Andy Means grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana — the city whose Indiana Pacers were the local NBA team, whose Hinkle Fieldhouse sat in the basketball-historic memory of the entire state, and whose high-school basketball culture had, for decades, produced more Division I basketball talent per capita than any other state in the country. He attended Lawrence North High School, the public high school in northeast Indianapolis whose basketball program ranked among the most decorated in Indiana high-school history. The Lawrence North Wildcats had, by the time Andy was finishing his senior year in 2001, won three IHSAA state championships under head coach Jack Keefer (1989, 1992, 1993). The program would, in the years immediately after Andy left for Duke, produce three of the most-celebrated NBA prospects of the 2000s:
- Greg Oden (Lawrence North 2003-2006, Ohio State 2006-07, No. 1 overall NBA Draft pick 2007)
- Mike Conley Jr. (Lawrence North 2003-2006, Ohio State 2006-07, NBA point guard for Memphis Grizzlies and Utah Jazz)
- Eric Gordon (Lawrence North 2004-2007, Indiana 2007-08, NBA shooting guard for the Clippers, Pelicans, Rockets, Heat)
In Andy Means's class — graduating in spring 2001 — the program had not yet produced its three NBA stars. But the basketball culture of Lawrence North was already deeply established. The Wildcats played a national-prep schedule under head coach Jack Keefer. Practices were rigorous. The expectations of a Lawrence North senior were the kind that could prepare a 6'5" guard for the practice floor of one of the most demanding college programs in the country, even if his game minutes never matched what Lawrence North's marquee NBA-bound stars would later generate.
Andy was a 6'5", 200-pound shooting guard. He was not, by the recruiting trail's measures, a Power-Five scholarship candidate at the level of the Greg Oden / Mike Conley / Eric Gordon basketball-prospect profile. But he was a smart, fundamentally-sound player whose academic record at Lawrence North made Duke an ideal next step — exactly the kind of student-athlete profile that a Krzyzewski walk-on opportunity rewarded. He arrived at Duke in fall 2001 as a regular freshman student and walked on to Mike Krzyzewski's roster in the same fall that the team was returning from its 2001 NCAA national championship. He was assigned jersey No. 53.
The 2001-02 freshman class he joined as a walk-on was a small one. Andy was one of two freshman walk-ons on the team — alongside fellow walk-on Mark Causey of Gainesville, Georgia, who took jersey #45. The two of them were the only freshman walk-ons in the program. The freshman scholarship class was, by contrast, headlined by Daniel Ewing (the highly recruited Houston guard who would become a four-year starter) and Lee Melchionni (the eventual four-year contributor). The team Andy was joining was the most-loaded Duke roster of the dynasty2 era: Jason Williams, Mike Dunleavy Jr., Carlos Boozer, and Chris Duhon were already on campus; three of those four (Williams, Dunleavy Jr., Boozer) would be NBA lottery picks in the spring of 2002.
Andy Means walked into Cameron Indoor Stadium that fall to take his shot at being part of it.