Last March, well before multiple outlets reported he intended to reclassify from 2018 to 2017, Marvin Bagley III released a list of six finalists: Arizona, Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, UCLA and USC. A few months later, after taking visits to three of those programs (Duke, UCLA and USC), Bagley announced on SportsCenter that he’d chosen to play for the Blue Devils.
The addition of Bagley, widely considered the top recruit in the class of 2017, was enough for Duke to receive 20 of 32 first place votes in the preseason Coaches Poll and 33 of 65 in the AP Poll.