Obviously, without savvy scouting and shrewd offers, one can’t win five national championships and own roughly a quarter of the nation’s past 40 No. 1 classes. But lessons from rare misjudgments and recruiting losses must be responsible for Duke basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski’s ever-sharpening instincts in landing elite talent.
Case in point: DJ Steward, a senior combo guard for Whitney Young (Ill.), the same high school that produced Duke basketball champ Jahlil Okafor. The 6-foot-4, 170-pound five-star was once a four-star — ranking as low as No. 127 on the 247Sports 2020 Composite last year — and appeared to be nothing more than a potential backup plan for the Blue Devils.