From freshman to senior leader, Duke's Grayson Allen on the NCAA tournament

Duke senior guard Grayson Allen talked to the media on Tuesday in preparation for Duke's round of 16 game against Syracuse on Friday in Omaha, Neb.

Allen and his Blue Devils will face the Orange at 9:37 p.m. on Friday.

Here are some highlights from his news conference:

Leadership role

Grayson Allen: It’s kind of fully come into the leadership role, like full 100 percent. This team, it’s clear to anybody who’s seen us play toward the end of the year recently and now that we’ve come together. They’re not only listening to me, they’re listening to each other. There’s a lot of back and forth going on between guys. We’re embracing the talk, embracing suggestions from others. Really embracing the kind of group-together, team mentality. It’s a really cool thing.

Playing Syracuse again

Grayson Allen: They’re (Syracuse) a different team, they’re a better team. A much better team now, and their guys are playing with more confidence. Some of the guys, like (Marek) Dolezaj is a different player than when we played him earlier. He’s playing much better now, much more confident, scoring the ball more. And so we can’t just think it’s going to be the same game when we played them. We’re even a different team from that game. So, we can’t think it’s going to be like that game. We have to know that it’s different. Their guys are better now. They’re playing with more confidence. And obviously going up against their zone defense is always a challenging thing.

Becoming a vocal leader

Grayson Allen: I can’t obviously know when I’m going to hold any words back or anything like that. I think it really helps with this team. We have, I can just feel, that we have such a common goal right now. It really feels awesome when you can just feel like all five guys are just coming towards one goal. I think it speaks to the maturity level of our team, everyone is secure in their role on the team right now. So me being that secure leader and telling these guys and either following or becoming the leader in their own right, like Trent and Gary have been pretty vocal in huddles. Wendell and Marvin are getting more vocal in what they’re saying in demanding the ball on the block. If they haven’t had it in a few possessions letting us know that they’re open in posting and stuff like that. Really, everyone is speaking up right now. It helps with our togetherness.

The NCAA tournament as a freshman and a senior

Grayson Allen: Yes, it was way different just from your perspective on things. Everything is new to you as a freshman and everything it’s kind of like wide-eyed, but you don’t really know what to expect about much and don’t really know much about how the tournament works and how being here it’s me in that position trying to prepare them for that. Me being here and seeing and we’re watching games, seeing upsets happen, guys are surprised. It happens every year. We’ve seen it happen to Duke and other teams, and it happens all the time. Just having that experience is different, knowing what the games are going to be like, knowing what that shorter warmup is going to be like, the longer media timeouts, the longer timeouts in general, longer halftimes. There’s so many little things that are different about the tournament that you know and you’ve experienced, and you try to get them ready for it just by talking to them.

This story was originally published March 21, 2018 at 6:29 PM with the headline "From freshman to senior leader, Duke's Grayson Allen on the NCAA tournament."