Welcome to Duke Neal Begovich!

Welcome to Neal!

I had noticed Daniel Begovich, a former player at Stanford, in pictures with Ryan Young and Bates Jones during the year last season. He has been a grad assistant since June 2022 and is a fellow Fuqua grad student.

Neal is his younger brother. Looks like they both earned bball scholarships while at Stanford.
 
Bluedog said:
There is ZERO player overlap, but I think the poster is simply suggesting it from a "number of schollies available" perspective IF Begovich is getting one.
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Yea, I was simply looking at it from a schollies available perspective. But, as Scott mentioned, if he is preferred walk-on status, then that alleviates that concern.
 
So basically if Roach is returning then probably no mythical rim-protecting big man expected from the portal, and vice versa. All to be revealed by tomorrow . . .
 
bshrader said:
Yea, I was simply looking at it from a schollies available perspective. But, as Scott mentioned, if he is preferred walk-on status, then that alleviates that concern.
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Right, I was thinking of it in the sense of 2 available scholarships - if Begovich gets one and (per Brandon Marks' article) Duke is still actively looking for a transfer portal 5, then there wouldn't be one available for Roach. Obviously, that concern isn't implicated if Begovich isn't on scholarship.
 
trinity79 said:
So basically if Roach is returning then probably no mythical rim-protecting big man expected from the portal, and vice versa. All to be revealed by tomorrow . . .
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If you mean the transfer portal deadline, that’s a common misconception. Tomorrow is the last day that undergrad basketball players can enter the portal. There’s still plenty of time for players already in the portal to decide upon a destination. And as we learned from Joey Baker, grad transfers are not affected by the deadline.
 
SavDukeGrad said:
Welcome to Neal!

I had noticed Daniel Begovich, a former player at Stanford, in pictures with Ryan Young and Bates Jones during the year last season. He has been a grad assistant since June 2022 and is a fellow Fuqua grad student.

Neal is his younger brother. Looks like they both earned bball scholarships while at Stanford.
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This ^^^ probably has a lot to do with why he’s coming to Duke. Whether he gets a scholarship or not probably depends on who else we bring in and Roach’s decision. And recall Ryan Young turned out to be a whole lot better than this board assumed he would be. Maybe Neal can play a little 4 with Flip at the 5, or maybe he is coming for the classroom and practice. We shall see, but at this point I trust Jon and the staff.

Welcome to Duke Mr. Begovich!
Go duke! 9F
 
I guess it can't hurt to have another practice player, but he better not be getting a scholarship. This dude, in 4 years at Stanford, played a grand total of 49 minutes and scored 16 points. This is not a guy who belongs in a Duke uniform. I really don't see the value here. If the truth is we're getting him to help with our GPA or APR or whatever it is, that would be shameful. I hope that's not it.
 
kidA said:
And recall Ryan Young turned out to be a whole lot better than this board assumed he would be. Maybe Neal can play a little 4 with Flip at the 5, or maybe he is coming for the classroom and practice. We shall see, but at this point I trust Jon and the staff.
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I mean, I trust Jon and the staff, too, but they don't have magic wands or anything. We're talking about a guy who has played 2.7 minutes per game over a four-year career with just 18 total games played. That's 49 total minutes in four years. For Stanford. Versus a guy who average 20mpg for Northwestern in nearly 90 games played. Stanford (7-13 in the PACX this past year, third-to-last) was notably worse last year than NU was two years ago (22-11, second in the BIGX) - the last year each played for their respective prior teams.

This is a practice player who wanted to come to Duke anyway. If Neal plays a little 4, it'll be to rest Flip for games that matter, not to play alongside him.
 
The media have been slow to pick up on this news -- I know it's not a big headline, but like it or not, Duke moves the needle.

The Chronicle: Stanford forward Neal Begovich transfers to Duke men's basketball

He is the first player to join Duke via the transfer portal this offseason, and there have been no transfers outside the team yet.

Begovich will have two years of eligibility left after redshirting his first year by only appearing in three games.
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SI/Fan Nation: Duke basketball lands veteran transfer out of blue

Presumably, he'll be a graduate student at Duke next year. He should have the option to play two years in Durham due to the redshirt he was granted as a freshman in 2019-20 and the extra year of eligibility that the NCAA gave everyone who played during the truncated 2020-21 season.

But don't expect Neal Begovich to be anything more than an extra practice body next season. After all, he played only 17 games in his Cardinal career, averaging only 0.9 points and 0.6 rebounds across 2.9 minutes per outing in primarily mop-up duty.
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On3: Former Stanford forward Neal Begovich commits to Duke

He is walking on at Duke, according to On3’s Joe Tipton.

