How Rare Is a Duke Recruiting Loss?
The long-repeated cliché about elite college football and basketball teams says that they “don’t recruit … they select.”
For much of the last decade, that appeared to be true of Duke basketball. While the Blue Devils may not have landed every single player they wanted on the recruiting trail, Duke coaches did an outstanding job of closing the show. Once Mike Krzyzewski and his assistants focused in on a target, they seemed to land him.
Coach K has been known for decades for his ability to build a relationship with a young player during the recruiting process. That allows him to pick and choose which prospects to spend energy recruiting. If he and his staff get an indication early in the process that the player is considering another suitor, the school and recruit will drift apart, sometimes before an offer is even extended. So, by the time Duke’s intentions are clear on the recruiting circuit, the Blue Devils stand an outstanding chance of getting the commitment.
That’s what made Max Christie’s decision to commit to Michigan State so surprising. Christie seemed to pass the initial “get to know you” stage of his Duke recruitment, and Coach K seemed to think that he was likely to choose the Blue Devils. That contrasts to Emoni Bates, another recent high profile Michigan State commitment. Coach K and his staff made contact with Bates last year, but that interest seemed to fade quickly, and the Blue Devils were never a factor in his recruitment.
Just how rare is it for Duke to zero in on a prospect and miss?
Going back to the 2013 cycle, the last year for which offers for all prospects are readily available, Duke has been far stingier with its offers than other major programs.
| Team | Total offers<br> |
|---|---|
Duke | 100 |
Michigan State | 115 |
UNC | 125 |
Kentucky | 154 |
Kansas | 330 |
This, again, is evidence of Duke’s ability to determine a recruit’s intentions and cut bait early, rather than wasting time pursuing a lost cause.
Duke is showing similar restraint with the 2021 and 2022 classes. The Blue Devils have made a total of nine confirmed offers to those two classes. Michigan State has made 16, UNC 11 and Kansas 47. Kentucky matches Duke’s nine offers.
As a result, Duke’s success rate on the recruiting trail has been significantly higher than the other elite programs.
In other words, when Duke offers a prospect, it’s four times more likely than Kansas to have him commit, and twice as likely as Michigan State and UNC.
Part of Duke’s success rate is explained by the one-and-dones that have made up a large chunk of Duke’s roster. The Blue Devils, and Kentucky, who has used a similar model, have had to fill out large classes at the end of a recruiting cycle, making last-minute offers that are quickly accepted by players to fill out a class or replace an unexpected departure.
Jordan Goldwire, who visited and committed in May of his senior year, is an example of how Duke has successfully filled out its roster this way. Jordan Tucker, who committed a week after his offer that same May, then transferred that December, is an example that didn’t work out quite as well.
These late additions can also be used when a team suffers an unexpected recruiting loss. Especially given Duke’s approach, a miss on a prime target when there are relatively few outstanding offers can murk up the plans for a future. In other words, Duke doesn’t have a strong plan B after missing on Christie and may need to go the Goldwire/Tucker route and hope for the best.
