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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    New York, NY

    How well do we recruit?

    The first answer is, of course, that we recruit extremely well. A question that has come up is why our players don't match up to their high school accolades. My response has tended to be a defensive one (they're 18; they have played even with all of the best players in the country; they were never tabbed to be Oden or Durant, but they are living up to their hype as top 20 players from hs (which probably translates into being a top 80-120 player in college, since there are top 20 players every year, most of them don't go pro early, and the difference between #20 and #40 is likely to be small.

    Anyway, that led me to look for numbers.

    In a search through the McDonald's web site, I came across 34 Duke McDonald's A-A's who aren't currently in college. 23 of them made an NBA Roster, or 68%. I then looked at the first 100 players on their list (got me through the middle of the C's). 46 made an NBA roster (and several of those didn't go to college). Making a roster does not mean stardom, but it does mean that the college career was good enough that an NBA team was willing to hand over money.

    I won't do the stats, but Duke's 68% is significantly higher than the overall 46%. In addition, the 32% who didn't make a roster includes such folks as Amaker, Wojo, and Collins, and they certainly weren't busts.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    Naptown, IN
    Quote Originally Posted by johnb View Post
    A question that has come up is why our players don't match up to their high school accolades.
    The majority of HS basketball teams do not get a player that is far superior (physically, mentally, bball skills, etc...) than his peers. Therefore, if you get one kid, that is superior, his stats could become very lofty. The ball is always in his hands. OJ Mayo & Bill Walker, are superior players, but last year they played in a Cincinnati HS division where they had little competition. Hence, lofty stats. When you don’t have competition, the numbers could mean McDonald's AA status but it also could mean a mediocre college bball career versus more competitive opposition.

    I remember playing high school BB and we had 1 really good player. Coach said “Give to ball to Jim… let him isolate”… that was our timeout play whenever we were down by a few points. Heh. So, I tend to think most of these kids don’t have strategic HS coaches. So, when the kid runs into a strategic coach in college or beyond, the kid can’t adapt. But this is just my biased opinion.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Durham
    I think the first thing to realize is that by and large, HS accolades are totally meaningless. Next, Duke plays team basketball. Sure, you get kids like J Will and Redick who score a lot of points, but Duke has always been about sharing the basketball. You saw that in 2004 where JJ and Luol did a great job of not getting in each other's way and co-existing beautifully. Even last year, when JJ averaged 27-28 ppg, Shelden still averaged 18 ppg.


    Duke recruits very well and this question highlights one of our recruiting side effects. For example, you have a kid like Shav, who was God on his HS basketball team, coming to a school where every other kid is just as talented; Shav was an All-American with Michael Thompson, Redick, and Dockery; this doesn't even include Shelden due to that bogus rape charge. Even though many believe Shav underachieved (I'm one of them), there was far too much talent coming in simultaneously for him to be the one and only star, as he was in high school. Most McD AAs don't go to schools like that, and it's a reason a lot of top-notch HS players don't want to come to Duke. It requires a degree of sacrifice...

  4. #4
    I think we recuit well and I don't think it's the major concern in reference to Duke basketball. I believe that Duke has a reoccurring flaw of misevaluating players. If you look at the bigs that we have recruiting in the past, we have whiffed on numerous occasions (Burgess, Newton, Beard, Domzalski, Meek, Boetang, and Boykin). UNC seems to be attracting a better caliber of player and the cast a much wider net to get potential recruits; we seem to target only a few recruits each year. UNC seems to get much better athletes from top to bottom and we seem to get good players (not great players anymore).

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
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    Chesapeake, VA.
    Quote Originally Posted by jawk24 View Post
    UNC seems to be attracting a better caliber of player and the cast a much wider net to get potential recruits; we seem to target only a few recruits each year. UNC seems to get much better athletes from top to bottom and we seem to get good players (not great players anymore).
    In fairness to Duke's program, the number of players who could potentially suit up at Duke is smaller than that at UNC-CH because of academic requirements.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Durham
    I don't really agree with either of the last two posts. With all due respect jawk24, Meek, Boateng and Boykin were brought in to be role players. Maybe they thought they were going to be starters or major contributors, but after seeing them play, I think we all knew that wouldn't be the case. Not to mention there are kids at every school that don't live up to expectations. It also has to do with the fact that its Duke. It's easy to pick on a McRoberts or a Shav when he's on TV 29 times a year. What about someone like Mustafa Shakur from Arizona that just never lived up to his billing? Exactly, not only is he on the West Coast, but he's not under the scrutiny that Duke players are, so he flies under the radar. Familiarity breeds contempt and nobody is on TV more than Duke.


