Freshmen point guards face different expectations

Mike Krzyzewski says Kyrie Irving will be "very, very good right away." Sidney Lowe says Ryan Harrow will have "his ups and downs."

The players are in similar situations: Two point guards, both freshmen, both top-rated recruits, both equally important to the success of their respective teams this winter.

The coaches, on the other hand, are not: Each is facing different kinds of pressure and each is taking a very different approach to the expectations their freshman point guards will face.

In their offseason gatherings with the media, Krzyzewski and Lowe both spoke at length about their incoming point guards, but while Lowe downplayed Harrow's potential to have an instant impact, Krzyzewski raved about Irving's chances to do the same.

Those differing perspectives speak volumes not necessarily about the personalities of the coaches, as one might imagine, or the relative talent of the players - Irving is the No. 2 recruit in the country according to Scout.com, while Harrow is No. 25 - but their peculiar and particular situations.

North Carolina also has a highly rated point guard coming in, but Kendall Marshall - No. 29 on the Scout.com list - will be competing for time with incumbent Larry Drew II. Irving and Harrow are clearly the top players at their positions. At Duke, Krzyzewski doesn't have the luxury of waiting for Irving to adjust. He has a team with almost all the pieces to win another national title. There's only one missing.

That's where Irving comes in. He's not going to be the kind of solid, error-free distributor Jon Scheyer was, and he isn't being asked to be that. He's being asked to be an attacker, a creator, and Duke needs him to be all of that immediately.

Krzyzewski wasted no time making that perfectly clear. Asked if he was concerned about having a freshman at point guard on a national-title contender, Krzyzewski responded with a flat-out "no."

"There's absolutely no question about that," Krzyzewski said. "He's that good a basketball player."

While Krzyzewski has no concerns about his a freshman point guard, Lowe, who was once a freshman point guard in the ACC, was willing to voice a few.

He spoke of a "learning curve" for his new arrivals while noting "very few guys come in and dominate as a freshman." That pointedly includes Harrow, and even though the coach must be giddy at the thought of having this kind of player at his own position for the first time in his tenure at N.C. State, he seems to be setting an artificially low bar for the guard.

"As a freshman coming into big-time basketball, it's a big adjustment, a huge adjustment," Lowe said. "We can look around our conference, we can look around the country at big-time guards, All-Americans, and they'll come in and struggle a little bit. I know he's going to have his ups and downs, but he'll get it though. He'll get it. "

The collective confidence shown by Harrow, Lorenzo Brown and C.J. Leslie has been a refreshing breeze through a program that has all too often been far too stale lately - an issue, to be fair, that predates Lowe.

There's a balance to be struck here, because the youthful exuberance of the freshmen is going to be a tremendous asset for the Wolfpack if handled correctly, but the season could just as easily be lost quickly in a cloud of overconfidence. Counseling patience with Harrow, with whom Lowe clearly has a close relationship already, is one way to try to gently burst that bubble.

It has been a long time since hopes were this high both at Duke and N.C. State. Those hopes are similarly balanced upon the skinny shoulders of two freshman point guards, each hearing a very different refrain from his coach.