Mike Krzyzewski believes the culture Tom Thibodeau has created with the Chicago Bulls is the reason the team is able to persevere through so many injuries.

"I think Thibodeau is one of the great coaches in basketball," Krzyzewski said. "He's developed a culture of tough character.”

Instead of collapsing from the absence of Derrick Rose and other key role players, the Bulls continue to win.

"I know Carlos [Boozer] obviously really well, I've coached him, I coached Luol [Deng], those kids ... they just have great character,” Krzyzewski said. “And the Bulls are a blue-collar team in a blue-collar town, and I think it's one of the great stories right now in the NBA, what the Bulls are doing.

"I think they have a philosophy that they don't talk about being sick all year. They don't talk about being hurt all year, so when the moment of truth comes in the playoffs, they're already accustomed to a certain way of living."

Shane Larkin plans to enter the NBA draft and skip his final two seasons at Miami.

Larkin is considered the third-best point guard in the draft class behind Michigan's Trey Burke and Syracuse's Michael Carter-Williams.

Larkin led the Hurricanes to the ACC regular season title and the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.

Shane Larkin will wait until the April 28 deadline before announcing whether he will declare for the NBA draft.

"I'm just going to class right now,” Larkin said. “I have finals coming up, so that's what I'm really focused on."

A 5-foot-11 point guard, Larkin is being projected as a late-first to late-second round draft pick.

Larkin averaged 14.6 points on 47.9 percent shooting last season and was voted the ACC player of the year by the league’s coaches.

Jabari Parker said early entry to the NBA is not a certainty.

“I’m going to look into that,” Parker said of staying at Duke beyond the 2013-14 season. “I love the whole attitude of ‘staying in college,’ because I want to take advantage of it. Getting a free education is big time in my family.”

Parker wants to be viewed as a role model in his hometown of Chicago.

“Everything in my city is negative,” Parker said of how he feels his hometown is portrayed in national media. “[The media] try to bring it down so much with the violence and I’m an African-American male in my community…going to college and that’s big time.

“I want to represent them in the best form, the best manner just to keep them close to my heart so they can see that there’s a young [guy] out on the South Side doing big things.”

P.J. Hairston will return to North Carolina for his junior season.

Hairston averaged 18.2 points over the Tar Heels’ final 13 games and made 89 three-point field goals overall, the second-highest single-season total in school history.

Roy Williams provided some optimism that James Michael McAdoo, Reggie Bullock and P.J. Hairston might return to North Carolina.

“We're much much closer to having all of them back than we were last year,” Williams said.

Williams was referring to the departures of underclassmen Harrison Barnes, John Henson and Kendall Marshall -- all three of whom declared for the NBA draft at the end of the 2011-12 season.

Only McAdoo has been projected as a first-round pick in the forthcoming draft.

“They are all enjoying school, they are all still hungry to do more and there is nobody that is a guaranteed top-10 pick,” Williams said. “We still have to continue going through the process, allowing those guys to make decisions, and in my mind some of them have already been made just about, but we're going to wait until all three are done so we can just have one announcement.”

Andrew Wiggins’ older brother, Nick, thinks Kentucky may not be the best fit for him.

“It’s all about combinations of players you put on the floor and how players feel about playing with each other, playing a team game," Nick Wiggins said.  “And I feel like they got a couple kids coming (back), they got seven or eight dudes that are already signed to come in off the (McDonald’s) All-America team, and I don’t feel like it would be the best fit for him to make his own legacy. But in the end, he’s going to make the best decision for him.”

Nick believes his parents want Andrew to pick Florida State.  

“I think both my parents would like him to go to Florida State University because that’s where my mom and my dad attended school so it would be pretty amazing to see him do that and I believe they would be happy with that decision,” Nick, a junior guard at Wichita State, told SNY.tv.

Several NBA scouts expressed concern that Alen Len may follow a similar trajectory as Nikoloz Tskitishvili, a 7-footer who was the fifth overall pick of the 2002 draft and averaged less than 3 points and 2 rebounds in a 172-game career.

Len has elite-level athleticism, but played erratically during his sophomore season at Maryland.

Len is projected to be taken among the top eleven picks in the June draft.

Jabari Parker got a chance to size up Andrew Wiggins during the McDonald's All American game on Wednesday.

Parker blocked Wiggins’ first attempt from the perimeter, and managed to stay in front of Wiggins more often than not, but did commit five fouls in the process.

"It went pretty good," Parker said. "He is super athletic so I had to over-commit on the drive, but he can shoot so it was kind of difficult. He is a great player."

Wiggins finished with 19 points on 6-of-10 shooting and helped hold Parker to 10 points on 4-of-13 shooting.

"Going against Jabari is the best going against the best," Wiggins said. "I look forward to doing it in the future."

Mason Plumlee scored 23 points and made three running hook shots in Duke’s first-round win over Albany last week.

“I’m not overpowering,” Plumlee said. “I play against guys who are 250-plus. I can’t just back people all the way under the rim. So I have to have something I can go to and use touch and shoot over people.

“I think really at the end of last year, I felt like it was more of a go-to move for me.”

Plumlee often practices the shot during team workouts.

“We call it a running hook,” said Duke assistant Steve Wojciechowski, who coaches the Blue Devils’ post players. “We don’t specifically say we’re trying to teach Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s sky hook. It’s very similar.”