Duke’s players voted junior guard Grayson Allen team captain for the upcoming season.
The news was first reported by The Athletic.
Allen was one of three captains last season, along with Amile Jefferson and Matt Jones, but had the title stripped after he tripped Elon’s Steven Santa Ana during the first half of a Dec. 21 game at the Greensboro Coliseum.
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski stripped Allen of his captaincy and suspended him indefinitely in the wake of that incident. The suspension ending up lasting one game, as he returned against Georgia Tech on Jan. 4.
“He had to learn how to adapt to all of those things,” Duke associate head coach Jeff Capel told the Durham Herald Sun. “Being looked upon as being that so-called villain at Duke. I think all of it wore on him for the last two years.”
Allen, who averaged 14.5 points and a team-high 3.5 assists in 34 games for Duke in 2016-17, opted to return to Duke for his junior season despite being projected as a late-first/early-second round NBA Draft pick. Allen will enter the 2017-18 season as the leading active scorer in the ACC with 1,424 total points, a figure that ranks 33rd on Duke’s career chart.
He’s currently projected as the No. 24 pick in the NBA Draft per ESPN.com.
“I think he’s in a great place,” Capel said. “The very first thing is he is healthy. He’s happy. He’s had time to reflect, to get refreshed.”
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