There is no digital trail for Ned Franke before Duke. No high school highlights. No recruiting profile. No newspaper clippings from Pinehurst, North Carolina, where the GoDuke roster lists his hometown. He was a 6-foot-5, 200-pound forward who appeared on the Duke basketball roster for the 1981-82 season as a junior, wearing number 42.
How he got to Duke — whether he walked on, whether he was recruited by Bill Foster or Mike Krzyzewski, whether he played high school ball at one of the Sandhills-area schools near Pinehurst — we don't know. The internet did not exist when Ned Franke played basketball. Small-town North Carolina newspapers from 1978 are not digitized. The trail, for now, goes cold before it starts.
What we know is that he was at Duke, and he was on the team.