Former Duke guard Jeremy Roach transfers to Baylor: What this means for the Bears

Former Duke guard and two-time captain Jeremy Roach has committed to Baylor, he announced on social media Sunday.

Roach is coming off a career-best season, when he averaged 14 points, 3.3 assists, and 2.5 rebounds per game, while shooting 42.9 percent from 3 and 84.4 percent from the free-throw line. The two-time captain — who is one of the last two active scholarship players from Mike Krzyzewski’s final team — has one season of eligibility remaining.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jeremy (@jeremyy)

Assuming Roach’s 3-point shot carries over to Waco, Texas, the 6-foot-1 Virginia native should be a terrific fit in Scott Drew’s perimeter-oriented offense. The Bears have finished top-10 in adjusted offensive efficiency each of the last four seasons, per KenPom, ever since they won the program’s first national title in 2021. That includes finishing sixth in adjusted offensive efficiency this season, and posting the nation’s fifth-best 3-point rate at 39.5 percent.

Baylor has already lost three starters from last season — freshmen Ja’Kobe Walter and Yves Missi, who declared for the NBA Draft, and senior RayJ Dennis, who is out of eligibility — and may lose a fourth in Jalen Bridges. Roach instantly fills one of those slots, and should be one of the players Drew depends on most this coming season.

🚨NEWS: Jeremy Roach will transfer to Baylor

He averaged 14 points, 4 assists, 3 rebounds per game while shooting 43% from three @TheAthletic pic.twitter.com/BEjqEngLhT

— Tobias Bass (@tobias_bass) April 21, 2024

If nothing else, this adds another interesting chapter to Roach’s college career. He arrived at Duke in the summer of 2020 as a five-star recruit, but his freshman season wound up being Duke’s worst in over two decades; the Blue Devils missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1994-95. Barely three months later, in June 2021, Krzyzewski announced he would coach one more season and then retire.

The Pulse Newsletter

Free, daily sports updates direct to your inbox. Sign up

Buy

As a sophomore on Krzyzewski’s final team, Roach was an up-and-down sometimes starter — until the NCAA Tournament, when he played the best ball of his career and led Duke to the Final Four. Between his strong postseason play and the fact that he was one of only two holdovers (along with Jaylen Blakes) on Jon Scheyer’s first squad, Roach was quickly named as the sole team captain for a new era in Durham.

In two seasons under Scheyer, Roach won the 2023 ACC Tournament title and recently advanced to the Elite Eight this March.

It will undoubtedly be strange to watch Roach play in a different uniform, but that has become all too common in modern college basketball. Technically, Roach could have returned to Duke for his final season of eligibility, but that would have entailed joining a graduate program, not to mention the rest of Duke’s roster construction.

Fellow guards Tyrese Proctor and Caleb Foster, who had a combined 40 starts for Duke this season, both already announced they’re returning next season — and not to mention, Scheyer has the No. 1 high school recruiting class incoming (again), the second time he has in his three offseasons as head coach. That six-man class is anchored by forward Cooper Flagg, the nation’s best high-schooler and one of the top American-born pro prospects of the last several seasons.

Roach also stands to benefit from Baylor’s NIL situation, which has helped lure several top transfers in recent seasons.

Required reading

(Photo: John Jones / USA Today)