Williamson commitment puts Duke in rarefied air
Zion Williamson didn't stay in-state at Clemson or South Carolina. He didn't return a favor to Drake by choosing Kentucky after Drizzy rocked one of his high school jerseys. Instead, the No. 2 hoops prospect in the country chose Duke as his collegiate pit stop for next season, and the Blue Devils are stacked once more.
Williamson joins R.J. Barrett (who overtook Williamson as the No. 1 prospect in the 2018 class when he reclassified) and Cam Reddish to make Duke the first school in the modern era to land the top three recruits in one season. Throw in No. 10-ranked Tre Jones, and it will be just the third time since 2007 a school has had four top-10 freshmen entering a season (Duke did it this year too, with Mavin Bagley III, Gary Trent Jr., Trevon Duval, and Wendell Carter).
Williamson credited Jones with swaying him to Durham. "We're in a group (text) message," he said, according to The Post and Courier's Grace Raynor. "But I'm going to give that to Tre Jones. He said: 'Zion, Duke's the place for you. It's a brotherhood. We all have the same dream of going to the next level.'"
The last time a program landed two of the top three recruits was Kentucky with John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins in 2009-10.
That's noteworthy because, not unlike those two players back then, Barrett and Williamson have been tagged as future NBA superstars. Along with Reddish, the trio could conceivably go 1-2-3 in the 2019 draft.
How will they play together?
Barrett is presently the more polished player, but Williamson has achieved a level of social media stardom the Canadian has not. That tends to happen when a teenager throws down rim-rattling dunks the way Williamson has been doing since he was 15.
At a football player-like 6-foot-6 and 272 pounds, Williamson is a power forward or even a center at the college level and beyond. With Barrett and Reddish on the wings and Jones at the point, the players will have have defined roles in Mike Krzyzewski's system, but a side effect of such stacked units in the NCAA is recruits facing unrealistic expectations (think Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid, and Wayne Selden at Kansas in 2013-14, but more intense).
Ultimately, that doesn't matter, however. Krzyzewski decided long ago to embrace the one-and-done era, and a simple demonstration of their abilities and avoiding disaster will ensure Williamson, Barrett, and Reddish are plying their trade in the NBA in 2018-19. On paper, this recruiting class should make Duke the favorites to win another national championship, but as that '14 Kansas team and 2010 Kentucky squad can attest, blue-chip talent doesn't guarantee anything come March.