As Duke has fallen into a two-game losing streak behind one of the worst shooting slumps of JJ Redick’s career, literary experts and poetry critics have noticed that Redick’s poetry has begun to take on a much more ominous and foreboding tone.

            “All the great poets go through different phases in their career, and JJ has proven to be no different,” said Dr. Laura Illovich of the University of Iowa Writing Center. “His early works were more boastful, confident and aggressive – about how he would make a game-winning shot or beat North Carolina – but his latest writings show great vulnerability and an overwhelming sense of impending doom.”

            Illovich points out two examples of Redick’s work over the past year. The first was written in March of 2005 after Duke was flying high off of a victory in the ACC Tournament and was among the favorites to win the national championship:

Duke, Duke, D-U-K-E
I am the man, the King of the Three
But some say that J.J.
is really gay-gay
But all I can say-say
is that Duke will go all the way ... way

            The second poem Redick penned after the Blue Devils lost to North Carolina on Sunday on Senior Day at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Death. Sadness. Sorrow.
Shooting 5-for-21 in my last career home game.
Crash. Bang. Smash. Crush.
Knowing I’ll never win a national title.
Hate. Disgust. Regret.
Knowing I’ll be a failure in the NBA.
Death. End. Fin.

            “First of all, let’s be clear – each of them are just terrible, terrible poems. I mean 100-percent awful. And the fact that he reads crap like that on national television thinking people will like it, well ... I’m embarrassed simply as someone who loves the English language and the expression of emotion through the written word,” said Illovich. “But that’s not my point. My point is that there is a noticeable shift in the tone of his poetry from confidence to one of disillusionment.”

            Dr. Roderick Mason, an English professor at Princeton, feels that if Duke hopes to have any shot at winning a national championship, they’ll need to coax Redick out of his slump through his love of poetry.

            “If I’m Mike Krzyzewski, over the next week or so I would assign J.J. Redick a poem about redemption, then one about hope and finally one about success and achievement,” said Mason. “By the end of the process, he would probably find he has a newly refreshed and confident player on his hands. Of course, Krzyzewski shouldn’t actually read any of the poems Redick writes, or he’ll want to pluck his eyes out with a spoon. And having a blind coach won’t help Duke win anything.”