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While this may not be the most ideal time to take a look at the Wake Forest basketball scholarship due to the uncertainty caused by the most recent news of Bryant Crawford and Doral Moore declaring for the NBA Draft, it is by far the most frequent question that I get on social media.
So far in the past two months Wake has lost: Richard Washington, Donovan Mitchell, Sam Japhet-Mathias, Keyshawn Woods, and now possibly Bryant Crawford, and Doral Moore. Losing six upperclassmen in one off-season is something you want to see when there is a coaching change, but not year 4-5 of a coaching tenure.
I certainly understand the want to know where the Deacs stand, especially after the ridiculous attrition over the past 2-3 months, so here is a snapshot of where everything is if nothing else occurred this off-season:
A few things to note:
- The most pressing observation of the chart currently is that Wake Forest is still two short of filling all 13 scholarships, which is concerning given it’s very late in the 2018 recruiting cycle. This is even without Moore or Crawford leaving, and just going off of pure speculation I will guess that at least one will not return. One of the spots will likely be filled by a grad transfer (which we will touch on later this week), and I would guess that sophomore Sunday Okeke gets a good look at a scholarship spot too.
- At this point I would much rather fill the rest of the scholarships (whatever that number ends up being) with grad transfers instead of other 2018 guys. It’s very late in the cycle and I would prefer one year commitments as opposed to 4-5 year commitments.
- The roster is very unbalanced right now, both in terms of depth at each position, as well as the class breakdown. If Crawford doesn’t return then we currently only have two true guards on the roster in Brandon Childress and Jamie Lewis. Sharone Wright, Jr. may prove to be a more than capable 2-3 type player, as I think Brown will, but this is a completely opposite experience from last year.
- Recruiting for 2019-20 is going to be massive if head coach Danny Manning is going to stabilize this roster moving forward. Due to the transfers and early departures the Deacs will likely have back to back classes of at least five players.
As more news comes out we will update this, but it’s always good to get a visual snapshot of where things actually stand with the scholarship chart.