#13: Duke Transfer Roundup 2021

With the off-season news coming in at a slower rate than it was just a month ago, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to take a look back at Duke’s outgoing transfers and what to expect from them in the 2021-22 season. While we covered each roster move in detail in the real time, none of the players declared their new team right away, and thus we weren’t able to project anything based off their landing spot. With all four of the former Blue Devils’ destinations secured, let’s take a look at what we can anticipate from them.

Jaemyn Brakefield: Mississippi

Following an inconsistent freshman season at Duke, Brakefield decided to return to his home state of Mississippi to continue his collegiate career. In 2020-21, Ole Miss went 16-12, including ten wins in the SEC, but failed to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. Like most programs, they’ve had their fair share of player movement this off-season. With the dust mostly settled, there appears to be an opportunity for Brakefield to play a key role immediately for the Rebels. Two frontcourt starters from last season, Romello White and KJ Buffen, won’t be returning to Oxford. The same goes for Khadim Sy, a starter for Ole Miss in the 2019-20 season who battled knee injuries throughout the 2020-21 campaign. There are also losses in the backcourt, including last season’s leading scorer, Devontae Shuler, who’ll be pursuing professional opportunities along with White.

The only rotational pieces that are returning in the frontcourt are Robert Allen, who started 8 games last season after transferring from Samford, and Sammy Hunter, a 6’9” forward who hasn’t made much of an impact in his two seasons for the Rebels. Duke fans may remember Miami center Nysier Brooks, who’ll be joining Brakefield in transferring to Ole Miss. The two figure to have a great shot of coming in and starting immediately for head coach Kermit Davis. It’s unlikely Ole Miss will contend for a conference championship in 2021-22, as the SEC looks to be very strong yet again. However, a tournament berth isn’t out of the conversation, and Brakefield will get plenty of chances to go head-to-head with the plethora of talented forwards in the conference. With the disappointment of his first year behind him, Jaemyn will have a great chance in Oxford to play a hefty amount of minutes – something he wouldn’t have done at Duke this year – and try to work his way back onto the radar of NBA scouts. 

Original coverage of transfer: https://savedukebasketball.blogspot.com/2021/03/2-jaemyn-brakefield-enters-transfer.html

Jordan Goldwire: Oklahoma

After their run in the NCAA Tournament was halted by the eventual runners-up Gonzaga Bulldogs, the Oklahoma program saw an upheaval that few teams could match this off-season. Just a few days after the loss, head coach Lon Kruger announced his retirement, and seven of the ten players who logged at least 100 minutes in the 2020-21 season would follow him soon after. The biggest hole was left at point guard by senior Austin Reaves, the proverbial heart and soul of the team who declared for the NBA draft. Umoja Gibson and Elijah Harkless, both 2020 transfers from smaller schools, were the only backcourt players returning, and neither had previously shown the ability to play lead guard for a power conference team. There were plenty of minutes to go around in the projected rotation of new coach Porter Moser. 

Insert Jordan Goldwire, who, after four years of playing the role of defensive specialist, is yearning for the chance to run a team. Such a chance he never would’ve gotten under Mike Krzyzewski. Don’t get me wrong, Coach K loved Jordan and would’ve found ways to get him on the floor plenty during the 2021-22 season. But Jordan wanted be the lead guard, and that simply wasn’t in Duke’s plans. Goldwire isn’t the only incoming transfer for the Sooners; he’ll be joined by brothers Tanner and Jacob Groves of Eastern Washington as well as SMU’s Ethan Chargois. Most of the Sooners’ rotation will be made up of guys who scored double digit points per game at lower levels, but they won’t have a single guy who’s done it at such a level as the Big 12. The success of the team will be largely predicated on players, including Goldwire, taking on a bigger portion of offensive responsibilities than they saw last season. Having watched Jordan for four years, it’ll certainly be interesting to see whether or not he’s capable of it. 

