Duke Basketball: 3 takeaways after Trevor Keels departs for NBA Draft
By Joey Loose
What options remain in the portal
With Keels not returning to the Blue Devils, there’s still another scholarship that Scheyer can fill by utilizing the Transfer Portal. There’s no doubt that Duke knew that Keels’ departure was possible, even inevitable, so there was always going to be a contingency plan. Unfortunately for the Blue Devils, that plan hasn’t exactly gone down as expected.
The big target for the Blue Devils was former Northern Iowa star A. J. Green, a dynamic scorer and former MVC Player of the Year. Instead of coming to Duke or playing for his father at Iowa State, Green recently announced that he too would stay in the NBA Draft. Fortunately, there’s another very solid option for the Blue Devils on the open market.
That option is former Texas guard Courtney Ramey, a talented scorer who remains in the Transfer Portal and has one last year of eligibility. The Blue Devils have already been connected to Ramey and he would help fill that hole of guard depth and veteran leadership. There are also other names still in the Transfer Portal that would make sense, including recent Illini transfer Jacob Grandison, a sharpshooter whose outside shooting would fit in well on a team full of talented big men.