Duke basketball target JJ Starling set to announce decision

A coveted Duke basketball recruiting prospect is ready to commit somewhere.

Late Monday evening, ESPN national recruiting director Paul Biancardi noted via tweet that La Lumiere (Ind.) combo guard and longtime Duke basketball target JJ Starling plans to reveal his college destination at 5 p.m. ET Tuesday. The announcement will take place on Biancardi’s Instagram Live.

Starling is a 6-foot-4, 180-pound four-star silky sharpshooter who has risen from No. 50 to No. 33 overall on the 247Sports 2022 Composite across the past year.

In early September, Starling unveiled the five finalists in his recruitment: Duke, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Stanford, and Syracuse. He then took visits to every school on his list other than Stanford.

Duke basketball chances looking somewhat slim for JJ Starling

At one point, Duke basketball head coach-in-waiting Jon Scheyer and his crew looked like a clear frontrunner alongside Syracuse for JJ Starling, who originally hails from just outside Syracuse in upstate New York.

Now, though, Notre Dame seems to be trending in the eyes of insiders.

The latest prediction for the Fighting Irish popped up on Monday evening. And it was from 247Sports national recruiting insider Travis Branham, who thus far on the 2022 recruiting trail is batting 38-for-39 when it comes to forecasting recruits’ choices. And his Starling-to-ND prediction comes with a “high” confidence level.

Currently, the Duke staff boasts the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class, per the 247Sports 2022 Team Rankings, with commitments from four players who all rank inside the top 60.

Three of those future Duke Blue Devils are five-stars who sit in the top 10: Westtown (Pa.) center Dereck Lively at No. 2, Montverde (Fla.) small forward Dariq Whitehead at No. 5, and Wilbraham & Monson (Mass.) power forward Kyle Filipowski at No. 8. The other is Yorkville Christian (Ill.) four-star shooting guard Jaden Schutt, who ranks No. 56.