It’s almost summer and the Duke-Carolina drama continues.
Duke basketball looks to have its most unsettled team in four years with the Blue Devils’ one-and-dones looking good, but not grea,t and their lame duck starting center turning pro when he knows he won’t be drafted. Does he just want to get out of Dodge?
Marques Bolden entered the NBA draft protocol to test the waters and decided not to withdraw and return for his senior season even though he will probably end up a free agent for a G-League team or in Europe. Guess the 6-11 one-time 5-star was tired of being recruited over for the last few years when Coach K signed Marvin Bagley and incoming freshman Vernon Carey.
Duke already lost one signee, Boogie Ellis, who asked to be released from his letter of intent. Point guard Tre Jones is returning for his sophomore season, along with veterans Javin DeLaurier, Alex O’Connell and Jack White, plus Carey and several other highly ranked recruits. But mix them all up and Coach K’s 40th Duke team doesn’t look close to his last two that came within a possession of the school’s first Final Four since 2015.
If the 2020 Blue Devils are looking a bit more like Carolina, the Tar Heels are sort of resembling Duke with so many new faces from different places. Roy Williams may need to be a bit of a chemist trying to figure out who starts and plays a lot besides probable one-and-done scoring point guard Cole Antony.
But even if you hand senior Brandon Robinson and sophomore Leaky Black the two starting wing spots, and assume freshman Armando Bacot and juniors Garrison Brooks and Sterling Manley rotate through the posts, what about all these other new guys? Freshman guards Jeremiah Francis and Anthony Harris; graduate transfer swingmen Christian Keeling and Justin Pierce, and scrappy returnee Andrew Platek all deserve a shot at minutes.
How does Ol’ Roy handle that 11 spot, and what if rumors are true that 6-8 freshman forward Jalen Wilson, the No. 40 prospect in the country, is seriously looking at Carolina after he was released from Michigan due to the coaching change there?
That would be an even dozen, which will have UNC’s coaching chemist cooking up a lot of different formulas for success.
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