Henry Coleman to Texas A&M

[jimmymax]

It's like the Duke Brotherhood is really the name of a Durham orphanage with a very high adoption rate.

[Truth&Justise]

I think these two are probably, in some combination, correct.

And I think whenever a top-50 player doesn't play major minutes right away, we should suspect the possibility of a transfer. That's the nature of the college basketball landscape. Guys know there are legitimate opportunities to play right away elsewhere, and they are more willing to take that opportunity than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Especially this year, with there being no penalty for transferring.

We have been fairly lucky as Duke fans: we avoided the early-entry problems with our stars well past when most teams did, and we avoided having major issues with transfers a few years longer than most teams did. But this year might just be the beginning of a new era, especially if the one-year transfer penalty stays gone moving forward.

The one guy bucking the trend (so far) is Joey Baker. Guess this opens up more PT for him.

[CDu]

Isn't the 9th guy (Blakes) kinda fringe too (I assume #10 is Jones?)? How many freshman ranked #50+ are part of the rotation at Duke? I get we need guard depth, but not sure Blakes is the answer...

He's not fringe outside of a Duke-centric mindset. A top-100 guy would start at many P6 schools even as a freshman. We are asking him only to be a backup.

Jones was the fringe guy.

[LasVegas]

The one guy bucking the trend (so far) is Joey Baker. Guess this opens up more PT for him.

I would want nothing more than for Joey to just kill it this year.

[DukieTiger]

Isn't the 9th guy (Blakes) kinda fringe too (I assume #10 is Jones?)? How many freshman ranked #50+ are part of the rotation at Duke? I get we need guard depth, but not sure Blakes is the answer...

Well, I think the magic number of 10 is related to having bodies available for a competitive practice. In that regard, Blakes and Jones very much qualify as substantial upgrades over K’s grandson.

[flyingdutchdevil]

I think these two are probably, in some combination, correct.

And I think whenever a top-50 player doesn't play major minutes right away, we should suspect the possibility of a transfer. That's the nature of the college basketball landscape. Guys know there are legitimate opportunities to play right away elsewhere, and they are more willing to take that opportunity than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Especially this year, with there being no penalty for transferring.

We have been fairly lucky as Duke fans: we avoided the early-entry problems with our stars well past when most teams did, and we avoided having major issues with transfers a few years longer than most teams did. But this year might just be the beginning of a new era, especially if the one-year transfer penalty stays gone moving forward.

We all call the 2020-21 season an anomaly for Duke basketball; I'm banking on the 2021 offseason as an anomaly as well.

If there are no penalties for transfers, fans will drop. The fan and school investment in players erodes, and viewership would easily drop. There isn't one person who likes what's going on right now. It's akin to NBA stars breaking contract and playing wherever they want the next season. It would destroy the game.

I get the reason for removing the penalty but it cannot be a mainstay.

[CDu]

Of all the Duke freshmen, he was the one I was most enjoying getting to know over the course of his career.

We all want Duke to field an older, veteran team, while winning games. I'm just not sure how we get there anymore. No one in recent Duke memory seemed more like a prototypical, old-fashioned four-year guy, learn, pay your dues, get better and better.

The count is now up to five, five members of Duke's 2020-21 team who never played in front of the Crazies, never high-fived the Blue Devil, never got goose bumps hearing the pep band play Devil With a Blue Dress On, while the cheerleaders go at it, never talked with the media in any way other than Zoom.

Hopefully, this will self-correct over time. But anyone good enough to get a scholarship offer from Duke is going to be good enough to get serious attention from almost any program out there. None of these guys are going to be left at the altar.

That's going to make it very, very difficult to put together a cohesive, veteran team. Unless everyone is comfortable with a run of .500 seasons. Recruiting players good enough to play at the level we've become accustomed to while staying around for awhile is going to require threading a very tight opening.

Five? I count four: Johnson, Steward, Brakefield, Coleman. Hoping that Roach and Williams remain. Who am I missing? Hurt and Goldwire both played in front of the Crazies in 2019-20.

[DukieTiger]

Five? I count four: Johnson, Steward, Brakefield, Coleman. Hoping that Roach and Williams remain. Who am I missing? Hurt and Goldwire both played in front of the Crazies in 2019-20.

Tapé

[flyingdutchdevil]

Five? I count four: Johnson, Steward, Brakefield, Coleman. Hoping that Roach and Williams remain. Who am I missing? Hurt and Goldwire both played in front of the Crazies in 2019-20.

Tape.

[CDu]

Tape.

Oh, right. Totally forgot about him. :/

On the other hand, I'm relieved that Jim wasn't accidentally dropping some news about Roach or Williams.

[Music man55]

This is just getting absolutely crazy. Coleman was the one guy I thought loved Duke and was there for the academics along with basketball. I am getting cynical about what college bb is becoming, but what is one going to do about it? Good luck Henry, we hardly knew ye! CRAP!

[Steven43]

This is brutal. I know everyone has said something to this effect, but the annual complete turnover of college rosters is really killing my interest in college basketball.

