Agree. For a freshman, Mark has been an excellent defender this year, with the ability to cover multiple positions. No one knows how well the three incoming freshmen will be as defenders. But they will have to be pretty good to displace Mark as an upperclassmen with his defensive abilities. Sean Stewart is a great athlete but as limited as Mark is offensively. I haven't seen where Powers or Mgbako are great defenders on the high school level. But very good offensive skills.
I don't keep up with those sites that project drafts positions, but a friend who does, stated that our freshman class has played themselves out of the first round.I'm sure someone on here can contradict that.
I think Flip can play himself into a lottery pick were he to come back. Proctor probably into the first round. Lively and Whitehead were never coming back and the talk last summer was that Mark wanted to be in college for one year.
These kids have often pretty much made up their mind before they play their first college game. And it didn't change for kids like Keels, Steward, Stanley and others who either fell to the second round or were not drafted at all. They wanted to get to the next level as quick as possible. And a majority of posters on the Duke boards feel like they made the right decisions.You can supposively get better without all the "distractions" of college by playing in one of the many minor league organizations. Didn't seem to hurt kids in the pre-OAD era of Duke basketball, but I guess things changed.
I think our best chance of seeing sophomores at Duke are Flip and Proctor. And Schutt. I think Mark would have a huge sophomore year, despite the presence of Powers, MgBako and Stewart. MgBako might be the only player coming in that could be considered ready for the next level. And he, like anyone in this years class, is near the one year players Duke has seen the last five years. No Tatum, Bagley, RJ, Zion, or Banchero.