Original coverage of transfer: https://savedukebasketball.blogspot.com/2021/03/3-jordan-goldwire-also-enters-transfer.html

Patrick Tapé: San Francisco

If 45 minutes of the Patrick Tapé Experience weren’t enough for you for Duke, you’ll get one last chance to watch him play this upcoming season. You’d better be ready to set the DVR to record those late Pacific time tip-offs, as he’ll be finishing out his collegiate career at the University of San Francisco of the West Coast Conference. Yes, that means you’ll get to watch him play at least one game against the likely preseason #1 team, the Gonzaga Bulldogs. But Gonzaga isn’t the only capable team in the conference, as the WCC will try to send multiple teams to the NCAA Tournament for the third time in the last four years.

The Dons won’t be the favorite to lock down that second spot, but don’t rule them out entirely. While their 11-14 record in 2020-21 was disappointing, they did manage to knock off the Virginia Cavaliers early in the season and should return most of their roster. Tapé will actually be joined in San Francisco by his former Columbia teammate, Gabe Stefanini, who has played just 45 less minutes than Patrick since the 2018-19 season. Also in the fold for the Dons are San Diego’s Yauhen Massalski and Nevada’s Zane Meeks, both of whom should provide front court depth. Last season’s leading scorer, Jamaree Bouyea, has been linked with the NBA draft process, but if he stays, San Francisco will have a real chance to contend for an NCAA Tournament berth in 2021-22. 

Original coverage of transfer: https://savedukebasketball.blogspot.com/2021/03/4-patrick-tape-re-enters-transfer-portal.html

Henry Coleman III: Texas A&M

The first two years of Buzz Williams’ tenure at Texas A&M haven’t gone as smoothly as the Aggie faithful would’ve hoped, and there’s plenty of reason to believe year three won’t be much better. After racking up just two conference wins in the COVID-shortened season, eight different Aggies entered their name into the transfer portal. If Williams is going to earn his $24 million contract, he’ll have to do so by building the program back from the ground up. Part of that foundation was the addition of Duke’s Henry Coleman III, whose transfer caught a lot of Duke fans off guard, including myself. While Henry will be missed in Durham, there’s no doubt his opportunity to play is much greater in College Station.

Despite the eight transfers, A&M’s cupboard of returning players isn’t completely bare – they’ll return three of their top six scorers from a season ago. Fortunately for Coleman’s prospects of immediate playing time, all of the returns come in the backcourt. Similar to Brakefield’s situation at Ole Miss, the Aggies’ frontcourt rotation projects to be mostly newcomers at the moment, giving Henry a great opportunity to contribute right away. His biggest competition for minutes appears to be Arkansas transfer Ethan Henderson, Connecticut transfer Javonte Brown, and freshman Ashton Smith. While Blue Devil fans will certainly feel a sense of regret if Coleman is able to blossom away from Durham, we should find out pretty soon just what type of player he can be given a real chance. 

Original coverage of transfer: https://savedukebasketball.blogspot.com/2021/04/10-henry-coleman-iii-enters-transfer.html

#12: Duke Development Diaries, Part 2

Last week, I posted the first part of a series highlighting Duke’s struggles in player development since the 2015 championship team. Here’s the second part, focusing on the players who lasted three or more years in the program from the 2017 and 2018 recruiting classes:

Note: All pictures came from Ball Durham.

Alex O’Connell (2017) – #20 SG/#87 Overall (ESPN), #14 SG/#68 Overall (247 Sports)

Duke Career Stats: 101 G, 12.5 MPG, 4.3 PPG, 1.8 RPG, 0.6 APG

On paper, Alex O’Connell is the exact type of recruit that you’d want the Blue Devils to sign. He was billed as a prolific three-point shooter with athleticism and his father even played for Duke in the 1970’s. He hit just under 49% of his threes as a freshman and even briefly wrestled a starting spot away from Trevon Duval. Unfortunately, the three-point clip O’Connell posted as a freshman turned out to be an aberration. Even at the percentage he shot from deep as a sophomore (37.5%), he could’ve been the perfect complementary player on the 2018-19 team that so desperately lacked a consistent three-point shooting presence, but he was yo-yoed in and out of the rotation for the latter half of the season. A late scratch by Cam Reddish catapulted O’Connell into a major role in the Sweet Sixteen win over Virginia Tech, but he played just three minutes in the following game which wound up being Duke’s last of the season.

