Duke basketball: Sizing up 3 legit contenders for Patrick Baldwin Jr.

Sizing up suitors in key Duke basketball recruiting race: No. 1 Blue Devils

Back in July 2018 — the summer after Patrick Baldwin Jr.’s freshman year of high school — Duke basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski officially entered the race. By the Hall of Famer doing so at such an early stage in the recruitment, the prized forward became the all-time earliest recipient of a Coach K offer.

From that point until February 2021, essentially every recruiting insider viewed the Blue Devils as the clear favorites. And the good vibes had ramped up a bit in February 2020 when Baldwin stood alongside the Cameron Crazies at a Duke basketball home game.

But in February of this year, Milwaukee quickly took a commanding Crystal Ball lead.

Now, though, the momentum has shifted. Within the past six days, two 247Sports experts have flipped their predictions to the Blue Devils.

One of those experts is the chief Duke basketball insider in John Watson. Although he at first tagged his pick with only 50 percent certainty, he has since dialed up that up to 90 percent. As a result, factoring in the confidence levels and dates of all the experts’ prognostications, it’s fairly easy to see a sunny forecast for the Blue Devils.

Obviously, it doesn’t hurt that the Duke basketball program has apparently been receiving confident help behind the scenes from its four 2021 signees: O’Dea (Wash.) five-star power forward Paolo Banchero, Archbishop Stepinac (N.Y.) five-star small forward AJ Griffin, Paul VI (Va.) five-star shooting guard Trevor Keels, and Blair (N.J.) four-star point guard Jaylen Blakes.

With Baldwin on board, the Duke basketball recruiting class would move from No. 2 to No. 1 on the 247Sports Class Rankings and potentially result in the Blue Devils seeing a fair share of first-place votes when the initial AP Top 25 Poll comes out in the fall.

The perceived probability that Patrick Baldwin Jr. picks Duke? 59 percent.