked him about the program up there,” Hairston said. “He gave me one of the assistant coaches' number and it so happened that I was getting ready to call that assistant coach and he called me and asked if I would be interested in coming up there. I went up and talked to Coach [Stu] Vetter and the moment I finished talking to him, I knew that's where I was going to go. Just, his reputation for developing players – Coach Nate James played under him in high school. I talked to Coach Nate about him and he said he gets you ready. It's a strict program and it prepares you for college. I talked to Coach Vetter the other day and I thanked him because I'm so prepared.”
Hairston got another chance to develop his game – and to get to know a future teammate – when he was selected to play for the USA 18-and-under national team in the world championships in San Antonio.
“It was an honor, first of all, just being able to put on the USA jersey and represent my country and win a gold medal,” he said.
Hairston didn't put up big stats during the tournament (5.2 points; 2.4 rebounds), but he started and played a key role for Team USA. Most importantly, he got to play with – instead of against – future teammate Kyrie Irving.
“I had never played with Kyrie, I had played against him,” Hairston said. “There were a couple of times – it's going to come when you have so many great players on one team – the ball wouldn't be moving or you wouldn't get the touches you think you deserve or you do get the touches and when you shoot the ball, you miss it … I had a couple of those days when I was down on myself and Kyrie picked me up and told me it would be alright and to move on to the next one. That's when I found out that Kyrie was going to be special. I knew Kyrie was great and has a great future ahead of him in basketball. My experience with him out at USA, experiencing him as a teammate, just made our relationship grow even more. Now, he, Tyler and I consider ourselves brothers. We stick together through everything. We have our moments when we get on each other's nerves, but we still love each other.
“All three of us are in the same room. We call ourselves The Trio and we do everything together.”
There was a time when Hairston thought that he – and Thornton – would be sharing a room at Duke with Dawkins. But the prognosticator who saw Hairston's eventual arrival actually accelerated his own timetable and came to Duke a year early. Dawkins is – as he once predicted – Hairston's teammate at Duke, but as a sophomore, he's no longer a classmate.
“Now, instead of us being the same age brothers, it's almost like he's an older brother,” Hairston said. “At AAU tournaments, we always roomed together. We were planning on coming in together and learning at the same time. Now he's doing the teaching. I've learned a lot from Andre – just as far as how everything operates here. If have any questions, I go to Andre and he answers them. He doesn't get mad when we ask him stuff because he knows he was there too.
“He pushes me too … we were running sprints the other day and he told me to come over and run with him. He said, 'I want you to stick with me.' I stuck with him the whole time and I've never been pushed like that. It's a great experience.”
Hairston cherishes such experiences. He's under no illusions about his game. He understands that to be a force at Duke, he's got to keep developing and improving.
“I need to develop at everything,” he said. “I'm not particularly good in any facet of my game. I'm okay, but I'm still looking to grow. Definitely, the main thing I need to get better is my strength. Just because I am going to be down low. I need to be able to bang with the big guys in the ACC. The ACC is one of the toughest conferences in the country and I need to play down low and I need to be able to rebound. I credit Coach Will [Stephens], because I've definitely gotten stronger since I've been here. I'm finding myself battling with Miles [Plumlee] down low and Miles is an ox down low. He pushes me and forces me to get better.
“As far as shooting, dribbling, passing … I just need to get better at everything.”
Hairston expects to start out playing a post position, but he also expects to expand his game to eventually play on the perimeter. That's what Coach Collins was getting at when he linked the young forward with former Duke standouts Lang and McLeod.
“I've heard of both of them,” he said. “The main thing I heard about both of them is that they were very versatile. That's what I've really been working on in the open gym. If you were to come in and watch open gym, sometimes you'll see me on a guard. Sometimes you'll see me on Miles. It just depends. I can switch off on guards. If me, Kyrie and Tyler are on the same team, all three of us switch. I could guard Nolan or I could be guarding Seth or Kyrie or Tyler, Mason, Miles … it doesn't matter. I can guard a lot of positions.
“I think that's what I want to do to help this team out. I want Coach to be able to put me in to guard anybody. My dad, he stresses defense the most. He believes in offense, but he's a defensive man. He said that's how you get on the floor, locking your man down and making sure he doesn't touch the ball or score.”
Josh Hairston might not have expected to end up at Duke, but now that he's here, he's going to make the most of his opportunity.
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