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.
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