2025 Men's Basketball Recruiting

2025: Darius Acuff Jr
2024: Boogie Fland
2023: DJ Wagner
2022: Cason Wallace
2021: TyTy Washington
2020: Devin Askew
2019: Tyrese Maxey
2018: Ashton Hagans AND Immanuel Quickley
2017: Quade Green
2016: De'Aaron Fox AND Malik Monk
2015: Isaiah Briscoe
2014: Tyler Ulis
2013: Andrew Harrison AND Aaron Harrison
2012: Archie Goodwin
2011: Marquis Teague
2010: Brandon Knight
2009: John Wall AND Eric Bledsoe

NBA draft status added...

2025: Darius Acuff Jr
2024: Boogie Fland
2023: DJ Wagner
2022: Cason Wallace 1st (10)
2021: TyTy Washington 1st (29)
2020: Devin Askew undrafted
2019: Tyrese Maxey 1st (21)
2018: Ashton Hagans undrafted AND Immanuel Quickley 1st (25)
2017: Quade Green undrafted
2016: De'Aaron Fox 1st (5) AND Malik Monk 1st (11)
2015: Isaiah Briscoe undrafted
2014: Tyler Ulis 2nd (34)
2013: Andrew Harrison 2nd (44) AND Aaron Harrison undrafted
2012: Archie Goodwin 1st (29)
2011: Marquis Teague 1st (29)
2010: Brandon Knight 1st (8)
2009: John Wall 1st (1) AND Eric Bledsoe 1st (18)
 
Is there a Caitlin Clark Effect in men's college basketball? Of course there is.


“Coach Matta and his staff, I think the reason I can trust them is because my brother (Patrick McCaffery) goes there now. He just grad transferred there..."

Patrick McCaffery ditching his father at Iowa and going to Butler was the funniest transfer headline of the offseason*, but it makes sense once you realize that they have an older brother, Connor McCaffery, who works for the Indiana Pacers and is also dating Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever. That whole family is slowly relocating to Indianapolis, one Butler addition at a time.

* Tied with Ashton Hardaway, who transferred to Saint Mary's, leaving behind his father Penny Hardaway at Memphis.
 
NBA draft status added...

2025: Darius Acuff Jr
2024: Boogie Fland
2023: DJ Wagner
2022: Cason Wallace 1st (10)
2021: TyTy Washington 1st (29)
2020: Devin Askew undrafted
2019: Tyrese Maxey 1st (21)
2018: Ashton Hagans undrafted AND Immanuel Quickley 1st (25)
2017: Quade Green undrafted
2016: De'Aaron Fox 1st (5) AND Malik Monk 1st (11)
2015: Isaiah Briscoe undrafted
2014: Tyler Ulis 2nd (34)
2013: Andrew Harrison 2nd (44) AND Aaron Harrison undrafted
2012: Archie Goodwin 1st (29)
2011: Marquis Teague 1st (29)
2010: Brandon Knight 1st (8)
2009: John Wall 1st (1) AND Eric Bledsoe 1st (18)

You're jumping the gun on Devin Askew. He's still in college, about to spend his 5th year at Long Beach State after a year at Kentucky, a year at Texas, and 2 years at California.

But John Calipari would likely agree with you. Last year he did an interview where he bragged/taunted that players who left his program didn't get drafted (start around the 5:40 mark):


"What are we teaching them [with the] transfer portal? To leave the first sign you get unhappy, first time you're uncomfortable, go to another school. That's good for a 17, 18 year old who's not mature enough to really know? Anyone that's left this program and transferred... I'm going to give you another number. Now I've been there [at Kentucky] 14 years. I think we've had -- well, we've had a couple this year -- probably 12 or 13 kids transfer in my time. Not one has been drafted. You're better off staying and fighting than thinking you just leave."

I don't know if I have the stomach to fact-check Coach Calipari, but I'll try. Here is a list of every player who transferred away from a Calipari program since 2010. Obviously, anyone who followed him to Arkansas this offseason doesn't count.

Sources: Andrew Parrish's Transfer Tracker for the years 2016-2023 and Verbal Commits for 2024. For earlier years, I used Real GM in conjunction with Basketball Reference.

