Duke basketball roster issues?

As usual, when trying to watch college basketball we are bombarded from all sides with everything Duke. I am getting really tired of hearing about how Duke only has 5 or 6 available players... What is the deal?
I went and looked at their roster and it appears they have 10 legitimate players on scholarship:
Jeter
Allen
Kennard
Thornton
Jones
Ingram
Jefferson
Plumlee
Obi
Vrankovic

Jefferson is injured so they are down to 9. Of the 10 on that list, I believe that 7 were McDonalds AAs - is that correct?
And I guess Jones is doubtful right now - making it 8...

First of all, why is Coach K stockpiling scholarships? He could have signed a couple more good players and he wouldn't be in this predicament. Why do they not carry a full complement of players? Weird. There are plenty of really good players that would take a scholarship to sit on the bench at Duke...

Second of all - looks like K made some bad choices... I guess Vrankovic is a 7'0" project, since I had never even heard of him until I looked up their roster.
Obi is a transfer from Rice and cannot get any run - even with all of their injury issues. Very strange to me that K would take a transfer that was not good enough to play for them.
But you know what, they are warm bodies that they could play if they needed to - hell, we have been playing walk-ons all year - they've got at least 2 scholarship guys that they don't play - even when they play whole games with only 5-6 "available" players... That is a decision, not a hardship.

I don't feel sorry for them for that... It happens to the best of us - they screwed up, basically.

This doesn't count the fact that I guess they gave David Robinson's son a scholarship, but he is basically a walk-on. And they have two additional walk-ons.

That means they have scholarships sitting there unused and walk-ons busting their ass and paying their own way - nice. Of course, one of them is the son of an NBA owner so I doubt the tuition is a hardship for him.

They have extra scholarships because they won the title last year and 2 of the Freshmen went pro that they didn't expect going into the year. Obviously no one would feel sorry for them based on that.

TheIshThatSaved WakeForest said:

They have extra scholarships because they won the title last year and 2 of the Freshmen went pro that they didn't expect going into the year. Obviously no one would feel sorry for them based on that.

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Yea, we've never had that problem, now have we? And, even so, K could have signed a player or two late if he wanted to - we have done it. And, with the pull of Duke I am sure he could have gotten a good player. They seem to always run a few players short of a full scholarship load - they are obviously quite successful but times like this make it seem like maybe they should go ahead and use another scholarship or two...

They can always go find some High School sophomores to fast track through High School and straight onto the active Duke roster. Or some juniors. Who needs senior year of High School anyway?

That fast track program is nice - maybe we can use it too????

TheIshThatSaved WakeForest said:

They have extra scholarships because they won the title last year and 2 of the Freshmen went pro that they didn't expect going into the year. Obviously no one would feel sorry for them based on that.

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Well he forced one of his 2016 recruits to enroll early. Odd enough he requested this after the NBA Deadline so the kid had six weeks left of High school and suddenly only a few credits shy to graduate. Those credits were issued online. People argue the “One and Done” model whenever a team actually lands a great crop. Problem with this model and especially in K’s case, there are not many four star players that want to come sit on the bench behind the new crop of one and dones, so unless you are confident you will crack the top seven you better stay clear. Other than the goofy Plumblees it is hard to fin players at Duke that worked their way into the starting lineup or major PT.

Side note, what is K going to do in the 2018 class where there are only three white kids rated in the top 100? Say what you want but he has always nabbed a large portion of the elite white guys to fill his roster, currently has three playing in his top six. In 2018 the highest rated is like #58. It blew my mind when I saw this. Looking back most classes normal have between 12-18 and K has always landed those that he wanted.