Louisville basketball: Could Cards lose another top target to Duke?

It seems as if Duke and Coach K are up to their usual tricks, offering a top Louisville basketball target in the class of 2020 late in his recruitment.

Coach Krzyzewski is to college basketball what Trey Songz is to the club. But instead of stealing your girl, he’s taking all of your recruits. Unfortunately for Chris Mack and the Louisville basketball program, they are finding out the hard way.

We’ve detailed ad nauseam Louisville’s pursuit of some of the top talent that the 2020 class to offer after putting together one of the best classes in program history in 2019. So far with only one player committed, albeit a major haul, the recruiting storylines have been more about Mack striking out than hitting a home run.

Part of that can be thanked to some of the more seasoned recruiting coaches in the business, including Coach K at Duke and daggum’ Roy Williams at North Carolina. DJ Steward and Caleb Love, two five-star guards, were targets one and 1a for Louisville all through the spring and into the summer and it looked like Mack was closing in on landing both up until the last few weeks.

First, it was Steward who took an official visit to Duke earlier this month only to leave committed to the program, making him their third five-star commitment in the class of 2020, leaving Louisville to rearrange their plans.

Landing Love would’ve been a major momentum changer in the class, but just a few days before his official visit to Louisville for Louisville Live the Saint Louis, MO product cut his list to two, eliminating the Cards before ultimately picking UNC.

In 2019 Chris Mack never really had to worry about going head-to-head against the game of college basketball’s top recruiters like Coach K, Roy Williams, and even John Calipari. But the relationships he spent over a year building with the five-star talent in the 2020 class were put to the test this go-round by those names mentioned, and it’s not stopping yet.

Louisville is already down 0-2 to Duke this summer. After losing Steward, the Cards saw Hunter Dickinson cut his list to four, removing Louisville (who probably weren’t going to land Dickinson) while keeping Duke. Keep in mind, Duke extended a scholarship to the 7’2 five-star center earlier this week.

Now for the third time, Coach K is looking to step in late in the recruiting process on another talented player in 2020 who just so happens to be the top target for Louisville basketball.

This time, it’s four-star combo forward Jaemyn Brakefield who caught the attention of the Duke Blue Devils enough to earn a scholarship.

Regardless of how long Louisville has been courting Brakefield, there is reason to be nervous about Duke hopping into the race for one of the top available forwards remaining in the class.

For one, Duke does this time and time again. Programs spend months and months building relationships with players, getting in on the ground floor and doing what they can to earn favor only to see the player fall to the allure of playing for arguably the biggest name brand program in the country at the last minute.

We have no idea how serious the offer is to Brakefield in terms of interest of a commitment, but you have to think it will be very similar to the situation that’s played out for Dickinson.

There is hope that Brakefield takes into consideration how long Louisville has been pursuing him and making him a top priority. Chris Mack and the Cards offered Brakefield back in October of 2018 during an unofficial visit and everything that followed led many to believe the 6’9 forward would one day wear red and black for Louisville.

Brakefield, a former teammate of current Cardinal Quinn Slasinzki at Huntington Prep sparked a quick connection with Coach Mack saying,

"“Chris Mack is probably the coolest coach in college basketball,.”"

Last week looked like the potential tipping point in his recruitment as he visited Louisville Live getting to watch the likes of Donovan Mitchell and Jack Harlow make big entrances and get the crowd hyped. He told Cardinal Authority’s Jody Demling,

"“I felt like even though I had been there several times, I learned a lot more about Louisville.  It was great to be able to show my parents how comfortable I am around coach Mack and at Louisville and the relationship we have with each other. It was a great event. It was really cool to see and just great to see how must excitement and support the entire city of Louisville has for the team.”"

A commitment didn’t come right away from Brakefield which now has fans worried about his feelings for Louisville. Add in a Duke offer and I’d say things are far muddier than we thought they would be leading into the Early Signing Period.

**It doesn’t help that just moments after originally publishing this article, Evan Daniels of 247 Sports tweeted a crystal ball projection for Brakefield that may or may not have included Duke. Sigh.**

Coach K and Duke’s recruiting track record speaks for itself. They get the guys they want because of their pedigree of sending players to the NBA. While Mack is a great coach and developer of talent, it will take time for him to build his own NBA pipeline in the recruiting game but he may have to do so without a guy like Jaemyn Brakefield.