2024 Men's Basketball Recruiting

[gam7]

I feel good about this recruitment- well I knew that I would.

I am excited for him to see the facilities, especially the hot tub.

[UrinalCake]

I am excited for him to see the facilities, especially the hot tub.

One of my favorite SNL skits ever

[JasonEvans]

Little surprised we have not heard about Duke getting involved with John Bol. He is a 7-2 center from South Sudan who has been in the US for a couple years now. He plays at Christian Brothers in Kansas for Justin Tatum, Jayson's dad. He is widely considered a top 20 recruit in the 2024 class.

Oh, and he sure seems like the kind of kid who fits the Duke profile: https://www.on3.com/news/meet-7-foot...an-cheat-code/

In the classroom, Bol boasts a 4.0 GPA. In six of his seven classes, he has a grade of 98 or higher. His lowest score is in Spanish (95), as he’s in the process of learning his fourth language. He also speaks fluently in English, Swahili, and Arabic.

[jipops]

Little surprised we have not heard about Duke getting involved with John Bol. He is a 7-2 center from South Sudan who has been in the US for a couple years now. He plays at Christian Brothers in Kansas for Justin Tatum, Jayson's dad. He is widely considered a top 20 recruit in the 2024 class.

Oh, and he sure seems like the kind of kid who fits the Duke profile: https://www.on3.com/news/meet-7-foot...an-cheat-code/

With one of those languages he may already qualify for tenure at the school down the road.

[JasonEvans]

Carolina gets their first 2024 recruit. He is Drake Powell, ranked as the #76 player in the country by 247 (he is #58 in their composite rankings). He had scholarship offers from Appalachian State, Cincinnati, VCU, and a few other schools**. UNC-Greensboro looked at him, but never made an offer.



-Jason "**-Tennessee, Miami, FSU, Wake... schools like that" Evans

[DavidBenAkiva]

Carolina gets their first 2024 recruit. He is Drake Powell, ranked as the #76 player in the country by 247 (he is #58 in their composite rankings). He had scholarship offers from Appalachian State, Cincinnati, VCU, and a few other schools**. UNC-Greensboro looked at him, but never made an offer.



-Jason "**-Tennessee, Miami, FSU, Wake... schools like that" Evans

I read on reddit that Powell's father played baseball or something at UNC and that Hubert Davis is a 2nd cousin or something like that.

Seems like there are a lot of unknowns with the current roster for UNC. Leaky Black and Pete Nance will have exhausted their eligibility after this season. It's unclear if Bacot, Davis, and Love will be on the roster beyond this year. I could see Bacot and Love trying to get drafted with Davis maybe deciding to jump ship if they all leave. Justin McKoy is a senior this season, too, although played less at UNC last season than he did at UVA the year before. It could be a significant exodus from UNC after this season and they only have 1 recruit from the Class of 2023 signed up in 5-star guard Simeon Wilcher. It makes you wonder what's going on with the roster next year and the frontcourt in particular.

Anyway, that's a thought for next summer.

[JasonEvans]

I read on reddit that Powell's father played baseball or something at UNC and that Hubert Davis is a 2nd cousin or something like that.

Seems like there are a lot of unknowns with the current roster for UNC. Leaky Black and Pete Nance will have exhausted their eligibility after this season. It's unclear if Bacot, Davis, and Love will be on the roster beyond this year. I could see Bacot and Love trying to get drafted with Davis maybe deciding to jump ship if they all leave. Justin McKoy is a senior this season, too, although played less at UNC last season than he did at UVA the year before. It could be a significant exodus from UNC after this season and they only have 1 recruit from the Class of 2023 signed up in 5-star guard Simeon Wilcher. It makes you wonder what's going on with the roster next year and the frontcourt in particular.

Anyway, that's a thought for next summer.

Well, the 2023 team is going to be built around elite big men GG Jackson and TJ Power. That's what Carolina fans were saying a few weeks ago.

[jv001]

I read on reddit that Powell's father played baseball or something at UNC and that Hubert Davis is a 2nd cousin or something like that.

Seems like there are a lot of unknowns with the current roster for UNC. Leaky Black and Pete Nance will have exhausted their eligibility after this season. It's unclear if Bacot, Davis, and Love will be on the roster beyond this year. I could see Bacot and Love trying to get drafted with Davis maybe deciding to jump ship if they all leave. Justin McKoy is a senior this season, too, although played less at UNC last season than he did at UVA the year before. It could be a significant exodus from UNC after this season and they only have 1 recruit from the Class of 2023 signed up in 5-star guard Simeon Wilcher. It makes you wonder what's going on with the roster next year and the frontcourt in particular.

Anyway, that's a thought for next summer.