Despite an uninspiring first two seasons in Durham, many around the program remained confident that O’Connell would break out as an upperclassman – he certainly wouldn’t be the first Blue Devil to do so. He averaged 11 points per game in the Devils’ first three contests, but wound up becoming an even more inconsistent version of himself than his first two seasons. He finished the year just 21/77 (27.3%) from three and made the same defensive mistakes that kept him from seeing the court more consistently as an underclassman. Ultimately, O’Connell found himself out of the rotation completely by year’s end for the first time in his career. Leaving the program seemed to be the only way for him to escape Coach K’s doghouse and it shouldn’t have surprised anybody when he entered his name in the portal at season’s end.

For a player who seemingly had all the physical tools to be an impact player, what exactly went wrong for Alex? Could the coaching staff just not tap into the resource of talent or was it impossible to do so? The verdict on this one will ultimately play out in O’Connell’s final season of college basketball. It’s hard to take much from his first season at Creighton; he was planning on redshirting and he wasn’t a part of the team’s plans. With the entire starting lineup leaving Creighton’s program, O’Connell will presumably get a chance to be one of the featured players for the first time in his career. It’s possible that this was a situation that was never going to work in Durham, but if O’Connell shines in his fifth and final year, Duke fans may live to regret letting him get away.

Jordan Goldwire (2017) – #47 PG/Unranked Overall (ESPN), #88 PG/#398 Overall (247 Sports)

Duke Career Stats: 116 G, 16.4 MPG, 2.9 PPG, 1.6 RPG, 1.8 APG

Considering how far down Goldwire ranked on all recruiting sites, this is probably the biggest win for Duke’s recent player scouting/development. As I already covered in greater detail, Goldwire emerged as an elite on-ball defender as an upperclassman who made a positive impact on the floor in spite of severe offensive limitations. Even though he never developed into a productive scorer, he led the conference in assist-to-turnover ratio as a senior. With a year of eligibility remaining, Jordan is heading to Oklahoma, where he looks to be in line for a bigger role. It’ll certainly be interesting to see Goldwire’s impact for another program and whether or not he’ll be able to take his offensive game to the next level for the Sooners.

Joey Baker (2018) – #11 PF/#41 Overall (ESPN), #7 SF/#33 Overall (247 Sports)

Duke Career Stats (To Date): 55 G, 11.3 MPG, 3.8 PPG, 1.0 RPG, 0.5 APG

The only player on the list who’s still in the program, it’d be hard not to consider Baker’s career to date at Duke a disappointment. Baker was considered the #15 overall recruit in ESPN’s 2019 rankings before he re-classified to join the star-studded 2018 class. Other than finding his way onto the cover of Sports Illustrated, Baker’s freshman season was most notable for Coach K’s inexplicable decision to pull his redshirt in February, only to play him a total of 18 minutes for the rest of the season. Thankfully for Joey, he will get that year of eligibility back, if he so chooses, thanks to the NCAA waiver. If the first three years of his collegiate career are any indication, he'll likely need it if he has any intentions of reaching the expectations he had coming in.

Baker was certainly inconsistent in his first full season playing for Duke in 2019-20, but he did have some big games off the bench and helped the Blue Devils get out of some tight spots. One that stands out in my mind was a game at Boston College where the team looked completely lifeless and in line for a vintage mid-week conference road loss. Joey had hardly played the entire game before coming in midway through the second half, but that didn't stop him from sparking the team to victory with eight points in quick succession and energy plays on defense. He only played 28 minutes in the last six games of the season before the coronavirus wiped away the post-season, but it’d be hard to call his sophomore season a failure given the coaching malpractice he endured as a freshman. 