No longer in college

2010: Darnell Dodson (to Southern Miss)
2011: Stacey Poole (to Georgia Tech)
2013: Ryan Harrow (to Georgia State)
2013: Kyle Wiltjer (to Gonzaga)
2016: Marcus Lee (to California)
2016: Charles Matthews (to Michigan)
2018: Sacha Killeya-Jones (to NC State, but went pro in 2019 after sitting out his transfer year)
2019: Jemarl Baker (to Arizona)
2019: Brad Calipari (to Detroit Mercy)
2019: Quade Green (to Washington)
2020: Johnny Juzang (to UCLA)
2022: Keion Brooks (to Washington)
2022: Zan Payne (to Louisville)
2023: Sahvir Wheeler (to Washington)

---

Still in college

2021: Devin Askew (to Texas, now at Long Beach State)
2021: Cam'Ron Fletcher (to Florida State, now at Xavier)
2022: Dontaie Allen (to Western Kentucky, now at Wyoming)
2022: Bryce Hopkins (to Providence)
2023: Daimion Collins (to LSU)
2023: CJ Fredrick (to Cincinnati)
2023: Lance Ware (to Villanova, now at UT-Arlington)
2024: Aaron Bradshaw (to Ohio State)
2024: Jordan Burks (to Georgetown)
2024: Joey Hart (to Ball State)
2024: Ugonna Onyenso (to Kansas State)

I'll be damned. Either Coach Calipari had that stat prepared in his back pocket, or he's good at pulling things out from somewhere near his back pocket. It's a bit misleading, in that some of those players were not going to have pro careers anyway, but, sure enough, none of them were drafted. Johnny Juzang is probably the most successful, having played 38 games (5 starts) for the Utah Jazz in two seasons so far.
 
Yeah, the same thing largely applies to kids who transferred away from Duke. Semi Ojeleye is a notable exception but almost all the rest of them left Duke and never played their way into being guys with strong NBA prospects. Michael Gbinije and Elliot Williams did have brief NBA careers but didn't make the kind of money that sets you up for life (unless you invest it really wisely).

Brakefield, Coleman, AOC, Joey Baker... all these guys were top 40 recruits who had legit NBA aspirations and it seems like none of them will even sniff a 2-way deal. Guys like Chase Jeter, Derryk Thornton, Taylor King, and Alex Murphy had even more impressive pedigrees coming into school. They left Duke with very little NBA stock.

It will be interesting to see if guys like Mitchell, Stewart, and Power can buck the trend.

For what it is worth, this post was not to disparage guys for making the choice to leave. I am rooting for all of them and, as far as I know, they worked hard every moment they were at Duke and deserve our everlasting support for that. Just pointing out that the track record of dudes who leave blue blood programs is not strong.

(( not counting Roach in this list as I think his circumstances are entirely different as a grad transfer looking to grab a lucrative NIL payday)
 
Yeah, the same thing largely applies to kids who transferred away from Duke. Semi Ojeleye is a notable exception but almost all the rest of them left Duke and never played their way into being guys with strong NBA prospects. Michael Gbinije and Elliot Williams did have brief NBA careers but didn't make the kind of money that sets you up for life (unless you invest it really wisely).

Brakefield, Coleman, AOC, Joey Baker... all these guys were top 40 recruits who had legit NBA aspirations and it seems like none of them will even sniff a 2-way deal. Guys like Chase Jeter, Derryk Thornton, Taylor King, and Alex Murphy had even more impressive pedigrees coming into school. They left Duke with very little NBA stock.

It will be interesting to see if guys like Mitchell, Stewart, and Power can buck the trend.

For what it is worth, this post was not to disparage guys for making the choice to leave. I am rooting for all of them and, as far as I know, they worked hard every moment they were at Duke and deserve our everlasting support for that. Just pointing out that the track record of dudes who leave blue blood programs is not strong.

(( not counting Roach in this list as I think his circumstances are entirely different as a grad transfer looking to grab a lucrative NIL payday)
I'd like to argue that those guys would have been better off staying, that had they fought for and earned minutes at Duke it would have paved the way to future glory.

But I'm not sure there are many examples of players in their positions - buried on the bench as freshmen or sophomores - who carved out significant roles later, maybe even dabbled in the pros. Few of the guys you list became pros, but most or all of them got to play more minutes somewhere else than they ever would have gotten at Duke.