Will Bacot be able to draw his first social security check, receive NIL $$$$ and still be eligible to play college basketball. Oh wait, the rules don't apply to Uncheat.

[johnb]

Little surprised we have not heard about Duke getting involved with John Bol. He is a 7-2 center from South Sudan who has been in the US for a couple years now. He plays at Christian Brothers in Kansas for Justin Tatum, Jayson's dad. He is widely considered a top 20 recruit in the 2024 class.

Oh, and he sure seems like the kind of kid who fits the Duke profile: https://www.on3.com/news/meet-7-foot...an-cheat-code/

He sounds like Henry Coleman meets Mark Williams.

Last I checked, the President of the South Sudan Basketball Federation was a guy named Luol Deng, who—among a variety of accolades—was one of Duke’s great players.

[CrazyNotCrazie]

Little surprised we have not heard about Duke getting involved with John Bol. He is a 7-2 center from South Sudan who has been in the US for a couple years now. He plays at Christian Brothers in Kansas for Justin Tatum, Jayson's dad. He is widely considered a top 20 recruit in the 2024 class.

Oh, and he sure seems like the kind of kid who fits the Duke profile: https://www.on3.com/news/meet-7-foot...an-cheat-code/

Just a note that the school is in St. Louis, not Kansas. It is the alma mater of Caleb Love (if I recall Love wanted to come to Duke but we basically chose Roach over him?). Hopefully the Love connection plus his knowledge of Swahili does not make him interested in UNC - it sounds like he is too bright for that! Between the Tatum connection, the potential Deng connection mentioned above, Coach Carrawell's ties to St. Louis, and his interest in academics, this seems like one we should be in good shape on if we are interested.

[heyman25]

https://247sports.com/player/carter-bryant-46117580/ Posted in error on 2025 Recruiting

[Gooch]

I’ve never clicked on a link to 247 before—a very cool site which must take a lot of work to keep up.

And how awesome must it be to have a scholarship offer from 20+ schools all over the country. If only I was 18 years old and 6’7” and could hit a jump shot

[heyman25]

Another Monteverde prospect. Plays Center or the 5.
https://twitter.com/TheCircuitAlex
https://twitter.com/liammcneeley30

[SkyBrickey]

https://247sports.com/Player/Liam-McNeeley-46103856/

I’m guessing the Wendell Moore story is great to use with recruits like these. Bryant, #26 composite. McNeeley, #18 composite. We can support you as a OAD if you come to Duke and prove youre ready against top competition. Or we can help develop you into a captain and first round draft pick….

[heyman25]

Missed the data on McNeeley. He is a small forward. 6'6 or 6'7 from Richardson,Texas

[DavidBenAkiva]

https://247sports.com/Player/Liam-McNeeley-46103856/

I’m guessing the Wendell Moore story is great to use with recruits like these. Bryant, #26 composite. McNeeley, #18 composite. We can support you as a OAD if you come to Duke and prove youre ready against top competition. Or we can help develop you into a captain and first round draft pick….

A lot of guys like that have come through Duke lately.

Grayson Allen
Luke Kennard
Tre Jones
Wendell Moore
Mark Williams

Is Jeremy Roach next?

[DavidBenAkiva]

I was debating which thread should get this post before landing here in the Class of 2024. My goal here is to try to see where we are with recruiting and attempt to identify which recruits are going to be targeted among the junior class. The picture will only become clear next summer, so take everything here with a giant grain of salt. This is going to be extremely difficult to project, so please give me some slack here. It's hard enough to do this for one season out. Doing it two seasons out is a fool's errand. I am a fool. Like a child that knows nothing, I will take the approach of asking a series of questions.

Question 1: Who could be on the roster in 2024-25?

The first place to start is by looking at the current roster and committed recruits from the Class of 2025. I'd like to group them into tiers based on how likely they are to be on the roster come Fall 2024, excluding the players that will have graduated or exhausted their eligibility should nothing crazy happen such as a medical issue. Here's where I landed:

100% Gone: Mackenzie Mgbako, Dereck Lively, Dariq Whitehead
95% Gone: Kyle Filipowski, Mark Mitchell, Tyrese Proctor
50% Gone: Caleb Foster, Sean Stewart
25% Gone: Jaylen Blakes, Stanley Borden (walk-on), Jared McCain, TJ Power, Christian Reeves, Jaden Schutt

