Good News For Duke

And with the mess surrounding their lacrosse program, they could use some. Josh McRoberts, their only returning big man, has just announced that he will return for his sophomore season rather than enter the NBA draft. He was expected to be a lottery pick if he had gone pro, based purely on potential, but decided to stay at Duke instead. This is a huge relief for Duke basketball fans. Their inside game would have been decimated without him, after losing Shelden Williams to graduation and Eric Boateng to transfer. They have 7-footer Brian Zoubek coming in as a freshman and next week they'll find out if they'll be getting 6'8 forward Lance Thomas out of New Jersey as well. Rumor has it that he's leaning toward Duke. Even with him, the freshmen will have to play significant minutes. Other than them, they have one player at 6'7 (Jamal Boykin) and one at 6'6 (David McClure) and that's it. The rest of the roster has all perimeter players. But if they'd lost McRoberts too, it would have been a disaster and Duke might well have ended up out of the top 20 for the first time since the Permian era. As it is, they're likely to be rated no higher than about 10th in the preseason polls. But with McRoberts coming back, they'll probably be picked to finish 2nd in the ACC behind a loaded North Carolina team and should be a top 15 team in the nation at least.