An e-mail message arrived on Monday, a day before guard J.J. Redick and the rest of the Duke Blue Devils would be back on the court to prepare for the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament.
"I noticed a couple things wrong with your shot," the message began. That was all Redick needed to read before he hit the delete button. No, he is not desperate enough to take advice from strangers. Not yet.
It was not about the shot, Redick said, and he had not lost his confidence and had not become worn out physically. Redick, the 2005 national player of the year, is facing the weight of expectations as he enters the final weeks of his college basketball career. Although he is averaging 27.8 points a game and vying with Gonzaga's Adam Morrison for player-of-the-year honors, Redick said that he had struggled under the spotlight after recently having becoming the career scoring leader at Duke and in Atlantic Coast Conference history.
"I just think I put a lot of pressure on myself, feel a lot of pressure from outside sources, and it hasn't been fun for me," he said on Tuesday. "I think there's always pressure from outside sources, always pressure from media attention, from family members.
"When you play here, when you play at a big-time program in college basketball, you're always in a fishbowl. The past couple of weeks, I haven't been able to watch ESPN. It's driving me crazy. They can't stop debating about us. Give it a rest for a couple of days."
This is no time for the hype machine to rest, not with the ACC tournament up next for the Blue Devils and then a possible No. 1 seeding in the NCAA tournament. It is not a good time to be in a slump, either. But going into Friday's ACC tournament quarterfinal game against Miami in Greensboro, North Carolina, Redick is 23 of 80 from the field in his past four games, including 8 of 36 from 3-point range. Duke has lost two of those four games, including a rare defeat at home Saturday against its rival North Carolina. Redick shot 5 of 21 in that game, including 2 of 10 on 3-point attempts.
"I just missed shots," he said. "I really think that each shot has become bigger than it is. I'm putting pressure on myself. Teams defend me well every game. I hit a lot of tough shots. It's tough shots that I'm taking, and when you put that added pressure on yourself, you can have those 5-for-21 nights."
But he cannot have them and expect Duke to win.
That was the reality of Saturday's loss to North Carolina.
"We're probably not going to beat a really good team with J.J. going 5 for 21," coach Mike Krzyzewski said after the loss. "You are who you are, and we're 27-3 because of using that. When it's taken away, or he's human, it makes it more difficult and we need other guys to step up."
Because of Redick's shooting prowess, fans come early to watch him warm up at Cameron Indoor Stadium and count the number of 3-pointers he makes in a row, marveling at his consistency.
There has been little to marvel at lately.
"He has internalized a lot of all of the demands and the stress and the records and the media attention," his father, Ken Redick, said in a telephone interview Thursday. "He's done a really good job in the past of deflecting a lot of that. But I think this time, for some reason, it being the end of his senior year, he kind of took it all in. You could see that in his demeanor; his floor demeanor wasn't the same as it normally is."
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