I am going to assume that nearly anyone on the current and projected roster for this season and next could either transfer or go pro. This is the reason why no one got a 0% chance of being gone. For the three in the first group, it should be obvious that they are one-and-done players. The next tier are all pro prospects from the Class of 2022 that should be off to the NBA after their sophomore season if not earlier. I find it hard to believe any of those three will be juniors, although there is a slight chance of that happening, just as Wendell Moore and Grayson Allen stayed at least a year longer than most anticipated earlier in their careers. It could happen. It probably won't. The next group includes a pair of players that I just don't know enough about at this stage. Foster has the size and shooting for the PG position in the NBA, although he doesn't seem like an uber athlete that or supremely skilled ball handler that the NBA seems to like at that position. He had a big summer and we should just assume a player in his recruiting range is OAD. Stewart is ranked even higher than Foster according to most and has the athleticism for college and the NBA. The question I have seen is around skillset on offense and fit. Is he capable of generating enough offense to play on the wings as a forward? Can he bulk up enough or even grow in order to play the 5 at higher levels? If he stays around 6'8" and 220 lbs without adding a more reliable jumper or ball-handling skills, he could still be valuable as a switchable defender that can guard a lot of different types of players. There is value there, although I wonder just how much value the NBA will place on him as a "tweener." TBD.

The 25% gone category includes a mix of reserves like Blakes, Reeves, and Schutt, and freshmen from the Class of 2023 that should be sophomores. The reserves could transfer for more PT while the freshmen might want to look at the pros. McCain and Power are 5-star prospects, after all, though closer to top 20-30 than the top 15-20 from the consensus recruiting rankings. For the sake of this thought exercise, I am going to assume that all of these players are on the roster in the Fall of 2024 as well as Sean Stewart. Like I wrote above, we'll know a lot more this time next year. For now, this is the core of the roster as I see it from today.

Question 2: Who is being recruited right now?

The current offers have gone out to the following players (247 composite score in parenthesis):

Naas Cunningham, 6'7" SF, Overtime Elite GA (#1)
Tre Johnson, 6'5" SG, Lake Highlands TX (#3)
Bryson Tucker, 6'6" SF, IMG Academy FL (#5)
Dylan Harper, 6'4" G, Don Bosco Prep NJ (#27)
James Brown, 6'9" C, St. Rita IL (#31)
Darren Harris, 6'6" SF Paul VI Catholic VA (#64)

By the accounts I have read, Naas Cunningham is the top recruit in the Class of 2024 in the nation and for Duke as well. He would slot into that scoring wing role being vacated by Mackenzie Mgbako. Cunningham is a lithe scorer with a good deal of explosive quick-twitch athleticism. With the shooters that Duke might have on the roster in 2024, it would be fun to see him playing with a great deal of space and playmakers around him, like Jared McCain and TJ Power. Bryson Tucker is the other top target in this class, a player with a bigger frame than Cunningham that has reminded me a lot of Dariq Whitehead. He's a bigger wing, smooth, and can score from all 3 levels. James Brown appears to be the lone frontcourt target at the moment, which is part of the reason I see Sean Stewart playing as a sophomore (again, big projection on my part that may be revisited next summer). Like Stewart, Brown is an energy guy with good athleticism for the frontcourt. He provides rim protection and rebounding as a prototypical roll man on offense and rim protector on defense. Duke recently offered Dylan Harper, son of former NBA player Ron Harper and brother of recent Rutgers player Ron Harper, Jr. The younger Harper is a skilled scorer that had a big summer on the EYBL circuit and is friends with fellow NJ-native Cunningham. It's possible they are a combo package. Tre Johnson is an elite scoring guard from Texas. With Tyrese Proctor most likely being off to the NBA by the time Johnson shows up on a college campus, he might be the heir apparent as the lead scoring guard prospect in the class with Harper being a multi-year player. I'm not sure if that would work, but that's one possibility. The Jai Lucas connections in Texas would have to work their magic for Duke to land Johnson. Harris is a bit of an odd prospect on this list in that he is not considered a top 50 recruit by most but was one of the first players in the class to receive an offer. He is considered one of the top shooting prospects in high school, something that Coach Scheyer clearly values. The fact that he has received an offer and appears to be continuing to receive attention from the coaching staff (the Duke coaching staff is visiting him again today) makes me think they view him as a late riser or someone that will join Schutt and Reeves as that multi-year foundational player on the roster.

There are other players from the Class of 2024 that are receiving attention, headlined by a pair of wings. That includes Carter Bryant (see above) and Liam McNeely. Bryant is a 6'6" SF from Fountain Valley, CA while McNeely is a 6'6" SF from Texas playing at Montverde Academy in Florida. Bryant is new on my radar, but I am somewhat familiar with McNeely. His profile is a lot like that of TJ Power but scaled down to more of a wing than combo forward. McNeely played very well at the EYBL, although I wonder if he will be offered with someone with a very similar skillset - big playmaking wing that is an elite shooter - already in the fold (assuming Power is a sophomore). Between Cunningham, Tucker, Harris, and possibly one of Bryant and Power, the coaching staff has made a lot of inroads with players on the wings. It's TBD is Bryant and McNeely will receive an offer.

