RECRUITMENT BACKLASH AT DUKE?

Absolutely: earlier this year a red hot Duke prospect from SoCal opted forArizona State (????) because of the Duke "situation." Now the real bombshell: University of Southern California, who up to this year could count on playing in front of a few hundred of their closest friends once per week, is actually getting good. This year is different, and next year? Thanx to grabbing off two of the absolute best players in the USA, at least one of whom had verbally committed to Duke, they have the second best recruiting class in the country. Many of the comments over at Durham in Wonderland have observed that "Coach K" is getting all the top high school talent he wants and that the insanity of the "88" means zero. Not so. To be frank, another one of the USC bound hot shot players is virtually an NBA starter right now who will surely go to the NBA after one year and doesn't really count. Nevertheless, my contacts at USC tell me that recruits were hit hard by the rape tales from Duke as well as the balls out effort to ban varsity big league sports. Coach "K" may not be enough to get all the "blue chippers" necessary to keep Duke in contention for the NCAA title as long as Duke leadership allows the Women's Studies Department to conduct a reign of terror over the entire university. Stay tuned. If Duke basketball suffers it means that sooner or later the faculty leadership will stand up. Either that or Duke will join the feared Colonial Athletic Conference, home to Delaware, Drexel, and Towson. BTW, those of you who read Ann Althouse will see a startling similarity between the professor Kaplan chaos at the UW campus and the insanity from the Group of 88 at Duke.