Alex Murphy reclassifies to 2011!!!

 "IN COMES KYLE SINGLER 2.0"!!!

Alex Murphy, an elite small forward from South Kingstown, R.I., decided Tuesday to reclassify into the Class of 2011 and enroll at Duke a year early.

The most difficult thing to do in evaluating is to take one player from a class and re-insert him into another class. In order to come up with a landing place for Alex Murphy — who was No. 15 in 2012 — in our 2011 list, we used Maurice Harkless (Queens, N.Y./South Kent) as the measuring stick in the SF group. Our thinking was that Harkless deserved to be ranked in front of Murphy, therefore Harkless is No. 38 and Murphy checks in two behind him at No. 40.

In the process of figuring out a landing place for Murphy, we decided to update our ranking of SF Otto Porter (Sikeston, Mo./Scott County Central). Our staff spent a good portion of last week evaluating him and decided this was our best and final look at the Georgetown signee. We’ve adjusted our ranking of him and re-slotted him to No. 41 from his last spot on the list, No. 31.

— Dave Telep

The 6-foot-8, 215-pounder committed to the Blue Devils’ 2012 class in February but never ruled out the possibility of being part of Duke’s 2011 class.

"It was a very difficult decision but in the end I just thought this was the best thing for my future," Murphy said. "It’s a great opportunity."

While Murphy began the year listed in the Class of 2012, it was his fourth year of high school after starting his career at the Prout School in Rhode Island and then transferring to St. Mark’s, where he repeated his freshman year and reclassified to the Class of 2012.

Having met all the academic requirements, Murphy will be able to enroll at Duke a year earlier than expected and now becomes the fifth player to join the Blue Devil’s incoming recruiting class, joining SG Austin Rivers (Winter Park, Fla./Winter Park), SF Michael Gbinije (Chester, Va./Benedictine), C Marshall Plumlee (Warsaw, Ind./Christ School) and PG Quinn Cook (Hyattsville, Md./Oak Hill).