From the bench to the starting lineup to the end of the bench: Greg Paulus' strange senior season.

Staff video by Jason Arthurs

With 12:23 left in the second half, and Miami up 42-40, Duke's Greg Paulus ended up with the ball after a scrum on the inbounds and hit a layup to tie the game at 42.

The steal and layup turned into a six-point possession. Miami's DeQuan Jones elbowed Paulus after the layup and was ejected for a flagrant foul.

DURHAM — Duke senior guard Greg Paulus returned from a one-game absence to score nine points with three 3-pointers against Duquesne.

Paulus is the team's best 3-point shooter but had trouble launching the 20-foot, 9-inch shots with a deep bruise in his right forearm, also his shooting side, against Rhode Island, Southern Illinois and Michigan. He rested for about a week, missing the Montana game before returning.

DURHAM — Duke senior guard Greg Paulus will not play today in the Blue Devils non-conference tilt with Montana. It is the first game Paulus will miss in his Duke career.

Paulus played the past three games with a sleeve on his right forearm. When the injury originally occurred, Paulus couldn't close his hand for the first day. Officially he has a right forearm contusion.

DURHAM — Duke senior guard Greg Paulus was feeling better than he did while playing limited minutes and making just one shot with an injured right forearm — he's right-handed — on Sunday, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said Tuesday.

"You could tell he was not close to being 100 percent [against Rhode Island]," Krzyzewski said. "He was going on guts alone. If he doesn’t get worse in today’s practice, we'll see if he can keep coming. We need him. We already feel he'll be much better on Thursday."

DURHAM — Duke senior guard Greg Paulus played with an injured right forearm in the win over Rhode Island on Sunday. He hurt it on Friday, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said, and couldn't even close his hand that day, much less grip a ball or shoot with any accuracy.

Paulus played with a long sleeve on his right (shooting) forearm. He scored 3 points, going 1-for-3 from the field, with one assist and a steal. Krzyzewski said normally, in a tight situation like Duke faced still trailing in the game's final minute, Paulus would play some of those minutes because of his free-throw and 3-point shooting skill.

Duke basketball player Greg Paulus has a sense of what his brother Mike, a backup redshirt freshman quarterback for the North Carolina Tar Heels football team, is going through these days.

With UNC starter T.J. Yates getting injured in the second half against Virginia Tech with the Heels leading, Paulus came off the bench and threw two interceptions. The Heels let the lead slip in an eventual loss and Paulus took his share of heat as a result.

Paulus and Cameron Sexton both played the following week in a win at Miami where Sexton, a junior, emerged as Yates' replacement.

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski announced this morning that he has annointed senior Greg Paulus and juniors Jon Scheyer and Gerald Henderson as team captains for 2008-09.

The move came just a year after Krzyzewski said he'd learned how using so many captains can dilute the ability of those captains to lead.