Duke Recruiting: Mark Mitchell Narrows His Focus

Over at The Fayetteville Observer, Chapel Fowler has an article up about the recruitment of Mark Mitchell.

Mitchell’s Final Four are - or perhaps were - Missouri, Kansas, UCLA and Duke. But according to Fowler’s article, Kansas is more or less out and Missouri is third. It is, Fowler says, likely to be a photo finish between Duke and UCLA.

Mitchell told Sports Illustrated that “[I]t’s tough. Duke wants to build a super class for Coach Scheyer’s first year, Kansas is close to home, Mizzou is a different type of program than all of them and UCLA is a really good program and my brother lives out there. So it’s a lot of different perspectives that make it harder.”

Being part of a super class has its allure obviously: it puts you in position to be a legitimate factor in the national championship race and boosts your NBA profile, not to mention your NIL profile now too.

But everyone thinks that this one is too close to call so we’ll just have to wait until Mitchell feels confident enough to make the call one way or another.

Not that anyone is asking us, but if anyone did, we’d say look at Mick Cronin’s overall record and weigh that against one good year - one good finish really - at UCLA.

We like Cronin and admire the job he did last year but it’s hard to not see it as an anomaly.