I'm going to do you one better and actually disagree on the definition of "international" player. So, yes, CDu is technically correct with his list, but several of those guys played high school ball in the United States. Pocius, Boateng, and Czyz definitely did and as a result received recruiting rankings and offers from high majors. Jack, on the other hand, came straight from Australia, and only 1 recruiting service (247) as far as I know even made an unwise attempt to try to rank him since obviously he never got a chance to play against American high school recruits, in either high school ball or AAU ball. (More on Jack's ranking later on in this post). With guys like Pocius, they had already made the adjustment to the United States and had played well enough in high school to get recruited by Duke!
So, I can't see why the "internationalism" of guys like Pocius, Boateng, and Czyz were why they didn't succeed at Duke. This is a classic case of a
confounding variable (aka third variable) being the thing that is
really influencing the outcomes, not the players' "internationalism." What is the confounding variable? Recruiting ranking. All of those players were rated as 4 or 3 star players, and it's really those lower-rated recruits that historically have not done well at Duke and with Coach K's short rotation. A top-5 recruit like Deng? As CDu noted, Luol excelled.
Back to Jack's recruiting ranking, as promised. Kedsy - I think the reason you compare him to Luke Maye
(#155 HS rank [247]) is because of Jack's recruiting ranking (
#226 per 247), correct? If so, I have to disagree. Jack's recruiting ranking should've been disregarded, and I remember arguing the case against a couple of you guys at the time. Not only was the recruiting service only outright guessing (again, no direct comparison against American HS players was possible), but only one service even gave him a rank. That's too small a sample. The power of RSCI is in the wisdom of crowds, the averaging of a bunch of services.
Jack isn't really the case of a lowly rated recruit overcoming his ranking to become a significant player at a blueblood. Jack is the case of a complete wildcard unknown -- he could be a 5 star or he could be a 2 star -- happening to work out for Duke, which happens sometimes in high variability cases. Jack is also a victory for youtube scouting, and we youtube scouts will take those victories where we can get them.