Unfortunately for Baker, he was far less productive offensively as a junior and couldn’t carve out consistent minutes for a team that really could’ve used another upperclassman presence on both sides of the ball. What may be a surprise to some is that Baker was Duke’s most impactful defensive player according to on/off splits among players who played over 100 minutes in 2020-21. If his shot had been falling, he would’ve played a lot more than he did and it’s certainly fair to question whether or not he should’ve been given greater liberty to play through slumps. But there is no questioning that his offensive game regressed from his sophomore season, even outside of any cold shooting from deep. His assist rate was cut in half, his turnover rate nearly doubled, and he shot only 30% on two-point field goals. He still can’t be trusted to put the ball on the floor and attack the basket despite plenty of failed attempts to try and do so. 

All indications are that Baker will stick around for a fourth season in Durham. While he won’t be the only senior on the roster, he’ll be the only Blue Devil to have been in the program for four full seasons. The role he'll have will largely be determined by whether or not he can consistently knock down outside shots and make good decisions with the basketball. Even in his sophomore season, his shooting accuracy fluctuated from game to game and we’ve seen that Coach K does not have enough confidence in him to let him play through a cold stretch. Duke’s expectations will likely be as lofty as ever in 2021-22 and Baker is going to be called upon in big moments. The entire trajectory of his Duke career will change based on whether or not he delivers in them.

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So how should we temper our forecasts for recruits who are viewed as more of a “long term play”? Simple, don’t expect much. The players who are good enough to jump to the professional ranks after one or two seasons are doing so in large abundance for Duke. Those who aren’t are either going to wind up entering the transfer portal seeking a bigger role after being recruited over by the next big incoming class or sticking around in Durham to graduate largely as the same players they were when they arrived. It’s hard to imagine this process changing as long as Mike Krzyzewski is the coach of the Blue Devils, for better or worse. 

#11: Duke Development Diaries, Part 1

It should surprise nobody reading this that today’s college basketball players are far more eager to bypass remaining eligibility in favor of a professional career. Similarly, it’s no secret than Duke and Kentucky have been the two programs to lean into this landscape change the furthest and both have a national championship to show for it. For Duke, this philosophical overhaul was a stark contrast from years past. Coach K’s first four national championship teams combined started less freshmen in their respective championship games (2) than the 2015 team that caught lightning in a bottle (3). The Blue Devils have tried time and time again to replicate this formula, but they’ve failed to even reach a Final Four in the six tries since. 13 of the 21 one-and-done players in program history have come since 2015! Meanwhile, the five teams that have actually lifted the championship trophy in that same timespan have started a combined two true freshmen. Compare that with the 21 upperclassmen starting on those five championship teams and it’s pretty obvious that experience is a very important factor in March/April. 

So why are Duke’s recent rosters trending so much younger? In the opening blog entry, I compared the program’s current recruiting strategy to a baseball player trying to hit a walk-off homerun when all his team needs him to do is get on base. But just one recruiting class cannot win a championship. Even the 2012 Kentucky and 2015 Duke teams that won the championship while heavily featuring one-and-done players also had upperclassmen playing key parts. Therein lies the problem for recent Duke teams. They've been as good as any program at bringing in star freshmen, but they've completely failed at finding and developing quality multi-year players to complement them. In this blog entry, we’ll take a look at all the Blue Devils recruited since 2015 who stayed in the program three or more seasons.

Note: All pictures came from Ball Durham.

Antonio Vrankovic (2015) – #42 C/Unranked Overall (ESPN), #51 PF/#203 Overall (247 Sports)

Duke Career Stats: 49 G, 5.5 MPG, 1.5 PPG, 1.6 RPG, 0.4 APG

Antonio signed with Duke fairly late in the recruiting process in 2015, and while he never had star expectations, he failed to even earn consistent rotation minutes at any point in his four years in Durham. Vrankovic was mostly used in only garbage time and emergency situations, but despite his lack of an overall impact, he did have some moments. In 2016-17, Duke was 12-0 in games where he played at least one minute. Let’s be clear, he was not a primary reason for any of those wins, but he did some positive things and was a better center option off the bench than freshman Marques Bolden that season. My personal favorite Vrankovic performance came in the 2019 ACC Tournament against North Carolina, where he was inserted into the game down 11 after Javin DeLaurier got into foul trouble and was part of the mishmash unit that helped tie the game at 44 by halftime. Vrankovic only played 269 minutes in his entire collegiate career, which is far from enough to develop any player, let alone such a raw prospect. There were plenty of talented big men ahead of Vrankovic in the rotation every season, but just on the grounds that he never even got a chance to prove if he could be a positive rotational piece for the Blue Devils, this one has to go down as a miss.

