What will Duke's preseason ranking be next year?

[DankeShane]

Anyone have a guess as to what our preseason ranking will be next year? Sure, there are a lot of unknowns at this point (i.e. who will and won't be on the team), so take your best guess...

[JasonEvans]

In another thread I pointed out that there are no more than 3 - 5 other teams in the land who will have a roster as talented as Duke next season -- regardless of whether Josh is here or not. I guess this could change if Oden or Durant or all the Florida kids decide to stay in school, but that seems quite unlikely.

Anyway, Duke will be somewhere just outside the Top Ten, I think. The pundits will talk about how great our incoming class is and how all our freshmen will be much better as sophs. Frankly, if we'd had the end-of-season Paulus and Henderson back in January, we would not have lose some of the early ACC games that put us in a hole when we hit the tough part of the schedule in February. Not saying the season would have been dramatically different, but a healthy Paulus and Henderson make this team more like a #4 seed and give us probably a 10-6 ACC record instead of 8-8. Woudl have helped our confidence earlier in the season too.

-Jason "this team was damn close to winning like 5 more games... frustrating but a sign of why we should be oh so optimistic about next season" Evans

[kydevil]

If Mcrob. stays and PP comes this team would be loaded with talent.... id say top 5 talent easy? maybe not ranked that high preseason though.

[Clipsfan]

I think that it is really too early both from the perspective of Duke players who will stay/come, and which other teams will lose their players. If UCLA dosen't lose anyone (they're not losing anyone to graduation) they'll have a ridiculous team next year. Florida is the same, while UNC, Texas and Kansas could technically keep their teams. We'll have a lot of talent, and I really liked the way some of our guys were starting to step up at the end of the season, but we won't know how we compare to the other teams for another month or two.

[freedevil]

Clipsfan makes a good point. Carolina only loses Terry, who while at times is excellent has that Demarcus Nelson-esque tendency to turn the ball over for no apparent reason.

Like the years between Boozer and Shelden, I still don't think this team has a strong post presence (well, I should say proven strong post presence), both defensively and offensively. I don't get why K will not recruit big role playing centers in addition to guys like McRoberts - guys like Rich from Florida or some of the fundamentally strong defensive bodies that play in the Big Ten.

Regardless, like Jason said, this team will have excellent talent and will, IMO, finish in the top 3 in the ACC and will rank around the top 10 to start the season.

[Buckeye Devil]

4 starters plus some bench contributors back from a 22-11 team that was 8-8in the ACC this year and exited both the conference and NCAA tourneys by losing in the first rounds to mediocre teams.

Highly touted freshmen coming in, hopefully joined by PP in the near future.

Doesn't sound like a top 10 team, but more like #15 or thereabouts. I know that there was improvement throughout the course of the year, but it remains
to be seen if the main bell-cows for 2007-08 will ring loud enough to get to the Sweet 16. I hope that Singler and Co. can contribute largely because this
team will need it to be better than this year. I am more optimistic for year after next.

[Cameron]

With Josh, top 15. Without Josh, top 15.

Bringing back four starters, including two studs like Scheyer and Henderson, a solid senior in Nelson, an ever improving scoring point guard in Greg Paulus, and perhaps the best freshman class in the country (if we sign Patterson), should ensure a pretty high preseason ranking. With that said, however, that means absolutely nothing. Nothing.

I can't wait to put all of this together and see where we are two months into the season. We all know we will breeze to a 12-1 or 12-2 start to the season, as usual, but it will be what we do once we start ACC play that determines how much we have improved. This season, we learned how good our 13-1 record really was when we got our butts drilled to start conference play. This is what I am waiting for.