Duke basketball: Coach K may have to rescind scholarship offers

An ugly debut against Division II talent shows no Duke basketball players are close to being ready for NBA careers, suggesting the staff may have two too many 2020 offers on the table at the moment.

From all accounts, IMG Academy (Fla.) center Mark Williams, who is on his official Duke basketball visit this weekend and is set to announce his college choice on Nov. 1, is a bright 17-year-old.

So as Williams sat behind the bench watching the laughably No. 4 Blue Devils escape on Coach K Court with a 69-63 win against Division II foe Northwest Missouri State on Saturday night, the 7-foot-1, 225-pound four-star may have been conducting an independent study in his head.

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I know I would have. I would have quickly noticed that no Blue Devils currently appear anywhere near worthy of being in the NBA next season. I would have counted the number of Duke’s non-senior scholarship players: nine. I would have confirmed that the program has already landed five 2020 commits.

I then would have added nine plus five to come up with 14. Next, I would have pulled head coach Mike Krzyzewski aside after the game and asked him, point-blank, how he can be certain that he will actually have a scholarship available for me considering the allotment of 13 per season. I would have pressed him on how he can be sure a couple of players will leave after this season.

I assume Krzyzewski would then explain how he has not promised a senior-year scholarship to junior guard Mike Buckmire, a walk-on prior to this season. In response, though, I would have pointed out that eight plus five makes 13, which means my addition would still make one too many.

I then would have asked him if he anticipates transfers. I also would have asked if he thinks a few of his current players will view getting lost in the G-League or overseas next season as a better opportunity to develop their games than under his tutelage. If the 72-year-old answered yes to either of the previous two questions, then if I was Williams, I would choose one of my other two finalists: Michigan and UCLA.

During the offseason, Ball Durham repeatedly offered the opinion that many fans — and apparently the coaches as well — were jumping the gun in assuming most of the four current freshmen would be goners after this season. After all, not a single one consistently falls in the first half of the first round on 2020 mock drafts; in fact, each finds himself outside the first round on at least one mock draft apiece.

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Freshman center Vernon Carey Jr. — a five-star out of high school whose ranking fell from No. 1 on the 247Sports 2019 Composite as a junior to No. 6 by the end of his senior year after consistently drawing concerns about his sputtering motor — played only 10 minutes on Saturday night.

The 6-foot-10, 270-pound South Florida native committed four turnovers in addition to three fouls while only mustering four points against a team devoid of any players taller than 6-foot-7 — not to mention not a single one who ever even smelled a composite ranking as a prep.

Though Carey Jr.’s performance in the Blue-White Scrimmage eight nights prior was far more impressive, one now has to wonder if his productivity that night was simply a product of matching up against senior big man Javin DeLaurier, who is an athletic defender in the open court but a spastic, sub-par one against halfcourt sets — where Carey Jr. seems to be at his best.

Needless to say, Anthony Davis, Karl-Anthony Towns, Joel Embiid, and Nikola Jokic aren’t likely too worried about facing Carey Jr. anytime soon.

Freshman power forward Matthew Hurt — a five-star whose ranking fell from No. 4 to No. 12 across his senior year after he looked a bit out of place in spring showcases and thereby forced scouts to wonder if his eye-popping high school stats were simply a product of playing for an average-size public school in Minnesota — has shown flashes of brilliance in both the Blue-White Scrimmage and against Northwest Missouri State.

That being said, one has to question if the 6-foot-9, 215-pound string bean’s 17 points on 8-for-16 shooting — 0-for-3 from downtown — were largely due to his enjoying several inches on the aforementioned Division II shrimps.

Freshman small forward Wendell Moore — a 6-foot-6, 215-pound four-star who ranked No. 29 in the end but had been a five-star as high as No. 17 until folks began noticing that the lengthy, determined defender had little to offer offensively — has an outside shot that someone needs to take out back behind the barn.

The North Carolinian has gone 0-for-8 from beyond the arc, including a couple of near air-balls, between the Blue-White Scrimmage and Saturday night. Furthermore, Moore has repeatedly fallen down when gearing up for drives to the basket. In other words, he’s not currently the type of wing NBA franchises will be fighting over.

Freshman shooting guard Cassius Stanley — a 6-foot-6, 195-pound four-star who finished No. 37 in his class but had been a five-star at No. 9 as a junior until folks began noticing his overall game didn’t come close to matching his otherworldly hops — has been solid thus far in a Duke basketball jersey.

Regardless, the Californian’s absence on nearly all mock drafts suggests the average set of eyes — i.e., those not wearing Duke-blue goggles — sees him in the dime-a-dozen category when it comes to his potential as a guard at the next level. Simply put, his handles and corresponding ability to create his own shot aren’t up to speed with his most elite peers at his position.

Finally — as no one is at all arguing Duke basketball juniors Alex O’Connell and Jordan Goldwire, nor sophomore Joey Baker, are NBA-bound after this season — we come to sophomore point guard Tre Jones. Quite frankly, with an 0-for-6 mark from deep thus far in preseason play after hitting only 26.2 percent of such shots as a freshman, he too is not exactly pro material right now.

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Sure, Jones is both a tenacious defender and heady leader who makes few mistakes, but the jury is still out on how much of his individual success last season had to do with being able to throw alley-oops to Zion Williamson and then benefit from the 6-foot-7, 285-pound scarecrow’s all-over-the-place presence behind him on defense.

In a nutshell, the Blue Devils lack alphas — you know, the type of guys who actually receive millions to play in NBA arenas.

So barring dramatic individual improvements, transfers, and/or decisions to chase professional dreams from either the G-League or overseas, the same Duke basketball freshmen, sophomores, and juniors who struggled mightily against the reigning Division II national champions — whom Coach K, somehow with a straight face, all but painted during his post-game press conference as a team with the potential to win a Division I national championship — will still be in Durham this time next year.

And if such is the case, Coach K will have an issue should he haul in commitments from Williams and/or four-star 2020 center Hunter Dickinson, who was at Countdown to Craziness last weekend and plans to decide between Duke, Michigan, Florida State, and Notre Dame in the coming weeks.

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Of course, if the 40th-year Duke basketball head coach continues to essentially ignore and thereby demoralize Baker — he yanked the former four-star forward’s redshirt in late February last season only to play him 18 total minutes the rest of the way and then refused to play him more than four minutes on Saturday night, including zero minutes in the first half — well, that’s at least one scholarship bound to become available.

Maybe even in time for the early signing period in November.

Stay tuned to Ball Durham for more Duke basketball recruiting updates, analyses, opinions, and predictions.