There are other full time academics on this board so I will defer to them, but my experience as a graduate student teaching at a school similar to Duke was that student athletes were very similar to other students. The assumption that the athletes are somehow different is for me an unproven assertion. The better ones were extremely driven, highly organized and very responsible. The problematic student athletes were just like the problematic students - lazy, boorish and self indulgent.
One thing I did note is that the student athletes tend to be anti-socialist and respectful of tradition - perhaps this is what riles those academics at places like Duke.
Athletes, like engineers and business people, live in a world where performance, or lack of it, is very easily measured. Score is kept and success or failure cannot be hidden. That performance is achieved by personal diligence and hard work. Arguments that someone else deserves the fruits of your own labor usually fall on deaf ears. I'm sure that does bug some faculty members.
Well here is how it has been in my fairly wide experience in athletes at a variety of universities:
A. I taught at one private school as good or slightly better than Duke. They were an NCAA Division 3 school and thus did not give scholarships. Their athletes were about as good as the average student.
B. I taugh as a graduate student at one major state university with NCAA D1A athletics. I have a limited number of athletes. In general they were not as good as the student body.
C. I have taught at two regional state universities with D1A athletics. Their athletes have been about equal to the student body.
D. I taught at another state University with D1A/D1AA athletics. My impression is that the athletes there were a bit worse than the average students.
Also really it becomes a matter of sports more than schools:
1. In revenue sports, basketball and football mainly, athletes tend to vary more from the student body everywhere where scholarships are given and it truly is a revenue sport. [The D3 of course has no revenue sports.] On average they tend to be worse prepared students.
2. In semi-reveneu sports where there is a true minor league program, ie baseball and hockey, the athletes were maybe a little worse than the student body, but the really really really ill prepared student that you might have in your class because college is the only way to persue a football or basketball career is not there. They are in the minors.
3. The non-revenue sports athletes, ie. tennis, swimming, track, golf etc are about as good or maybe better than the average student.
So where is lacrosse in all of this? I suspect it is not a revenue sport. There is now pro lacrosse in the US. So I guess a poor student who wants to seek a lacrosse career might be forced into college. I would guess that the lacrosse students at Duke would be slightly less prepared than the average student non scholarship student at Duke, but I doubt the really unprepared student that you might find in basketball or maybe football at Duke would not be there.