Begovich spent four seasons at Stanford, appearing in 15 total games. He has 16 career points on 14 career field goal attempts. He started two games as a junior in 2022-23.
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That's basically all I've found. Nothing from the DBR front page or the Duke Men's Basketball Twitter account. Verbal Commits added him to their transfer portal list 2 hours ago, but they haven't tweeted about him yet, even though it seems they tweet about everybody.
 
scottdude8 said:
I would speculate that he could be on the Max Johns track, who I believe was treated as a preferred walk-on (and thus didn't have a scholarship), but of course benefitted from the team-wide NIL opportunities Rachel Baker arranged.

If there's a scholarship available, my guess is he'd be first in line, but I highly doubt he was promised one.
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Max Johns was on scholarship last year and was not a preferred walk-on. Duked used all 13 scholarships last year and only Borden and Hubbard were walk-ons.
 
trinity79 said:
So basically if Roach is returning then probably no mythical rim-protecting big man expected from the portal, and vice versa. All to be revealed by tomorrow . . .
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Begovich will have zero impact on getting a rim protector (not that we'll necessarily get one). Roach and the mythical five man get the scholarships, unless the latter does not materialize.
 
tommy said:
I guess it can't hurt to have another practice player, but he better not be getting a scholarship. This dude, in 4 years at Stanford, played a grand total of 49 minutes and scored 16 points. This is not a guy who belongs in a Duke uniform. I really don't see the value here. If the truth is we're getting him to help with our GPA or APR or whatever it is, that would be shameful. I hope that's not it.
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It may be shameful that the GPA situation got so bad but bringing in a studious practice player to help doesn’t seem shameful to me. Are non- scholarship players included in team GPA?
 
brevity said:
If you mean the transfer portal deadline, that’s a common misconception. Tomorrow is the last day that undergrad basketball players can enter the portal. There’s still plenty of time for players already in the portal to decide upon a destination. And as we learned from Joey Baker, grad transfers are not affected by the deadline.
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But I think Jason suggested that Jeremy should transfer to team where he could play PG on the DBR podcast. I assume the portal closing would end that possibility unless he’s in position for graduate transfer? I don’t begrudge Goldwire and Baker taking an extra Covid year elsewhere but it does put a chink in their brotherhood affiliation for me. But Jeremy has been a key player and starter for 3 years. To me it would be weird to see him playing elsewhere in college next year.
 
lotusland said:
But I think Jason suggested that Jeremy should transfer to team where he could play PG on the DBR podcast. I assume the portal closing would end that possibility unless he’s in position for graduate transfer? I don’t begrudge Goldwire and Baker taking an extra Covid year elsewhere but it does put a chink in their brotherhood affiliation for me. But Jeremy has been a key player and starter for 3 years. To me it would be weird to see him playing elsewhere in college next year.
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Billy McCaffery left a championship team to go play point guard. Never thought I'd see that.
 
accfanfrom1970 said:
Billy McCaffery left a championship team to go play point guard. Never thought I'd see that.
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Isn't the rumor there that his parents insisted his only shot to make it in the NBA was to play PG, and that wasn't happening with Hurley there until 93. I know he was a good player at Vanderbilt, but I don't recall him being a great PG there nor do I recall him having much of an NBA career. I don't think his lot would have changed much had he remained starting SG at Duke, might have even been better.
 
Welcome to Duke, Mr. Begovich—don’t listen to all this gnashing of teeth. We get testy around here when we’re eager for the season to start. That is one difference between us and Stanford, where most undergrads are fairly confident that Stanford has some sort of a basketball team, though details are kinda vague.

Oh, and congrats on suddenly being viewed as an intellectual ringer. I bet at Stanford, you were seen as a 6’9” jock. At Duke, we’ll be appreciative that you finish the semester (I’ll stop making APR jokes when we demonstrate that we’re righted that ship—though I do actually believe that ship was righted a year ago, and we just haven’t seen the results yet).

By the way, it’s pretty cool that you and your brother played basketball for Stanford, your dad played basketball for Cal (team MVP in 1977), and that your grandfather played football, also at Cal. And it’s cool that your brother might also be on campus next year.

Welcome!
 
HoKogan said:
Isn't the rumor there that his parents insisted his only shot to make it in the NBA was to play PG, and that wasn't happening with Hurley there until 93. I know he was a good player at Vanderbilt, but I don't recall him being a great PG there nor do I recall him having much of an NBA career. I don't think his lot would have changed much had he remained starting SG at Duke, might have even been better.
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He wouldn't have started in 91-92 over THill, BD, or GHill so it made sense for him even if he never developed PG skills at Vandy. We could have really used his scoring punch the next year when THill regressed a bit and GHill had a bunch of injuries.
 
DU94 said:
He wouldn't have started in 91-92 over THill, BD, or GHill so it made sense for him even if he never developed PG skills at Vandy. We could have really used his scoring punch the next year when THill regressed a bit and GHill had a bunch of injuries.
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We obviously didn't need his scoring punch the next year as that was the repeat year when we beat Scott's other team by 20 in the finals.
 
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