Battier & Hill Named Among 20 Smartest Athletes

DURHAM, N.C. – Former Duke basketball standouts and national championship winners Shane Battier and Grant Hill were recently named two of Sporting News 20 Smartest Athletes in the publication's Sept. 27 issue. Princeton had three athletes on the list, while Duke and Harvard were the only other institutions with more than one athlete represented.

Battier, the 2001 National Player of the Year and Academic All-America of the Year, was tabbed as the seventh smartest athlete by Sporting News. Battier is a 2001 graduate of Duke University who majored in religion and graduated with a 3.5 overall GPA. The 2001 No. 6 overall NBA draft pick by the former Vancouver Grizzlies – now Memphis Grizzlies - is fluent in two languages, English and German, and says the nerdiest thing about him is “I have a subscription to Laptop magazine.” Battier currently plays for the Houston Rockets.

“Shane was an alien. I wanted at the end of his career to crack his head open and see if he was really human,” Blue Devil head basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski said of the two-time All-NBA defensive second team selection. “When the storm hits, you want him [Shane] to be the captain of your ship. I love Shane. I'd want him on any team that I ever coach.”

Hill, a seven-time NBA All-Star and winner of three NBA Sportsmanship awards, was selected as the 10^th smartest athlete. The 1994 Duke graduate won back-to-back national championships in 1991 and 1992 prior to being selected as the No. 3 overall NBA draft pick in 1994. He comes from a strong academic background with his father, Calvin Hill, a former NFL star, a graduate of Yale University and a fraternity brother of former President George W. Bush, while his mother was roommates with current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Wellesley College.

“I have many on-field accomplishments that make me proud,” said Hill. “The sportsmanship award is one I'm most proud of since I was voted amongst my peers,”

Hill has a wide variety of off-court intellectual interests, including buying and collecting art, looking at potential business deals and reading biographies and historical books. Most recently, he has been involved as an executive producer with a documentary about former Duke track coach Al Buehler. A private rough cut screening of “Starting at the Finish Line: The Coach Buehler Story” is taking place at Duke on Friday, Sept. 24.

Some other notable players to make the list were Pau Gasol, a former teammate of Battier at the Grizzlies, Peyton Manning, who was coached by Duke's own David Cutcliffe at Tennessee, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith and MLB veteran Craig Counsell of the Milwaukee Brewers.

A complete list of Sporting News' 20 Smartest Athletes can be found at http://www.sportingnews.com.

-d-u-k-e-

Battier & Hill Named Among 20 Smartest Athletes

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