NCAA Basketball Recruiting: 10 biggest early winners of 2024 class

4. North Carolina Tar Heels

Despite the awful PR that came from last season and missing the NCAA Tournament, Coach Hubert Davis still was able to get a pair of top-10 overall prospects. Drake Powell is a local top-5 small forward who’s set to replace Cormac Ryan on the wing, while Ian Jackson is a 6’5 shooting guard from New York and is viewed as one of the best pure scorers in the entire 2024 class.

Top-100 center commit James Brown will be part of the frontcourt rotation once star Armando Bacot departs after this season. The Tar Heels were able to get its core pickups for the class and as long as Brown remains in the class (online rumors that he could one day de-commit and go back home to St. John’s), it’s a nice core group to work it.

3. Duke Blue Devils

As expected, Duke has the No. 1 overall class, having five commits overall. Four of them are ranked in the top 20, including big man Patrick Ngongba, as well as wings, Kon Knueppel and Isaiah Evans. Of course, the big name is Cooper Flagg, the No. 1 overall prospect who was long-rumored to end up at Duke. With him on board, the Blue Devils could be the No. 1 team in early preseason polls.

In normal circumstances, I’d have Duke at the No. 1 spot. But since landing Flagg and the other top prospects isn’t truly a big surprise, I wanted to highlight two teams that don’t usually have elite recruiting classes but do now.