    In terms of academic requirements, Duke basketball is not constrained academically in recruiting. This isn't football where you bring in 20 kids a year. With Basketball, you bring in no more than 4 or 5 kids a year, max. IMO, I don't think Coach K bends the rules to get players in, meaning our players might not get into Duke if they didn't play basketball, but they're certainly smart enough to handle the rigors of the University. Hell, Trajan Langdon majored in Math at Duke; I took Calculus my freshman year and have been terrified since.

    That being said, if there was an instance where Coack K needed to get a questionable recruit in, I'm sure the school would have no problem affording him that right. In fact a lot of people considered Sean Dockery an academically dubious recruit. I'd be very surprised to see Coach K, the "Special Assistant" to the President of the University, take it in the face and lose a kid because Chris Guttentag from the admissions office wags his finger, Mutombo style. It's just not realistic. Coach K gets what he wants, and when he saw a Chicago kid like Dockery, there was no stopping him unless you were another school...
    Last edited by Classof06; 03-29-2007 at 03:27 PM.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, D.C.
    Quote Originally Posted by jawk24 View Post
    I think we recuit well and I don't think it's the major concern in reference to Duke basketball. I believe that Duke has a reoccurring flaw of misevaluating players. If you look at the bigs that we have recruiting in the past, we have whiffed on numerous occasions (Burgess, Newton, Beard, Domzalski, Meek, Boetang, and Boykin). UNC seems to be attracting a better caliber of player and the cast a much wider net to get potential recruits; we seem to target only a few recruits each year. UNC seems to get much better athletes from top to bottom and we seem to get good players (not great players anymore).
    What about the wonderful bigs: Ferry, Alarie, Laettner, Parks, Brand, Boozer, Deng (bigger than Boykin), S. Williams, McRoberts? For that matter, if you put Boykin and Beard on the list, you should include G. Hill.
    I am almost certainly leaving some names off.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Raleigh, NC
    "In terms of academic requirements, Duke basketball is not constrained academically in recruiting."

    I'm sorry but this simply isn't the case. Duke basketball self-selects in recruiting. Every year there are numerous top prospects that Duke eliminates off the top and never bothers with based on academic profile.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    New York, NY
    One reason that I counted the players who went into the NBA was to demonstrate that Duke's high school A-A's get NBA contracts at a higher rate than average, which implies that we pick 'em better, teach 'em better, or promote 'em better, but it certainly doesn't imply the opposite.

    As for academics, there have historically been very few basketball players at Duke who would have been serious possibilities if they weren't great at basketball. Having said that, there have been many Duke bball players who didn't have 1500 SAT's but have been serious, earnest students who graduated with their classes despite onerous pressures, time burdens, and often being removed from the demographic group in which they were raised. Sean Dockery, for example, had excellent hs grades and mediocre SAT's, but he also came from a lousy inner-city high school where kids generally did very badly on SAT's. K vouched for his character and perseverence, and it paid off. I doubt if he could take such chances more than once per year, but he can do it occasionally because of his track record. All in all, though, K does NOT get to simply pick whoever he wants (K doesn't actually run the University), but he has no interest in recruiting a player who is going to fail out.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
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    Philadelphia, PA
    Quote Originally Posted by johnb View Post
    All in all, though, K does NOT get to simply pick whoever he wants (K doesn't actually run the University), but he has no interest in recruiting a player who is going to fail out.
    It is really, really hard to fail out of Duke. There are several majors that involve taking very few tests and instead writing papers. Usually, the lowest grade on these papers is a C. These players have countless resources at their disposal, including proofreading, tutoring, and counseling to select classes that are nearly impossible to fail.

    I'm not saying that these guys don't get a real education, or that some of them don't take their education seriously. All I'm saying is that in order to recruit a player who is not going to fail out, all you're looking for is someone who will CARE enough to not fail out (i.e. go to class if there's an attendance policy, or actually write the assigned papers). Beyond that, if you do the assigned work, you're going to pass the class.

  11. #11
    I'm not sure if I would call Boykin or Boateng busts since they pretty much never played unless it was scrub time. I hope Boykin does well at whatever school he transfers to (Cal?) as well as Boateng at Az St.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
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    Philadelphia, PA
    Quote Originally Posted by RelativeWays View Post
    I'm not sure if I would call Boykin or Boateng busts since they pretty much never played unless it was scrub time. I hope Boykin does well at whatever school he transfers to (Cal?) as well as Boateng at Az St.
    Isn't that the definition of a bust? Their lack of any real PT was indicative of their (relative) lack of ability. In other words, if they were better players, they would have gotten more PT.

  13. #13
    So Marty and Zoobs are busts? People seem to think otherwise. To me, when I look at a bust I apply the Greg Newton seal of approval.

