College Basketball: Champions Classic Should Settle if Duke or Kentucky Has The Best Recruiting Class
The Champions Classic matchup between Duke and Kentucky is going to settle who has the best recruiting class in the land — kind of.
Depending on who you like to get your recruiting information from there is actually a split in who has the best recruiting class between 247 Sports and ESPN.
247Sports has the Kentucky Wildcats recruiting class headlined by Skal Labissiere, Jamal Murray and Isaiah Briscoe as the No.1 recruiting class in the land.
Meanwhile, ESPN.com is pretty sure that the Duke Blue Devils have the No.1 recruiting class in the nation with Coach K grabbing ESPN 100 recruits Brandon Ingram, Derryck Thornton, Chase Jeter, Luke Kennard.
Depending on how you look at the game of basketball, it will determine who you feel has the top recruiting class out of these two schools.
If you are the type that asks the question, which class has the most immediate NBA talent of the two schools, you are going to say that Kentucky has the better recruiting class with Skal Labissiere considered by many to be a possible No.1 overall pick, with Murray being a Top Five lottery talent and Briscoe being a Top 15 NBA prospect.
Duke Blue Devils head coach Mike Krzyzewski will rely on Jones and freshman Grayson Allen next season. (Photo: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports)
If you like depth with your recruiting class, Duke has a better all-around haul, with point guard (Thornton), shooting guard (Kennard) small forward (Ingram) and power forward (Jeter) coming in this season.
A lot of people would say, “why not just take ESPN’s word for it?”
Why would we do a dumb thing like that? You already know that as long as Dick Vitale has breath coursing in his body he is going to laud anything that “The Dukies” do with Mike Krzyzewski.
Yeah, we are saying that ESPN has a slight Duke bias involved when they talk about the ACC power. That is not Duke hate, just fact!
Kentucky is seen as the evil empire of college basketball and though everyone knows that they are grabbing the top NBA talent, we are sick of giving John Calipari credit for getting great talent in order to underachieve and not win a championship.
That is what makes the matchup between No. 2 Kentucky and No.5 Duke so intriguing. We get to see these highly touted freshmen settle some of this dispute on the hardwood in primetime.
Jeter vs Labissiere is going to be a nice battle in the blocks when they match up.
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Watching how Brandon Ingram handles himself against Kentucky’s wings is going to be nice to watch.
Seeing how Kentucky’s young guards Briscoe and Murray handle themselves on the perimeter against Duke’s Matt Jones and Grayson Allen is going to be interesting as well.
Is this going to completely settle the argument? No way, but we will get to see both of these groups perform on the court and that will give us more ammo when it comes to the debate.
Who has the better recruiting class really? The class with the best NBA talent on it. Kentucky might have the better projected NBA talent, but who is to say that Duke’s freshmen won’t go on to have better careers.
This debate could go on forever, if you care that much anyway.