Austin Rivers Headed To Duke, Basketball Starts In 32 Days

Doc Rivers son, Austin, who verbally committed to Florida back at the ripe old age of 15, has finally decided he likes Durham better than Gator country. Billy Donovan’s squad fell out of the running and the final decision came down to Duke, North Carolina and Kansas.

Rivals.com ranks Rivers, a 6-foot-4 shooting guard and son of NBA coach Doc Rivers, as the top prospect in the class of 2011. Scout.com has him ranked behind two forwards at No. 3 overall.

He gives Duke one of the country’s top three-point shooters. Rivers hit nine straight 3s for Team USA in a win over Canada in the FIBA Americas tournament in June. He also scored 19 points in the championship win over Brazil. Rivers was teammates with Duke freshman guard Kyrie Irving on the US Under-18 team.

Rivers joins a recruiting class at Duke that includes guard Michael Gbinije (No. 21 in the Scout.com top 100), forward Marshall Plumlee (40) and Tyler Adams (83).

Duke enters the 2010-11 season as the preseason favorites to repeat as ACC champions and likely the No. 1 team in the country. Singler (17.7 points per game) and Smith (17.4) will be gone by the time Rivers gets to campus.

No wonder everybody on NC Rt. 15/501 was recruiting him.

You gotta admit, he kind of looks like he belongs with Coach K. We see a little Wojo, a little Hurley and a little Redick in Rivers.

Some of the guys in the T.A.H. Worldwide Media LLC’s I.T. department are rumored to have “accidentally” tapped into Austin's cell phone and are now claiming that there was more to his final decision than Tobacco Road’s tradition of great basketball, Coach K and the Cameron Crazies.

“Look,” our tech nerds allege Rivers (might have) said, “Duke, UNC and Kansas are all awesome schools, but the story about that Karen Owens chick sealed the deal for me. I want to meet her, her friends and everybody like her.”

Officials at Duke could not be reached for comment.

For a composite 2010 ACC basketball schedule, click here.

*Items in italics may not be true.

(Editor’s Note: We couldn’t retain any journalistic credibility if we didn’t make some sort of reference to Duke’s most notorious coed Karen Owens. Owens, is, no doubt, seriously considering some big-time bodily harm for her so-called “friend” who released her “horizontal education” thesis joke to the entirety of cyberspace, and who could blame her? Her viral power point presentation is embarrassing Owens (and her family), a bunch of Duke athletes and the institution as a whole. We tried to work it in without making too big of a big deal of it.)