Top Duke basketball recruiting target Dariq Whitehead announces his college decision
Despite a last-minute, $500,000 offer to play professionally next year, Dariq Whitehead plans to play in college for Duke.
Whitehead, a 6-6, 190-pound small forward from Newark, New Jersey, committed to join Duke and play for new head coach Jon Scheyer beginning in 2022. He made his commitment public Sunday night in a Twitter video.
“Next year I’ll be attending Duke University,” Whitehead said in a video posted on Slam magazine’s high school hoops Twitter feed. “It was a lifetime decision. After basketball, they can help me.”
Rated a five-star recruit, Whitehead selected Duke over offers from Florida State, Kansas, UCLA, Auburn and Florida among others. He added a different offer on Saturday from the NBA’s developmental arm, the G League Ignite team, where he could have earned a salary for a year before entering the NBA Draft.
Instead, Whitehead is the second player from the Class of 2022 to commit to play for Duke beginning next year. On Thursday, Kyle Filipowski, a 6-11 forward from New York, became the first player to commit to Duke following coach Mike Krzyzewski’s announced his plans to retire following the upcoming season.
They are they first two players in four decades to commit to Duke while knowing they aren’t coming to play for Krzyzewski.
Duke’s coach since 1980, Krzyzewski announced in June he’ll retire after the upcoming season. Scheyer, Duke’s associate head coach, was selected to take over as head coach at that time.
Since then, Scheyer, associate head coach Chris Carrawell and assistant Nolan Smith have been recruiting players for the classes of 2022 and beyond. Krzyzewski has stayed off the recruiting trail because he knows he won’t be coaching those players.
“We’re beginning a new era with coach Scheyer,” Whitehead said. “I feel like Duke is going to remain the same. It’s still Duke. Nothing is going to change except the coach and I feel like he’s a coach that can come in and get the job done.”
Whitehead attends Montverde Academy in Florida and made an impression with his scoring and defense while playing on the Nike EYBL circuit this summer with Team Durant. Whitehead made first-team, all-Peach Jam while averaging 17.4 points, 6.9 rebounds, 3.9 assists and 1.4 steals at Nike’s premier summer event last month.
Duke offered him a scholarship on June 8 and he made an official visit to campus on June 11. He visited Kansas on June 28 and received an offer from the Jayhawks on July 20.
“Just the relationship I have with the coaches and kids on campus,” Whitehead said. “The campus was a great place. It kind of reminds me of Montverde. If I’m going away from my mother, just to have people who are going to look out and make sure you are good when my mom is not there? That stood out to me the most.”
Whitehead comes from an athletic family. His older brother, Tahir, played football at Temple and was a fifth-round pick by the NFL’s Detroit Lions in 2012. A linebacker, he played in 14 games, starting nine, with the Carolina Panthers in 2020.
According to the composite ratings for the Class of 2022 compiled by 247sports.com, Dariq Whitehead is the No. 6 player in his class and the nation’s No. 3 small forward.
If he follows through and signs with Duke, it means the Blue Devils will have landed at least one of 247sports.com’s national top-10 players in nine of the past 10 recruiting classes. The lone exception was the Class of 2020, when Jalen Johnson, at No. 13 nationally, was the highest-rated player.
This story was originally published August 1, 2021 at 7:04 PM.