Last week four star freshman Jordan Tucker announced that he would be transferring from Duke. This did not come as a surprise due to the fact that Tucker had played in only two games this season, against Elon and Saint Francis.
The Duke Blue Devils are 14 games into the season and in those 14 games Jordan Tucker has played a total of 14 minutes to go along with six points. Not quite the minutes you would expect to get if you’re the number 42 overall recruit in the ESPN Top 100.
Jordan Tucker had offers from the following schools: Duke, Arizona, Connecticut, Indiana, Louisville, Maryland, Syracuse, Southern Cal, and Villanova. When it came down to decision time he was deciding between Duke, Indiana, Georgia Tech and Syracuse. With that being said expect him to look back into those teams.
With Jordan Tucker transferring, we may see other Duke players who aren’t getting the minutes they would like transfer come seasons end. In the last three seasons we have now seen four players transfer, Derryck Thornton (transferred to Southern Cal), Chase Jeter (transferred to Arizona), Sean Obi (transferred to Maryland), and now Jordan Tucker.
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This goes to show you that Coach K sticks with 6-8 players and uses other players as up-30 down-30 kinda guys. With four players transferring in the last three seasons you can expect others to leave come April.
Players We Could See Transfer:
Some players we could see transfer include Marques Bolden, Justin Robinson, and this one may be a stretch but we could see Jack White transfer as well.
Marques Bolden is a player who I believe will end up transferring come the end of the season. So far Bolden has played in every game except for the season opener against Elon, but he has not gotten more than 18 minutes in a single game.
He is averaging 11.6 minutes per game but as a player who was the number 16 recruit in his class, he expects more minutes. Many expected Bolden to leave Duke last year whether it be through a transfer or follow the Harry Giles path and go to the NBA. He did not, and he expected to see the court much more his sophomore year, but that has not been the case.
Justin Robinson is a player who I’m on the fence about. On one hand he has played in only six games and in five of those games he didn’t even reach 10 minutes. On the other he was not a highly recruited player out of high school and he hasn’t proven anything at Duke yet. With that being said it would be tough to find a program that would give him high quality minutes.
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Jack White is a player who if he were to transfer I would be surprised, but I would understand why. So far this season Jack White has seen the floor in eight games, in the game against Indiana however, he saw the floor but he was in for less than a minute. In only one of the games he played in did he play for more than 10 minutes, which was the game against Evansville when the Blue Devils won by 64.
With that being said, and the fact that he is averaging 5.1 minutes per game in the games he does play in this year, it is possible we see White transfer.