Duke Recruiting: Not Necessarily Duke Bound, But An Interesting Situation With A Local Tie

We’re sure they are aware of him but we have no idea if Duke is recruiting Brady Dunlap or not. He seems to fit Duke’s profile in many ways.

He’s a 6-7 forward in the class of 2023, he’s a good shooter with excellent speed, he’s a gym rat and he’s from a basketball family, a coach’s kid.

In a lot of ways he would seem like a perfect fit for Duke.

The question? Aside from whether Duke is actually interested of course...is that he’s the son of former NC State assistant Jeff Dunlap.

He worked for Mark Gottfried at State and works for him now at Cal-Northridge. Given the questions that have arisen there about Gottfried’s program - he and his staff are currently on leave as the university investigates alleged NCAA violations - he may not be there when Brady graduates. We also never got the sense that there were warm feelings between the Duke and State staff when Gottfried was in Raleigh.

Given all that, who knows? The kid may continue to rise and become a truly elite talent. He’s already Top 100 in his class and his father’s situation, as a Gottfried assistant could lead to some interesting scenarios.

For instance, what if Gottfried doesn’t survive his third controversial situation - he was in trouble at Alabama, resigning mid-season which was never fully explained, and he left a mess at NC State that brought the university into the Adidas trial - and his father is looking for a job with a talented son?

There’s no guarantee that they would come as a package but it could happen. It’s happened before, notably with Ed and Danny Manning.

We’d hope of course that the father would emulate Jeff Capel II, who told his son Jason that he should go to UNC rather than Old Dominion, where he coached, because it would be a better situation.

But of course that depends on what schools he’s interested in and what’s right for him. As we just saw very recently, Patrick Baldwin is very happy to stay home and play for his father at Milwaukee.

Everyone’s situation is different. His just has some interesting variables that bear watching.