By ADAM ZAGORIA
NEW YORK — Roy Williams doesn’t mind saying he wishes he had landed some of the recruits who chose Duke over North Carolina in recent years.
“We tried to recruit Wendell [Carter], I thought he was really good, I tried to recruit Jayson Tatum, I tried to recruit Harry Giles, Luke Kennard. We haven’t been able to get them,” Williams said after North Carolina beat Miami to set up Friday’s ACC semifinal against rival Duke.
As has been well documented here and elsewhere, Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has taken his recruiting approach to a new level in recent years, especially since Jeff Capel came aboard, and Duke has now seemingly surpassed Kentucky — and everyone else — in terms of recruiting one-and-done type players.
This year alone, Duke has three freshmen in Carter, Marvin Bagley III and Trevon Duval who are expected to be first-round picks, with the 6-foot-11 Bagley (who dropped 33 and 17 on Notre Dame Thursday night) in the mix for a top-5 pick. Duke’s blockbuster 2018 recruiting class of R.J. Barrett, Zion Williamson, Cam Reddish and Tre Jones — which will be on display in the Jordan Brand Classic at Barclays Center on April 8 — features players projected to go at the top of the 2019 Draft.
Coach K’s Top 3 NBA Draft picks since 2011:
2011 – Kyrie Irving, No. 1
2014 – Jabari Parker, No. 2
2015 – Jahlil Okafor, No. 3
2016 – Brandon Ingram, No. 2
2017 – Jayson Tatum, No. 32018 – Marvin Bagley, ??
2019 – RJ Barrett, ??
2019 – Zion Williamson, ??
2019 – Cam Reddish ?? pic.twitter.com/3NcTJIQG3W— Adam Zagoria (@AdamZagoria) January 21, 2018
Still, North Carolina did win the NCAA championship a year ago — Williams’ third and the program’s sixth — with a mostly veteran team, along with one role-playing one-and-done in Tony Bradley.
“The little difference is if I had one or two [one-and-dones], I wouldn’t want three or four more,” Williams said. “I’d love to have Brandin Wright and Marvin Williams and Tony Bradley, okay, they were one-and-done for us. What people don’t realize, we’ve had just as many guys leave early for the NBA as Duke has, and maybe one more since I’ve been back, it’s just they haven’t been one-and-dones, there’s only been three freshmen.
“But I’d love to have one or two of those guys, but I like some other guys that I get to enjoy and get to know even better and are not there only eight or nine months or something like that. It’s a smaller philosophy difference. I told [John] Calipari the same thing, I tried to recruit those guys. We tried to recruit PJ Washington and Kevin Knox that he has. But I would struggle — I’m old fashioned. I’m old school. I just told them that in the locker room there. I like to have some guys that can stay and have a special relationship with for a long time. Everybody likes talent, and I do, too, and I think I’ve got one of the talented guys beside me [Theo Pinson] that has meant a great deal to our program, and in a corny, corny way but in a truthful way, he’s really meant a lot to Roy Williams, and I really like that.”
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