There was a lot of angst when Duke saw a mass exodus at the end of the season, but the reality is that free agency has reached college basketball and it’s not just Duke. Look around the ACC: other teams took big hits too.
Florida State has just two players back, Miami just three and Clemson and Georgia Tech have four. But no one has the problems that Louisville has as the Cards have no one back and are starting from zero (of course in that case, a complete demolition might be an improvement).
Like just about everyone else, Jon Scheyer and Duke hit the transfer market hard, bringing in four experienced players: Sion James (Tulane), Maliq Brown (Syracuse), Mason Gillis (Purdue) and Cameron Sheffield (Rice)
This article from Busting Brackets looks at the transfers, and all of them, with the possible exception of Sheffield, are likely to be major contributors. The biggest thing they bring, however, is experience.
The combination of several things, including the Covid pandemic and the bonus year, the rise of NIL, the new transfer rule and now revolutionary changes in the entire enterprise of college athletics, means that the era of players leaving for the NBA as soon as possible is over. Experience is king – again. Even John Calipari, who made recruiting star freshmen who stayed only a year a key point of his Kentucky program, has said he’ll be doing things differently at Arkansas.
Duke’s freshman class is tremendous but Scheyer has reached the same conclusion: youth is no longer the sole answer, no matter how talented it is.