I think the chances of Vernon Carey being in college for the Hurt/Baker freshman season are very low, due to OAD rule probably going away or Carey reclassifying into the final class to be subject to the OAD rule. If Duke is going hard after Carey, I hope it is with reclassification in mind. Then again, he would be in a Greg Oden recruiting situation if the OAD rule isn’t eliminated soon enough (only one relevant school recruited Oden, and most believed they were stupid for doing so during the process).
I wonder if either Hurt or Baker is good enough to go in the 1st round out of HS, in which case they are targets at risk of never playing in college. The downside of planning around their arrivals at Duke is how badly it may throw off short and medium term roster construction, similar to Shaun Livingston’s decision. The timing around OAD is going to cause some chaos. In the Oden case, it directly determined a national title game participant. In the Livingston case, a program was caught off-guard (pun somewhat intended) without a great replacement option.
Anyway, this rambling is to say Duke needs to start planning around OAD rule changes now, and be prepared for either scenario (with OAD vs. without OAD) beginning with this Hurt/Baker class. It should be helpful that Silver will keep K updated more than any other person involved with college basketball on what the likely outcome is.