Duke basketball: Media snubs Coach K’s 2020 class

Six of the nation’s top 50 high school seniors are now official Duke basketball signees, and already the national media is doing its best to either downplay or ignore the feat.

An article on Friday from Kentucky native Evan Daniels is misleading. Technically, as the 247Sports director of recruiting explained, the site’s class calculator did slide the 2020 Duke basketball class to No. 2 in the nation behind Kentucky as a result of the Wildcats signing Devin Askew, a former five-star 2021 point guard who announced this week that he is reclassing to 2020.

But the 247Sports 2020 Composite, which takes into account each player’s rankings from all major sites, is the basis for the class rankings, and this currently poses the following conundrum when it comes to Kentucky’s ranking: at the time of this Ball Durham article’s publishing, neither Rivals nor ESPN.com had yet tagged Askew with a 2020 ranking.

See, Askew sits at No. 27 on the 2020 Top247 (247Sports’ own rankings) but has a No. 18 composite ranking, suggesting the composite factors in his 2021 rankings of No. 9 and No. 12 from Rivals and ESPN.com, respectively. Even if it doesn’t — the site’s explanation of the composite rankings does not address such a reclass scenario — the fact he does not have a 2020 ranking on either of those sites means the composite calculations are at the very least incomplete.

So as it stands, Askew’s composite ranking is not only the result of technically irrelevant or insufficient data, but it also dropped every Duke signee other than five-star small forward Jalen Johnson (No. 6) down a notch, further contributing to the Blue Devils’ drop on the class rankings.

Now, this isn’t to say Kentucky head coach John Calipari’s possibly still-growing five-deep haul (three five-stars and two four-stars) won’t end up mathematically ahead of Mike Krzyzewski’s possibly still-growing six-stud class: Johnson, five-star point guard Jeremy Roach (No. 21), five-star combo guard D.J. Steward (No. 27), four-star center Mark Williams (No. 30), four-star power forward Jaemyn Brakefield (No. 39), and four-star power forward Henry Coleman (No. 41), each of whom has now taken advantage of this week’s early signing period.

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However, this is to say math matters — at least to those of us Duke basketball fans who regularly notice habitual sly slights from the national media in regards to anything relating to the Blue Devils.

Speaking of slights, one of the many sites notoriously friendly to Duke’s chief rival — UNC owns the nation’s No. 3 class at the moment — published two articles on Friday highlighting notable accomplishments from the 2020 recruiting trail. And neither made mention of the Blue Devils.

In his “10 prospects who made the most impactful decisions” list, Rivals’ Dan McDonald chose not to include, for instance, Williams, who gives the Blue Devils the potentially longterm force down low that they desperately needed to land. Nor did he include Johnson, who looks to have enough all-around tools to put a program on his back and carry it to the promised land. Obviously, McDonald did find a way to include a UNC signee, five-star point guard Caleb Love (No. 21 on the composite).

Two hours later, Rivals’ Corey Evans posted his list of seven schools that “landed players who can set a foundation for future success.” Again, despite Duke having landed at least four signees who are likely to stay in Durham for multiple seasons, he left off the Blue Devils. And — you guessed it — he did include UNC on the list despite three of Roy Williams’ five signees being potential one-and-done collegians. Granted, Evans may have taken into account the fact that the staff in Chapel Hill tries to keep five-stars around by benching them for a year (see: Nassir Little).

Also, the national media has probably grown tired of talking about the power of the Duke basketball recruiting machine (producer of three of the nation’s past five No. 1 classes). Ultimately, though, neither Daniels, McDonald, nor Evans much matter when it comes to the future in Durham. No, all that matters is how the recruits produce after they arrive on campus.

ALSO READ: Stacking up Duke’s six 2020 signees

Of course, the same haters from the media and other fanbases who mock the Blue Devils for supposedly only winning preseason national championships — despite the fact that the program owns more April trophies than any other program across the past 30 years and is tied for the most across both the past 20 years and the past 10 years — will concoct misleading numbers pointing to the failures of Coach K’s 2020 signees no matter what they accomplish.

Furthermore, expect all six to tumble down the composite across the next six months (similar to Duke’s signees from 2019 and most years prior).

No worries, for this Duke fan will always enjoy calling out these recruiting gurus — unlike this Duke fan, they all try to spread the narrative that they are unbiased — for their incomplete math and ridiculous snub-jobs.

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