Frank Jackson chooses Duke
 

puke.

I wish him nothing but failure.

Oh well. Can't control what a kid decides to do. Rose did the right thing in trying to get to him early. Fortunately BYU appears to be pretty well stocked at Frank's position for the next few years.

No sane person would choose BYU over Duke for basketball. He was too good to play for BYU.

Of course he could suck for Duke, ride the bench, and transfer. That would be BYU's best hope. We get the sucky blue chip guys that the good schools give up on.

There are maybe only a half dozen schools that get almost all of the players who are rated as high as Jackson is, so it's not a surprise. However, Eric Mika, Dastrup, Emery, and TJ Haws were all rated high enough to have been able to go to a bigger name school than BYU. But I wouldn't call them insane. Dastrup turned down Ohio State, Virginia and Florida. The others closed off their recruitment much earlier than they needed to but could have gone to similar level schools. The collection of players BYU will have over the next few years means they'll be really good. We can live without Frank J. I'm not going to beat myself up over being a BYU fan or worry about those who go somewhere else.

Adding to that, there is no question recruiting had a few off-years for a while, mostly while Jimmer was here and the scholarships were tied up along with a shortage of top LDS talent, I guess. But since 2013 it has really taken off and seems like it keeps going, if you look at the recruiting ratings. And because of missions these players haven't played yet except for one year of Eric Mika. But starting this season they'll be here now.

I think it's interesting to see where these guys rank not just by where they are in the espn top 100, but by where the players who ranked close to them ended up going. I think that gives a decent look at what type of school our recruits could have gone to. We know with Payton Dastrup. With Mika, Emery and TJ Haws they committed to BYU so early that they never gave anyone else a chance.

Here are the schools the players ranked 5 spots above and below our guys ended up going to:

2013 Eric Mika (#28)
#23-27: Cal, Notre Dame, Kentucky, NC State, Marquette
#29-33: Tennessee, Michigan, Syracuse, UCLA, Memphis

2013 Nick Emery (#45)
40-44: Duke, S. Carolina, W. Virginia, Arkansas, Florida State
46-50: Kansas, Kansas, Louisville, SMU, UCLA

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/ba.../18/class/2013

2014 TJ Haws (#51)
46-50: Xavier, Indiana, Seton Hall, Utah, Syracuse
52-56: Maryland, Missouri, Virginia Tech, San Diego State, Gonzaga

2014 Payton Dastrup (#95)
90-94: NC State, Villanova, Alabama, W. Virginia, USC
96-100: Vanderbilt, VCU, Bradley, Louisville, Cincinnati

http://espn.go.com/college-sports/ba.../18/class/2014

And looking more into the future...

2016
These three are just outside the espn top 100 (score of 80), but listed above that on other services.
Connor Harding (committed)
Gavin Baxter (committed)
Yoeli Childs (rumored to be close to committing to BYU)

If he goes on a mission and gets "Mormon" branded all over him, that would almost be as good for the kingdom as coming here. As exciting as it would be for him to be a Coug, what he does for the Church's name is most important.

unless he has a lackluster or bad year as a freshman at Duke, I'd say the chances that he goes on a mission now are very low.

He's already been quoted as saying he won't be going.

Kid in my ward, summer birthday, his parents held him back. He'll be about to turn 19 when he graduates from high school. So he'll be 19 when he leaves on his mission. He'll be 21 before he has taken a single class in college. Kids the same age as him will be one year from graduating from college.

And then you factor in tens of millions of dollars for a potential NBA athlete.

I wonder if we'll again see shorter missions in the future. The utility of longer missions.....are there diminishing returns? Most of us have never seen a middle class family join the church.