Jahliil Okafor – Rush The Court

For This Year’s Crop of Duke Freshmen, Patience is a Virtue

Matt Auerbach — Thu, 19 Nov 2015 21:05:00 +0000

What last season’s iteration of Duke basketball made us forget, this season’s version reminded us quite vividly during the Blue Devils’ loss to Kentucky at the Champions Classic — which is that the adjustment from high school to high-level college basketball isn’t all that easy. After a pair of tune-up tilts in Durham last week, Duke took the floor in Chicago boasting the most discussed player in the country in Grayson Allen along with the nation’s top-rated crop of incoming rookies. After a sound humbling at the hands of the hungry Wildcats, what they left with were a bunch of question marks and a better appreciation of the [...]

John Calipari’s Recruiting Prowess is All-Encompassing

Chris Johnson — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 15:20:29 +0000

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn.

Recruiting has never been as simple as John Calipari makes it look. Winning national championships, plucking the annual Rivals Top 150 of its very best talent, sending them off to the NBA Draft, and grinning with every lottery selection. It is a self-sustaining cycle, and it has long since worked. That’s the part that makes sense. Most coaches don’t have the luxury of bringing in six McDonald’s All Americans to an iconic, tradition-laden program – so they use scouting acumen, and developmental prognostication, to find the best players the best [...]