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Feb 2007

    What Duke Has Not Recruited Well

    With the exception of Shelden Williams, in very recent years,Duke does not seem to recruit the 6-8, 6-9 athletic player who runs the floor well and rebounds. Even with Shelden, there was no one else like that and this year's team and next year's team does not have even one player like that. I guess you could say that Deng was someone like that, but he was one and done.

    I remember last year's LSU game and they kept sending in these type of players. I do not know the reason why Duke does not attract these kind of players.

  15. #15

    There may be some truth in what you're saying, but . . .

    haven't some Duke players had academic issues anyway? Andre Sweet is a recent example, and as I recall, in the 90s Tony Moore, Newton and Joe Cook had academic troubles of one sort or another. So it doesn't appear to be a given that, once in school, a Duke player will succeed academically.

    My understanding from talking to some who are involved in recruiting is that Duke tends to enter the recruiting process very early with candidates - the coaches identify the candidates they want, they spend a great deal of time with them, their families, coaches, etc., and encourage them to commit early. Obviously physical skills and talent are important, but the coaching staff really looks for a certain personality characteristics - leadership skills, willingness to defer to be part of a team, work ethic, ability to take criticism, and the like - as well as the ability (either demonstrated or perceived) to handle the academics at Duke. If these characteristics aren't what the coaches want, they don't offer scholarships to those candidates. Fortunately, Duke is in a much better position to do this than other less successful schools.

    Other schools are typically more willing to to take chances on recruits that they don't know as well - who may be more athletic, or late bloomers, or whatever. It's really just a difference in philosophy.

  16. #16
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    Feb 2007
    Location
    New York, NY
    I think it's hard for the average Duke undergraduate to fail out, but that is not a random sampling of 20 year olds. Add in the very burdensome requirements that accompany being on the team, and I think it's striking that we have such a low failure rate.

    As for the rarity with which we recruit a Shelden Williams, well, as someone said, there's a pretty girl on every street corner in America, but an athletic 7 footer is hard to find.

  17. #17

    What Hasn't Duke Recruited?

    Quote Originally Posted by NYC Duke Fan View Post
    With the exception of Shelden Williams, in very recent years,Duke does not seem to recruit the 6-8, 6-9 athletic player who runs the floor well and rebounds. Even with Shelden, there was no one else like that and this year's team and next year's team does not have even one player like that. I guess you could say that Deng was someone like that, but he was one and done.

    I remember last year's LSU game and they kept sending in these type of players. I do not know the reason why Duke does not attract these kind of players.
    Isn't that pretty much what Lance Thomas is? And McRoberts (recruited the year before that)? And Patrick Patterson this year? And wasn't Duke recruiting Brandon Wright pretty hard until he decided to play for the Hated Heels?

  18. #18
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    Feb 2007
    Location
    North Carolina
    I agree with JohnB. It's tough to find the players everyone wants to see at Duke, the athletic big guys, particularly when Duke will not recruit some of the less intelligent ones for obvious reasons. We can all look down the road and ask why don't we have a Deon Thompson or an Alex Stepheson, but those are both top 100, top 50 guys, and there aren't that many of them and they aren't just being recruited by Duke. Contrary to popular belief, there are other top caliber programs recruiting them to.

    Personally, I think recruiting is incredibly hard, and I like what Duke is doing. We had some close calls on guys like Brandan Wright that just did not work out, but I certainly think the staff knows what it's doing and is doing what it needs to do.

    As we all know, this isn't the mid-90s anymore, and even if you land the exact recruit you want, you may only get a year out of him, and the year might not even be that great given the effort you put in getting the guy.

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Los Angeles
    Quote Originally Posted by NYC Duke Fan View Post
    With the exception of Shelden Williams, in very recent years,Duke does not seem to recruit the 6-8, 6-9 athletic player who runs the floor well and rebounds. Even with Shelden, there was no one else like that and this year's team and next year's team does not have even one player like that. I guess you could say that Deng was someone like that, but he was one and done.

    I remember last year's LSU game and they kept sending in these type of players. I do not know the reason why Duke does not attract these kind of players.
    In addition to the above post, would any of those guys have cut it academically at Duke? Even with the help athletes get? I mean, it's LSU...It's in the SEC.

    Additionally, for all those who missed Tyrus Thomas' response to whether he was looking forward to the Slam Dunk contest, it was something along the lines of "I'm just there for the $10,000" That's not the sort of guy we recruit.

  20. #20
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    North Carolina
    Strong points by clipsfan - while it may be unfair to assume that these kids aren't excellent students or capable of being excellent, it may be safe to say they would not have been interested in a school like Duke, with its relative academic rigors, compared to a school like LSU (and Duke would not be interested in them).

    Thomas lost a lot of respect from many people for his comments.

    But, in spite of my post above, I am still puzzled why we can't land a 6-9 guy with muscle consistently. I don't want to blame anyone by any means, it's just sort of puzzling.

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