Duke announced its 2024-’25 men’s basketball roster a few weeks ago and it included walk-ons Spencer Hubbard, Stanley Borden and Neal Begovich.
Hubbard’s inclusion was a bit of a surprise inasmuch as he was recognized on senior day.
Now, none of these three guys was recruited, hence their status as walk-ons. And unless my memory fails none of them played last season in a game whose outcome had not been decided.
But they should provide valuable leadership next season, in practice, in the locker room, the weight room, video review, you name it. All three are bright and have at least one year’s experience in Jon Scheyer’s system.
The new guys will need someone to show them how all this works, or is supposed to work.
Because there are new guys. Like Caesar’s Gaul--knew that high-school Latin would come in handy one day--Duke’s potential rotation is divided into three parts.
Part one consists of Tyrese Proctor and Caleb Foster, the only two recruited returnees. This will mark the second time in his first three seasons that Scheyer will welcome back only two recruited returnees; his first team included only Jeremy Roach and Jaylen Blakes.
Then we have four incoming transfers, in alphabetical order, Maliq Brown, Mason Gillis, Sion James and Cameron Sheffield.
Which leaves us with six freshmen.
In more stable times six used to be an unimaginably large number.
Faced with a massive rebuilding project after the graduation of Gene Banks and Kenny Dennard following the 1981 season, Mike Krzyzewski brought in four freshmen for the 1982 season and six for the 1983 season. But he followed with only two recruits in each of the next two seasons, Tommy Amaker and Marty Nessley from the prep class of 1983 and Kevin Strickland and Billy King from the prep class of 1984.
Krzyzewski brought in only one recruit from the prep classes of 1998 (Corey Maggette), 2001 (Daniel Ewing) and 2003 (Luol Deng).
That kind of economy disappeared once one-and-dones became a constant of the Duke men’s basketball universe.
So, about those six incoming recruits. The people who do this sort of thing for a living rank them as the top class in the country, potentially one of the best classes ever. This transfer portal cycle was unprecedented from a Duke perspective, with seven players leaving through the out door and four entering through the in door.
Five of those six incoming freshmen signed last fall and the sixth committed in early March.
So, maybe we’ve put these newbies on the back burner a bit.
Make no mistake, there’s a lot of talent coming into Duke from the prep ranks, young talent to be sure but talent supported by five recruited players who will be juniors or grad students.
It starts with a projected generational talent, forward Cooper Flagg. I’m not entirely sure what constitutes a generation in college basketball. Zion Williamson was a generational talent six seasons ago, so maybe six seasons is a generation.
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