J.Blink
03-23-2014, 02:51 PM
Though I've been a Duke fan since I was a kid (and graduated in early 2000s), the first time I paid any attention to recruiting news was the Patrick Patterson affair. After following the sagas of Monroe, Barnes, and even Wall (etc), pretty closely, I got fed up with the--in my mind--complete futility of trying to make any sense of cryptic tweets, cinder blocks, and insiders who have hot news (none of which comes to fruition!), and I've now almost entirely given up trying to keep up with recruiting before signing. Between recruiting announcements, two UNC games a season, and the tournament, I needed to cut down on some stress and recruiting didn't make the cut.
Anyway, I got thinking about this topic after reading some of the debates over one and dones in other threads. Much has changed in college basketball while Coach K has been active (that seems too banal to even say), but I'm curious about how recruiting at Duke today compares to 10, 20, or 30 years ago.
This is an area of almost complete ignorance for me. I've read a few tidbits about recruiting battles over the years (my favorite is that Grant Hill was a big UNC fan) but not much. While I think it's pretty much impossible to directly compare today's fishbowl world of twitter, facebook, and social media to pre-Internet recruitments, I thought it might be an interesting exercise to compare recruits (and the recruitment process) of 30 years ago to the last 5-10.
So, as kind of a hypothetical--which Duke players in the 80s or 90s might have been one and done players in today's climate? Which Duke stars (if any) were "under the radar" recruits who were possibly not as highly recruited as others. Which recruits of the 80s or 90s were touted as "game changers" or the kind of players one builds a team around (I'm thinking about the kind of language used about some of the recent one and dones)?
I have nothing interesting to add! Does anybody?
Anyway, I got thinking about this topic after reading some of the debates over one and dones in other threads. Much has changed in college basketball while Coach K has been active (that seems too banal to even say), but I'm curious about how recruiting at Duke today compares to 10, 20, or 30 years ago.
This is an area of almost complete ignorance for me. I've read a few tidbits about recruiting battles over the years (my favorite is that Grant Hill was a big UNC fan) but not much. While I think it's pretty much impossible to directly compare today's fishbowl world of twitter, facebook, and social media to pre-Internet recruitments, I thought it might be an interesting exercise to compare recruits (and the recruitment process) of 30 years ago to the last 5-10.
So, as kind of a hypothetical--which Duke players in the 80s or 90s might have been one and done players in today's climate? Which Duke stars (if any) were "under the radar" recruits who were possibly not as highly recruited as others. Which recruits of the 80s or 90s were touted as "game changers" or the kind of players one builds a team around (I'm thinking about the kind of language used about some of the recent one and dones)?
I have nothing interesting to add! Does anybody?