Marques Bolden (2017) – #2 C/#16 Overall (ESPN), #1 C/#14 Overall (247 Sports)

Duke Career Stats: 88 G, 13.6 MPG, 3.8 PPG, 3.3 RPG, 0.4 APG

The highest ranked recruit on this list by a mile and the only McDonalds All-American, Bolden arrived at Duke with lofty expectations and was seen by many as a potential one-and-done himself. After a lower leg injury forced him to miss the first eight games of his freshman campaign, he was never able to find his footing (pun not intended). He played just 11 total minutes in Duke’s final eight games, including three straight DNP’s to end the season. Naturally, the transfer rumors started to swirl, but Bolden decided in the end to return to Durham for a second season. The additions of Marvin Bagley III and Wendell Carter Jr. relegated Bolden to the bench again as a sophomore, but Marques was able to parlay a mostly clean bill of health into a much more productive campaign. Despite the still-limited minutes (373), he emerged as the team’s second best shot blocker.

Coming back for his third and ultimately final season in Durham, Marques was finally given a chance to start and play the majority of the center minutes alongside perhaps Duke’s most hyped freshmen class ever. He and Javin DeLaurier both had stints in the starting unit, but neither was able to take a firm hold of the position. Bolden’s extraordinary shot blocking got even better in 2018-19, but his offensive game was still far from what was expected of him early on in his career and his defensive rebounding rate dropped from the season before. An MCL sprain in the last regular season game against North Carolina knocked him out of the ACC tournament, and the Bolden that returned for the NCAA Tournament just wasn’t the same – a detail that I think gets lost in the eulogy of the 2018-19 Duke Blue Devils. 

With Vernon Carey Jr. set to arrive in Durham the coming fall and Javin DeLaurier returning for his senior season, the writing was on the wall for Bolden. He chose to make the jump to the pros, but unfortunately didn’t hear his name called in the 2019 NBA Draft. He’s bounced up and down a few times with the Cleveland Cavaliers and their G-League affiliate, the Canton Charge, before eventually being waived in February. Given the hype that surrounded him as a recruit, Bolden’s career at Duke has to be considered a failure by both the Duke coaching staff and the recruiting pundits who ranked him so high in the first place. He developed into a serviceable center who started 60% of his games in his final season, but that’s not what anybody would've hoped for out of a top twenty recruit who was garnering major NBA buzz before coming to Durham.

Javin DeLaurier (2016) – #9 PF/#45 Overall (ESPN), #11 PF/#39 Overall (247 Sports)

Duke Career Stats: 114 G, 13.4 MPG, 3.4 PPG, 3.8 RPG, 0.4 APG

Javin was the third member of the celebrated 2016 recruiting class to commit to Duke and while his expectations were far from the highest of the group, he was one of only two players in the class to play all four seasons in Durham. Even though the 2016-17 team faced injury problems all season long, DeLaurier only played 85 minutes as a freshman, 76 of which came before December 10th. To be honest, it’s pretty surprising that transfer rumors didn’t pour in like they always seem to do for Duke players who fail to find success right away. But Javin came back to school and earned a bigger role as a sophomore, playing rotation minutes in a crowded frontcourt and even earning five starts. He didn’t shoot much outside of the restricted area, but he did connect on over 64% of his field goals and was a solid defensive player and rebounder.

