Originally Posted by
miramar
I don't think Duke is where everybody wants to be, but I don't think any other school is either. Forty years ago everybody did not want to go to UCLA and it certainly didn't hurt them.
The important thing for recruiting is whether the program can recruit three very good players per year on average. If you can recruit two McDonald's, then you are doing very well, so let's look at the Burger Boys from the last four graduating classes:
2002: Sean Dockery, Shavlik Randolph, J. J. Redick, (Michael Thompson)
2003: Luol Deng, (Kris Humphreys)
2004: DeMarcus Nelson, (Shaun Livingston)
2005: (Eric Boateng), Josh McRoberts, Greg Paulus
That's 11 in four years, which is extraordinary, but in parentheses are two who didn't show up at all, and two who left quickly without having contributed much. Shavlik left after three tough years and Deng surprised everyone by leaving after one productive season. McRoberts left after only two years leaving a lot of problems in his wake. So only Dockery, Redick, Nelson, and Paulus stayed for four years, but we can say that only J.J. lived up to expectations.
So I would say that the problem is not recruiting, but a down cycle where many top recruits simply didn't pan out, didn't show up, or only showed up for a cup of coffee. Fortunately, Henderson, Scheyer, Thomas, Singler, Smith, and Williams have helped to turn that around (King, not so much). I would expect the same from Plumlee and Kelly, so I think the situation is resolving itself.
Much of our frustration probably comes from the fact that because of this down cycle, for several years the team seemed to have been missing one key player inside, and then to make things worse we would come up short when we recruited power players such as Patterson, Echenique, and Monroe. We still won't have a bruiser in the middle next year, but we will have four players 6-10 and up, so we should be much better off than we have been since Shelden graduated. No matter what, next year's team will be very talented and should be very successful.