Without disagreeing with the bolded line, the best date to make this comparison is after the fall signing period in early November. I suspect we'll still be at 1 commitment at that point in time while the 2018 class would've had 3 commits at that point (with Joey, as you noted, reclassifying later).
^ yes, good point. Last year at this time those guys were queuing up; this year we've fanned on several of our presumed commits, e.g. Antoine and James...
Wendell Moore has begun his Twitter dot com campaign to lobby Stewart and Hurt to Duke. Godspeed, young fella.
Does Dr. Ruth have a vote on the Crystal Ball?
The difference between recruiting this year and last year is that Duke was perceived as the clear leader for Barrett, Reddish and Jones long before they made it official.
That isn't the case with any of the top recruits Duke is still going after. Doesn't mean they won't get any of these guys or even all of Stewart, Carey, Hurt, Anthony.
But there are no guarantees, either.
Duke was perceived as the leader for both Antoine and James and lost both of them.
I don't recall Duke losing any strong Duke leans by the end of September 2017.
So, IMO, it's disingenuous to view the two classes as analogous at this point.
Maybe they end up in a similar spot. But they sure are taking a different route.
They aren't mutually exclusive. Getting Moore is big and Duke certainly can put together a great class. But this time last year Duke was running out the clock on three top prospects who had largely already made their decisions but just hadn't formalized them yet. That doesn't apply to anyone in the class of 2019. Duke has work to do.
Twitter reports that Joe Girard will announce on Sunday. He still lists Duke among his finalists, even though most assume that ship has sailed.
I was in the gym at Basketball City(NYC) on 7/15/18 with Coach K and Coach Scheyer as they watched Hurt play a Sunday morning game. They had been at Peach Jam in N. Augusta, SC until the evening before so I feel that Coach K and Duke still have a reasonable chance with Hurt. (Coach K and Coach Scheyer left Basketball City immediately after Hurt's game concluded so it was pretty clear who they were there to see.)
"Play and practice like you are trying to make the team." --Coach K