As was mentioned in the previous section, DeLaurier and Marques Bolden would mostly take turns as the fifth starter alongside the four star freshmen of the 2018 class. Both provided high-level rim protection, but neither player emerged as a consistent offensive option at any point during the season. DeLaurier’s lack of offensive development was epitomized by his turnover percentage of 23.7% despite the second lowest usage rate on the team. He did have his best game of the season in Duke’s last, going for 10 points on 5-5 from the field, 11 rebounds and 3 blocks in the heartbreaking Elite 8 loss to Michigan State. He attempted to parlay his big game into positive feedback during the NBA draft process, but he eventually received the correct advice that he would be best served coming back to school for one more season. With Vernon Carey Jr. arriving on campus, Javin’s opportunities to shine came few and far between as a senior. His usage percentage did just barely reach a career high, but both his role and production were largely the same as the two years prior.

After a disappointing end to his senior season thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, DeLaurier would go undrafted in 2020. It’d be easy to label this one as a recruiting whiff by the Duke staff. After all, there are several players who ranked lower than Javin in 2016 – Kevin Huerter, Grant Williams, Robert Williams, and Payton Pritchard to name a few – who were drafted after their time in college. But could Javin have turned out better in a system more suited to develop raw players? It’s almost impossible to see a scenario where Javin ends up any less developed than he did after his four years at Duke. What about his game was so much different as a senior than it was as a sophomore? Did his remarkably bad hands get any more reliable? He’s going to have an uphill battle trying to breakthrough onto an NBA roster over the next few years and is yet another example of Duke’s player development failing a recruit who came to Durham with potential.

Jack White (2016) – #45 SF/#226 Overall (247 Sports)

Duke Career Stats: 103 G, 13.6 MPG, 2.7 PPG, 3.0 RPG, 0.6 APG

Not to be confused with any famous guitarists, basketball-playing Jack White was another recruit who came to Duke with little to no fanfare. The Australian native had offers from lesser programs like Boise State and Albany, but opted instead to join Duke’s already loaded 2016 recruiting class instead. He didn’t get much of an opportunity (just 220 minutes) in his first two seasons in Durham, but that didn’t stop White and Javin DeLaurier from being named co-captains in 2018 on a team begging for production from upperclassmen. For the first thirteen games of the season, White was sensational as a role player. He was scoring 7.5 points per game while hitting over 41% of his three point attempts. He also notched 6.8 rebounds, 1.2 steals, and 1.4 blocks per contest. He was exactly the role player then number one ranked Duke needed to complement their cavalcade of freshmen stars. 

Shortly after, the wheels fell off. In a January overtime loss to Syracuse, White missed all ten of his three point attempts. In the following games, Jack’s confidence was understandably lost. He became hesitant to shoot open shots even when opponents dared him and his allotment of minutes got smaller as a result. He would continue on to miss 18 more threes in a row before finally breaking out of his slump against Miami in early March. He would later injure his hamstring in the ACC championship game against Florida State, which forced him out of action during the first weekend in the NCAA Tournament. He then returned against Virginia Tech in the Sweet 16 but was a non-factor in the last two games of the season. There are a lot of plot points when reminiscing about the 18-19 team’s failure to win the program’s sixth championship, but White’s late season yips shouldn’t be lost among them. If he plays anywhere close to his early season level down the stretch, Duke would have been much harder to beat in the tournament.

White returned for his senior season and again assumed the mantle of co-captain alongside DeLaurier and sophomore Tre Jones. He was still the guy Duke could count on to give his all every night, but his shooting form from the early days of 2018-19 never returned. On one of Duke’s deeper teams in recent memory, White eventually found himself on the outside of the rotation, only playing 61 combined minutes in Duke’s final ten games, and his Duke career was unceremoniously ended by the coronavirus pandemic. Ultimately, this was a guy who did all the little things and showed flashes as a guy who could stretch the floor. Why he only played 220 minutes in his first two seasons is something I’ll never understand. Specifically, the 2017-18 team didn’t have another small forward on the roster and was porous defensively before a switch to 2-3 zone saved the season. An impact defensive player such as White could've had an impact on that team and White would've benefited in the long run as well. Unfortunately for White and the others, Coach K and the rest of the staff simply don't have any semblance of long term vision anymore.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we'll highlight the recruits from the 2017 and 2018 classes.