Originally Posted by
Olympic Fan
Just to be clear, you are right -- we're dealing with two very different situations. In the Purvis case, Duke WAS interested, but voluntarily backed off the kid because of concerns about his academic situation. This is very much lik Eric Bledsoe in 2009 -- we were interested, took a look at his academic record and couldn't back out of the room fast enough. I don't think Purvis' case is that bad, but there were concerns that caused us to quit recruiting him.
I'm not as clear about the Muhammad case, except there were strong rumors after he committed to UCLA that he told friends that he had wanted to go to Duke, but there were reasons that he had to go to UCLA. Again, just rumors, but the rumors were that his father had reaped a large sum from adidas to deliver his son.
Now, those are just rumors, so take if FWIW. We'll let the NCAA investiogation play out.
But in Purvis' case, I'm glad we backed off the kid ... while in Muhammad's case, it's very possible that we didn't get him BECAUSE of irregularities .. ie, he or his family was paid to go elsewhere.
At the time, I think folks were saying (or perhaps speculating) we backed off of Purvis because of the emergence of Sulaimon. Don't recall the academics justification. Was that published somewhere? Or just generally accepted? Just curious...
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