I suspect the same would be true if you looked at the Kentucky transfers.
 
But I'm not sure there are many examples of players in their positions - buried on the bench as freshmen or sophomores - who carved out significant roles later, maybe even dabbled in the pros. Few of the guys you list became pros, but most or all of them got to play more minutes somewhere else than they ever would have gotten at Duke.
As a point of reference, Sean Stewart averaged 8.3mpg as a freshman, more than all but 2 of the players on the below list... TJ Power averaged 7.0 minutes per game.

Ryan Kelly - 6.5mpg as a freshman, 28.9mpg as a senior, $5+ mil in NBA earnings
Marques Bolden - 6.5mpg as a freshman, 19.0mpg as a junior, approx. $500k in NBA earnings thus far
Brian Zoubek - 7.3mpg as a freshman, 18.7mpg as a senior, no NBA earnings but what a beard!!
Miles Plumlee - 6.9mpg as a freshman, 20.5mpg as a senior, $55+ mil in NBA earnings
Mason Plumlee - 14.1mpg as a freshman, 34.7mpg as a senior, $77+ mil in NBA earnings
Quinn Cook - 11.7mpg as a freshman, 35.8mpg as a senior, $6.8+ mil in NBA earnings
Marshall Plumlee - 2.6mpg as a freshman, 30.5mpg as a senior, $600k+ in NBA earnings
Grayson Allen - 7.2mpg through his first 25 games/9.2mpg as a freshman, 35.6mpg as a senior, $28 mil in NBA earnings (+$70 mil on his new contract)

You can quibble with whether a couple of these guys were in or out of the regular rotation as freshmen, but it is clear that the rise from benchwarmer to NBA-level talent has been done a fair bit if you stick with it. And the available evidence would say that it is more likely if you stick it out and succeed at Duke versus going elsewhere and taking the Semi path (which very, very few others have successfully tread).
 
Addendum: ZagsBlog is reporting that "Baylor is still in the mix as well", according to Caleb Wilson's father.

I wish Tipton or recruits or someone would do one of the following:
1) Order the team logos alphabetically
2) Spell something funny with the logos

I hear you. It's really difficult when the team has a logo with no letters. #3 recruit Darryn Peterson also announced a list of finalists today, and you have to recognize the angry bird (Louisville), the purple wildcat (Kansas State), and the maroon/yellow trident (Arizona State). FYI: the other teams are Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio State, USC, and Washington. UNC did not make his cut.

1) Usually, when you click the link, the article will name the teams in alphabetical order, but for Caleb Wilson, the article is premium content.

2) Tipton kinda does spell AUTO above with Auburn University, Tennessee, and Oregon. But yeah, we need someone to trim their school list to Duke, Oregon, Georgia Tech, Alabama, and Georgia. DOGTAG! (I wanted to do DOGTIRED, but after Illinois and Rutgers I got stuck.)

Even better: Duke, Illinois, Southern California, Oregon. DISCO!
 
On the CBS hoops podcast w/ Matt Norlander, 247's Travis Branham indicated that Duke, UNC and Kentucky aren't really in play for Caleb Wilson, and suggested his actual contenders are (IIRC) Arkansas (Calipari), Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee and maybe Georgia Tech.
Am I wrong to read this post and only see, "Look at how much NIL the SEC is offering."

- Chillin
 
On the CBS hoops podcast w/ Matt Norlander, 247's Travis Branham indicated that Duke, UNC and Kentucky aren't really in play for Caleb Wilson, and suggested his actual contenders are (IIRC) Arkansas (Calipari), Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee and maybe Georgia Tech.
The Heels being out of the picture is interesting.
 
On the CBS hoops podcast w/ Matt Norlander, 247's Travis Branham indicated that Duke, UNC and Kentucky aren't really in play for Caleb Wilson, and suggested his actual contenders are (IIRC) Arkansas (Calipari), Auburn, Alabama, Tennessee and maybe Georgia Tech.
I think he just keeping the blue bloods to drive up his price. Kinda hoping he goes to G-Tech but I think Calipari gets him.
 
Interesting. Hadn't seen us linked to Aristode. 247 has him at #18 in the class.

6-7, SF

He's holding offers from Arizona, Wake, UCLA.
 
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