catmandoo
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posted 09-21-2021 04:39 PM
Two terrible seasons, one monumental coaching transition, another program reboot and a changing college basketball landscape apparently can't alter one constant of the past decade.
When it comes to recruiting, it's still Kentucky, Duke and everybody else.
On Monday night, five-star center Dereck Lively II announced his commitment to the Blue Devils, picking Duke over Kentucky in the biggest head-to-head battle between the two blue-bloods in this 2022 recruiting cycle.
It's been quite a year for the two college basketball powers.
Both teams missed the NCAA Tournament last season, one that greatly affected all of the sport due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which likely had an even greater impact on two programs that annually rely on new faces to fuel their on-court success.
In June, legendary Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski announced his retirement, effective at the end of the upcoming 2021-22 season, with longtime assistant Jon Scheyer set to take his place.
Before that announcement, fellow Hall of Fame coach John Calipari acknowledged a need for changes within his program, ultimately shaking up his recruiting approach, bringing aboard two nationally renowned assistant coaches — Orlando Antigua and Chin Coleman — and, more recently, teasing a new style of play for the future.
The past few months have also seen both programs navigate a new era of immediately eligible transfers and the massive change brought about by NCAA name, image and likeness reforms.
The results on the recruiting trail — despite all that change — will be the same.
Kentucky and Duke will almost certainly have the top two recruiting classes in the country. It's just a matter of which school ends up on top.
Kentucky's 2022 class
UK already has commitments from shooting guard Shaedon Sharpe (the No. 1 player in the new 247Sports rankings), wing Chris Livingston (No. 5) and point guard Skyy Clark (No. 18).
Right now, that's good enough for second place nationally, behind only Duke.
The Wildcats are far from finished, however. Kentucky is expected to land a commitment in the coming weeks from combo guard Cason Wallace, who is No. 7 in the new 2022 rankings.
UK is also seen as a possible favorite for center Adem Bona, the No. 10 overall player on the 247Sports list. UCLA appears to be Kentucky's top competition for Bona, and he's expected to announce a college decision by the November signing period.
If the Cats can land both Wallace and Bona — and there's a good chance of that happening — it would give them four top-10 commitments in the same class for just the second time in the Calipari era.
Yet, it still might not be enough for Kentucky to secure the No. 1 team ranking in the 2022 cycle.
Duke's 2022 class
Lively (No. 2 in the 247Sports rankings) joined a Duke class that already included small forward Dariq Whitehead (No. 4), versatile forward Kyle Filipowski (No. 12) and sharp-shooting guard Jaden Schutt (No. 54).
The commitment from Lively pushed Duke's class past Kentucky's and into the No. 1 spot. For now.
While Kentucky could land two more star recruits for next season, so could the Blue Devils.
The two names to watch at the top of Duke's list are small forward Mark Mitchell (No. 11 in the rankings) and combo guard JJ Starling (No. 33).
247Sports analyst Travis Branham told the Herald-Leader on Monday that — although Mitchell still has four schools on his list — he sees that recruitment as an "extremely tight battle" between Duke and UCLA. "It's going to be a fight from now until commitment day," he said.
Branham said it looked like the Blue Devils were in "a good position" for Starling, who is also considering Northwestern, Notre Dame, Stanford and Syracuse.
The 2022 rankings
The ideal scenarios for each school would obviously be to land both of their top remaining targets.
If that happens, Kentucky might have a more impressive group from an individual rankings standpoint — and certainly one of its best-ever recruiting classes — but Duke's class would be right there in terms of top-of-the-rankings talent and have the clincher of one more total player.
According to the 247Sports class calculator under that scenario, Duke would get the nod for the No. 1 class ranking, by a razor-thin margin.
The Blue Devils' six-man class would result in a 247Sports recruiting score of 70.94, while the Wildcats' five-player group would add up to a 70.83. (If UK lands both Wallace and Bona, but Duke gets only one of their top targets, the Cats would have the higher-ranked class by an even slimmer margin).
If the plans shake out for Kentucky and Duke, the two programs would be getting a combined eight of the top 12 players in the 2022 rankings, with each team landing four such players.
Such a lopsided, two-team haul has never happened in the modern recruiting era.
And there would be a wide margin between the nation's No. 2 and No. 3 recruiting classes.
North Carolina and Ohio State currently occupy the third and fourth spots, respectively, in the 247Sports team rankings. And while both of those programs have stellar, four-player recruiting classes, neither has a commitment from a five-star prospect, and neither UNC nor OSU is favored to land such a recruit in the 2022 class.
So, there's likely to be a big gap between the projected talent of the top two classes and everyone else.
Obviously, whoever ultimately finishes No. 2 in the team recruiting rankings in this cycle is still going to have one of the best classes in years. The true winner will be settled on the court during the 2022-23 season.
But for those who pay attention to recruiting, the battle for the top spot between two longtime rivals should be a fun storyline over the next several weeks. And this cycle should leave no doubt that, despite the changes that took place over the past year, it's still very much a Kentucky-Duke world on the recruiting trail.
Link
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http://www.ukfightsong.com/
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