Interesting. For those in the know: what, if any, impact do you think this has on the recruitment of Daniels, and on the rotation for next year?
In other words, where does Murphy rate in terms of readiness to play the SF position in college right now compared to, say, Daniels, Gbinije, or Dawkins?
It was my uneducated guess that Dawkins would be the frontrunner and that any of the freshmen would be chasing him for the starting spot. But we now have two freshmen who are bigger than him challenging for a spot, and possibly even a third (depending on Daniels).
Hm, I'm thinking Daniels delayed his decision because of this situation. However, I'm glad to have a guy at that position for sure, rather than waiting on Daniels to make up his mind. Only question is: can Alex Murphy play the 3? I hope to God he can. We need someone with his size and shooting ability at that position.
Let's hope this doesn't dissuade Daniels. It's not like we didn't have Murphy coming anyway and had to pick between the two. I'd like to think that despite a very crowded 2/3 situation, Daniels (and Murphy) realize they can see both potentially see minutes as multitalented, non-traditional power forwards, given their height.
To me, the only donwside to Alex coming a year early is that Duke haters will once again try to say that Coach K is being selfish in encouraging this kid to come a year early and miss out on his Senior year.
But then again, it doesn't matter what they think...There is no downside to this. I think it's great news!! And it will only make next year's practices more competitive and the team better overall. For all this talk about KY and UNC, I think Duke is "quietly" loading up; and the trip to China and Dubai will give the coaching staff an early look at the time which will give them a headstart towards molding this team into a potential powerhouse team IMO if the players develop accordingly.
Sure. And it'll be like when Jason Williams chose to stay for his junior year and we were treating to scores of UNC fans droning on about how Saint Dean Smith had to almost force Jordan to leave college and turn pro early because Jordan wanted to stay, but Deano had his players' best interests in mind, yadda yadda yadda. If it's anything like that time, they'll all suddenly forget when one of their own chooses to make the same decision.
Just be you. You is enough. - K, 4/5/10, 0:13.8 to play, 60-59 Duke.
You're all jealous hypocrites. - Titus on Laettner
You see those guys? Animals. They're animals. - SIU Coach Chris Lowery, on Duke
I know i'm getting way ahead of myself and I don't want to derail this thread; but this team has the potential IMO of being as versatile as the Duke teams of the early 90's when you had interchangeable players that could guard and play multiple positions in Grant and Thomas Hill, Brian Davis and Antonio Lang. Even Christian could play 2 positions as either the 4 or the 5. I'm not saying the 2011-2012 team will be as talented but on paper this upcoming team will potentially have just as many interchangeable and versatile/multi-positional players.
Great news... Anyone know how many scholarships we have left? Have to imagine we are close to max capacity.
I would think that your uneducated guess would still likely hold for the start of the season. I doubt Murphy, Gbinijie or Daniels (we hope) will start over Dawkins to start the year. As they learn defensive responsibilities though, those are a lot of potentially versatile players at the wing positions and/or second big spot.
I have been thinking of this as well. There is a nice potential to have many versatile players that could guard multiple positions on next year's team.
I am very excited to see Murphy join the squad a year earlier than first expected. I expect he will be able to make an impact over his career.
When looking at this news, I saw an interesting take from Dave Telep at ESPN who stated:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/recru...ory?id=6389471In order to come up with a landing place for Alex Murphy -- who was No. 15 in 2012 -- in our current 2011 list, we used Maurice Harkless (Queens, N.Y./South Kent) as the measuring stick in the SF group. Our thinking was that Harkless deserved to be ranked in front of Murphy, therefore Harkless is No. 38 and Murphy checks in two behind him at No. 40.
I was surprised to see Murphy drop down this far when getting re-ranked in the new class. This would seem to indicate that we shouldn't expect too much from Murphy this coming year, but I certainly like his talent and what I have seen and heard about him.
“Those two kids, they’re champions,” Krzyzewski said of his senior leaders. “They’re trying to teach the other kids how to become that, and it’s a long road to become that.”