Never in Duke basketball history has the question of who stays and who goes been quite as difficult to answer as it is this year.
It’s here! The best month in the business and most wonderful time of the year (sorry, Christmas, but you don’t have a Selection Show). That magical period when Margaret from Accounting out-brackets Joe Lunardi, every bubble-team coach prepares a filibuster speech, and suddenly sick employees prepare to cost Corporate America $6.3 billion (yes, billion with a “b”).
I’m sure my fellow Ball Durham writers are as excited as I am to predict and preview Duke’s NCAA Tournament draw. Unfortunately, my colleagues and I find ourselves in a bit of a professional quandary. We’re still four days from Duke’s first ACC Tournament game and 11 or 12 days from Duke’s First Round NCAA Tournament opener, and I am more jittery than my wife at a spider farm.
With all this time and all this weird energy, I’ve decided to be productive and make some predictions on whether individual members of our tournament-bound Blue Devils will be returning to Cameron Indoor Stadium’s warm embrace next season.
To be clear, I’m not exactly predicting WHERE the players are going, I’m merely predicting IF the players are going. To clarify further, I’m not including next year’s freshmen, as they will almost certainly be on campus come summertime. I’m placing the players in groups, which are determined by my percentage of confidence that they will leave.
There have been similar articles written on this site, and you can bet there will be more, but I have the laptop and you don’t. Without further ado, let’s begin with those who definitely won’t be in Durham next season…