Starting Lineup
The current starting lineup for the Blue Devils features the players in the photo above: Trevon Duval, Grayson Allen, Gary Trent Jr., Wendell Carter Jr., and Marvin Bagley III. What's so special about this starting lineup is that it's the first starting lineup for Duke since 1982 that the Blue Devils have started four freshmen. What also makes this lineup so good this year is that only 20 players in the country -- regardless of class year -- are placed on the watchlist for each position, meaning that Duke potentially has a top 20 player at each position. To put this in perspective, Duke is the only team in the country who has a player at each position on their position's respective watchlist.
Number One Recruting Class
With the addition of Marvin Bagley III, Duke solidified their 2017 class rankings as the top class overall for the second year in a row. According to ESPN's ranking of the top 100 players in the class of 2017, Duke signed four 5-star players (all were ranked in the top ten), which includes Marvin Bagley III (top recruit overall), Wendell Carter Jr. (No. 4 overall and No. 1 power forward), Trevon Duval (No. 5 overall and No. 1 point guard), and Gary Trent Jr. (No. 8 overall and No. 1 shooting guard). Duke rounded off their class by adding two 4-star recruits in Alex O'Connell and Jordan Tucker and one 3-star recruit: Jordan Goldwire.
Role Players
Because Coach K doesn't prefer to use a 10+ man rotation, Duke's rotation this year will probably be around nine, with the four bench players being sophomores Marques Bolden and Javin DeLaurier and freshmen Alex O'Connell and Jordan Goldwire. Although Goldwire is part of the rotation, he won't be seeing minutes on a nightly basis, but still look for O'Connell to play big minutes to relieve the starting guards and Bolden and DeLaurier who will relieve the starting big men.