Yeah, it s#%ks big time for the fans — which is what we are here at DBR. We aren’t the player/student, nor are we the player’s family. friends, agent, or coach. We are fans, period. And we have selfish reasons for wanting to see Duke Basketball be great and continue the traditions that have been going on for decades. But it’s pretty much over now. What else can be said? It is what it is.

Over the last 10 years I’ve become less and less of a fan of Duke Basketball while at the same time becoming more of a fan of the DBR community. That’s really the main reason I’m here. It’s not so much about the basketball anymore. What has been lost will never return. I’m fully aware of and grudgingly accepting of that fact.

But I can’t say that it doesn’t still hurt a little bit every time I think about it, though even that has mostly gone away. As a fan you can only take so many punches to the gut before you start to become numb to it. That’s where I’m at now.

[tommy]

Well, I freely admit I was wrong about this. I thought Henry would not cut and run like this just because we signed John. I thought he would try to beat him out for backup big minutes, just like he beat out guys like Tape and eventually Brakefield last year. I have long felt, and stated on these boards, that lots of people think they know things about what goes on in a guy's head, what a guy's character is like, what goes on at practice, the dynamics of the team, leadership issues, all sorts of things -- things about which we actually know very, very little. People like Jim Sumner know it because they see it with their own two eyes and talk to the players and coaches directly. But most of the rest of us have no such knowledge and so we make a lot of assumptions based on very little actual information.

I fell prey to that myself in this situation, believing -- based on really almost nothing -- that because of Henry's character and his solid upbringing and the kind of kid he seemed to be -- that he would stick this out and fight and prove himself and earn his minutes at a great program and school like Duke. That somehow he was different than the rest. Wrong. Apparently, like for seemingly everybody else these days, it's about and only about minutes and exposure right now. Today. Not tomorrow. Instant gratification etc. rather than putting your nose to the grindstone and working for it. Pretty depressing and alienating.

[weezie]

Do we think Henry goes to Charlottesville and joins Tony Bennett’s squad?...

That's an interesting take. Their game is slower and might suit him better.

[Billy Dat]

I bought this year's team poster because I thought the cartoon depictions of the players were really cool. As each character departs, it kind of feels like a prophesy, none of us got to see them in person this year, maybe they never really existed. Was the entire season merely a deep fake?

[Kedsy]

But even in the last 6 years since our 2015 title team, there have been three freshman TOTAL on the national championship teams from 2016–2021.

Huh? The five national champions after 2015 had 19 freshmen on their collective rosters, including at least 9 rotation players. Maybe there were only three starting freshmen (not sure, I didn't check), but there were at least two sixth men as well.

If it was so easy to see coming, that begs some questions about what the Duke staff is thinking.

It was easy to see coming. I've been posting about this possibility all week, and I wasn't the only one.

- They are going all in on this year and we’re willing to take the risk of alienating Coleman and harming their long term upside for a guy who raises their floor a bit (theoretically) next year.

Yeah, this could be it. Even so, I don't agree that Theo would give us more than a marginal improvement over Henry in 2021-22. So I think the staff may have made a mistake.

[CDu]

I mentioned in another thread way back when that I didn't expect we'd have all three of Williams/Brakefield/Coleman back next year, and that there was a good chance that 2 of the 3 at least would be gone before the 2022-23 season. I hoped we'd get two seasons out of two of them, but such is the reality of college basketball these days. You simply can't expect top-50 recruits to sit and wait their turn for 2-3 years. If they don't have a clear path to 20+ mpg by at least year 2, the expectation should probably be that they will transfer.

And honestly? I can't blame them. These are kids who know their window of opportunity in college is limited, and they know they don't HAVE to wait in line to get the exposure and opportunity. Keeping Coleman beyond 2021-22 was already going to be difficult, as who is to say we wouldn't bring in an all new frontcourt? Or that he'd grow tired of seeing his peers at other schools getting PT.

It stinks, but that's where we are in college basketball. Hopefully Coleman finds the right situation for himself. I'm sad that it isn't at Duke, but c'est la vie.

[91Duke]

I hate this. Like others have said, I really admired what I saw in Henry Coleman both on and (especially) off the court, and I was excited to see him continue in a Duke uniform. But, I *do* understand that this year is uniquely different in so many ways, and I wish him nothing but the very best.

Even so, this revolving door of players is giving me whiplash (mixing my metaphors). Not only Duke, but across college basketball.

[Steven43]

Best wishes to him. I tried to tell you guys you were being too optimistic when anticipating a bunch of returnees next year.

Gotta love the “I told you so” guy! 😉

[CDu]

Yeah, this could be it. Even so, I don't agree that Theo would give us more than a marginal improvement over Henry in 2021-22. So I think the staff may have made a mistake.

I trust that the fact that they added John suggests they think he'll be more than a marginal improvement over Coleman. Certainly he'll provide more value in terms of experience, and most likely in terms of performance as well.