Trouble ahead: Predicting entire Duke basketball roster next season

When trying to envision what every face will be on the next Duke basketball team, why does the outlook spell trouble ahead?

High turnover — a result of graduations, transfers, and early departures — is nothing new for the Duke basketball program. In fact, the numbers across the past decade say to nowadays expect roughly half the roster to skedaddle after each season.

So what about after this season? Who will stay? Who will go? Who will arrive? Let’s get rolling with a few easy yet relatively inconsequential pieces to forecast.

First, the two current preferred walk-ons, guard Michael Savarino and forward Keenan Worthington, have been nothing short of consistently lively at the end of the bench as first-year redshirts. One would imagine — particularly in the case of the former, as the grandson of Duke basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski — both will choose to stick around.

And former walk-on Mike Buckmire, who earned a scholarship for his junior year, has expressed nothing but love for the four-letter word on the front of his jersey ever since moving to Durham from Blue Bell, Pa., in 2017; therefore, expect the jolly guard, who has scored three points for his career, to keep his selfless positivity in the Bull City for a senior campaign.

OK, those are three of the guys Ball Durham foresees suiting up as Blue Devils for the 2020-21 season. But what about the regular contributors? Well, let’s predict them one at a time on the basis of either where their recruitments stand (for those who will appear on this forecasted squad as projected freshmen) or their presumed likelihood to return (for those who will appear here as projected sophomores, juniors, or seniors).

Without further ado — in ascending order by their 247Sports Composite rankings as high schoolers — let’s begin (forewarning: at the end, the predicted No. 1 attraction of next season’s Duke basketball show is probably not the one most fans expect)…