The Duke coaching staff will soon know what their final roster will be for the 2012-13 roster as Mississippi State transfer Rodney Hood is expected to decide between Duke and Ohio State in the coming days. Hood spent the weekend in Durham on an unofficial visit.
According to Adam Zagoria of Zag's blog, the Blue Devils might be the favorite to land the 6-foot-7 swingman, who made the SEC All-Freshman team this past season.
Regardless of where he chooses to attend, Hood will not be eligible to play until the 2013-14 season due to NCAA transfer rules.
This past weekend, finalists for the U.S. U-17 team were announced. Duke targets Tyus Jones, Jahlil Okafor, Jabari Parker, Justise Winslow and Beejay Anya were among the 14 finalists.
One of Duke's top targets, Parker, indicated at the NBPA Top 100 camp that he plans to announce his college decision this fall before his high school season starts, per Zagoria. Duke and Michigan State are perceived as two of the leaders in Parker's recruitment, however, he has not publicly shown any signs of favoritism.
In the next month, Parker is expected to cut his list of schools down to 5-8 schools. Besides the Blue Devil and Spartans, Kentucky, Illonois, DePaul, Washington, Kansas, North Carolina, BYU and Ohio State, among others, are all still heavily pursuing the consensus No.1 player in the class of 2013.
On a similar note, Blue Devil target Austin Nichols expressed in a recent interview with Zagoria that he will probably sign in the fall. The Memphis product has not trimmed his list of schools yet. In addition to Duke, Kansas, Ohio State, North Carolina, Memphis and Tennessee are considered some of the strong players in Nichols' recruitment.
In other news: The NBPA Top 100 Camp for the top high school recruits in the nation finished this weekend and The Chronicle caught up with a few targets who were in action there. Notably, 6-foot-6 small forward Semi Ojeleye told The Chronicle that Duke has been coming on especially hard as of late, while we also spoke to Marcus Lee and Anthony Barber.
Read this post on The Blue Zone from earlier this weekend to read more on that.
Additionally, The Chronicle was among the first to break the news of 2013 point guard Solomon Poole committing to Georgia Tech. Poole is the No. 37 recruit in that class according to ESPN.com, and he informed The Chronicle of his decision Friday afternoon and we then reported it on Twitter.
Follow @BradyBuck on Twitter. Andrew Beaton (@andrewlbeaton) contributed to this post.
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