Duke basketball: The only clear truth in Patrick Baldwin Jr. saga

The one ongoing Duke basketball recruiting race is now exhausting to watch.

Back in December, longtime Duke basketball target Patrick Baldwin Jr. said the following to Jason Jordan of SI:

“I don’t have a timeline for a decision, but February or March sounds the most realistic. That’s about as far out as I’ll push it.”

Well, it’s now almost the middle of May. Still, there’s been no announcement from the Hamilton (Wis.) small forward. Actually, it doesn’t appear as if there has been much of a peep coming from the Baldwin camp in several months.

Baldwin ranks No. 4 overall on the 247Sports 2021 Composite and has been down to a final 10 for more than a year without making any additional cuts. Those 10 are Duke, Georgetown, Kentucky, Michigan, Milwaukee, Northwestern, UCLA, UNC, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

All-time longest Duke basketball pursuit?

During a February chat with Jason Jordan, the 6-foot-10, 205-pound five-star — the namesake of Milwaukee head coach Pat Baldwin — provided the only substantial clue this calendar year:

“I think I know where I would like to go. So I’m just kinda just sitting on it right now…I think in a few weeks or a few months, I’ll be able to say 100 percent. I’ll take as much time as I would like to.”

That he has. Meanwhile, all the outside chatter concerning the Baldwin sweepstakes has been unrelenting and a tad tiresome, to say the least, with so many so-called “confident” narratives coming from countless sources…

Picks changing inside the 247Sports Crystal Ball (Milwaukee still leads over Duke). Experts missing the mark when forecasting a date (see: last week). Erroneous reporting in regard to Pat Baldwin’s job status. All sorts of what now seem to be baseless theories on message boards and social media alike. Deleted tweets from arguably the top insider in the field these days.

In other words, the only clear truth right now in the Patrick Baldwin Jr. recruitment is that nobody has yet proven to know anything.

Already, seeing that in July 2018 the sharpshooting phenom became the youngest recruit to ever land an offer from Blue Devil head coach Mike Krzyzewski, this now must rank as the longest chase across the Hall of Famer’s 41-year stint in Durham.

At the moment, the 2021 Duke basketball recruiting class ranks No. 3 in the country, consisting of four names: O’Dea (Wash.) power forward Paolo Banchero, Archbishop Stepinac (N.Y.) small forward AJ Griffin, Paul VI (Va.) shooting guard Trevor Keels, and Blair (N.J.) point guard Jaylen Blakes.