Question 3: What does Duke need from the Class of 2024?

Clearly, the coaching staff has prioritized wings in the Class of 2024. With Blakes (SR), Schutt (JR), and McCain (SO) as potential guards on the roster and Power and maybe Stewart forming the nucleus of the roster, you can see a hole on the wings. A high-flying athlete that can score it from all three levels while serving as a secondary playmaker is the most obvious need. That's Naas Cunningham, in my mind. Tucker and, from the few videos I've seen, Bryant also fill that role to a degree.

The next biggest hole is up front. Stewart and Reeves present a couple of options, either together or individually. I am not one to think that Reeves will be a starter at any point in his time at Duke. The best-case scenario for him is to serve as a kind of Jordan Goldwire role, but from the Center position. There are very few examples of a 3-star recruit contributing at Duke, so I am hesitant to project him as such. That leads me to think that Brown is the primary target and that he and Stewart would be splitting minutes at the 5 if Stewart isn't gobbling up most of them, should he be a sophomore at Duke. The post is an area where Duke has cooled on recruits lately, like JP Estrella and Xavier Booker before him. It wouldn't surprise me if the staff identifies another post player over the next 3-9 months, even if things with James Brown progress. There's a need for a multi-year 4/5 like Javin DeLaurier, in my mind. Stewart is fairly close to that profile but with more upside - a long, athletic player that can defend multiple positions and can score a little around the basket. I think the team roster needs someone like DeLaurier or Lance Thomas that is willing to stay on the roster for 3-4 years. That's more of a want than a need, I suppose.

At the guard position, the team isn't lacking options, assuming no transfers and McCain staying at least 2 years. There are no true PGs offered yet, so that could be the next move. Like with Schutt and Reeves, a long-term PG that can take over from Jaylen Blakes as a sophomore would make a lot of sense. I assume that McCain will eventually slide over to the primary PG. That's going to be his best position in the NBA, should he make it. Being able to showcase in college would be ideal. He displayed some good flashes of playmaking this summer while carrying a significant scoring load for the FIBA U17 team and at Peach Jam. Perhaps Dylan Harper is that long-term PG option.

From today looking forward over the next year, I think the team is going to move in the following directions:

1. Clearly prioritize which wings they want (my guess is Cunningham and Harris)
2. Push for James Brown to commit or, if they think they need an additional post player, start scouting more recruits
3. Identify a couple of long-term options up front (the 4/5 type) and at the PG position

[SkyBrickey]

I hope you’re right that we have McCain, Power, Schutt and Stewart all back in 2024-25. Those would be four experienced potential starters - something we haven’t had in some time.

[scottdude8]

I hope you’re right that we have McCain, Power, Schutt and Stewart all back in 2024-25. Those would be four experienced potential starters - something we haven’t had in some time.

FWIW, early 2024 draft projections seem to be all over the place with our guys. I've seen some with Foster in the first round, and some with him nowhere... similarly with McCain. Stewart doesn't seem to be on many draft boards since he's a bit of a "tweener" for the NBA, so that's an interesting one to keep an eye on.

As I've said on the front page, while for our mental health we should always assume 5*s are OADs, there may be a higher likelihood than we're used to that we see some sophomore returnees in 2024. I think how Scheyer pursues the 2024 class will shed some light on that soon. Caleb Foster announced his commitment at around this time in the 2023 recruiting cycle, while Sean Stewart announced his in December of 2021. If the staff focuses the pursuit of its 2024 targets and aims to get a commitment before the New Year, that should shed some light on who they expect to not be around for the 2024 squad. However, if things continue to move more slowly in the Class of 2024 than has been the case for Scheyer's first two classes, it might be indicative of some uncertainty from the staff on who will still be on the roster in 2024.

As an aside, I personally think McCain could be an exception to recent draft decision patterns given that he's already a social media star. Until he's a surefire first round pick he'll arguably be able to make as much (maybe more?!?!) money in NIL at Duke, especially as the potential face of the program, than he would in the G-League or deep on an NBA bench. That's a ways away, but could be an interesting subplot to all this.

[MyFirstK'sLast]

Carter Bryant, a 6'7 SF in the class of 2024, announced that he received an offer from Duke tonight via his Twitter page.

https://twitter.com/carterdbryant/st...rOCgxnz3tgYcUA

Carter is currently the 27th-ranked recruit on the 247 composite, but with the class entering its junior year there is still plenty of room to move up or down.

Worth noting that this is the 4th forward, 3rd ranked in the top 30, Coach Scheyer has offered in this class.