Duke Basketball: Blue Devils strongly pursuing 2020 guard Jeremy Roach

The Duke basketball coaches are always on the lookout for the next great point guard, and their latest offer fits the criteria.

As bad news keeps rolling in for the Duke basketball program involving guards from the 2019 class — Villanova commit Bryan Antoine and Arizona commit Nico Mannion spurned the coaches earlier this month, and experts are almost unanimously predicting Josiah James to choose Clemson over the Blue Devils when he makes his announcement on Wednesday morning — Mike Krzyzewski and his staff are not hanging their heads.

Instead, they are ramping up their pursuit of other 2019 guards — namely, Cole Anthony — and 2020 prospects so that the future doesn’t turn out as bleak as the present. Their most recent offer, extended on July 30, was to a 2020 guard who would be a welcome addition if he was to decide to come to Durham.

Jeremy Roach, a 6-foot-2, 165-pound five-star point guard from Fairfax, Va., checks all of the boxes on the list of attributes the Duke coaches are looking for.

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He’s fast, he’s smart, he’s confident with the ball, and he’s deadly from long range.

And most impressively, when Roach drives to the bucket in traffic — whether he stops and pops from 10 feet, tosses up a running floater, or throws a one-handed layup high off the glass — it’s as if he has somehow preprogrammed the ball to find the bottom of the net. Like former Duke basketball point guard and current NBA star Kyrie Irving, bumps by defenders and difficult angles don’t seem to faze Roach’s accuracy.

In addition to Duke, Roach currently holds offers from UNC, Villanova, Maryland, Virginia Tech, Virginia, Miami, Texas, and USC. While it is true that the experts at 247Sports’ Crystal Ball are all predicting he will end up at Villanova, the experts all had Antoine pegged as a Blue Devil before he chose the Wildcats (crossing fingers that the opposite outcome occurs with Roach).

Roach, who is listed as the No. 15 overall prospect and No. 1 point guard in his class on the 247Sports Composite, has not scheduled any official visits or specified whether he will make an announcement this year or wait until he is a senior. The Blue Devils have also extended offers to three other five-star 2020 prospects — shooting guard B.J. Boston (ranked No. 14 overall), combo guard R.J. Hampton (No. 5), and small forward Jalen Johnson (No. 7).

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