Jon Scheyer’s second season as Duke’s basketball coach finished with a 27-9 record, and he is looking ahead with newfound ambition. He led the Blue Devils to the ACC championship in his first season and came within one win of the Final Four in his second.
Both times, though, the Blue Devils fell short of the program’s ultimate standards — the NCAA championships they coveted, and won five times, during Mike Krzyzewski’s Hall-of-Fame coaching tenure. “There’s some good building blocks there,” Scheyer said in an interview with the News and Observer. “For me, I’ll always desire more. I’ll always want to do more and set higher standards for how we do things.” That means overhauling the Duke squad from the bottom up, the type of dramatic change that’s grown more normal in modern college basketball, but one that has been disturbing to some lifelong Duke supporters.
Following the 2023-24 season, seven players departed Duke via the transfer portal, while the Blue Devils acquired four new players. “There wasn’t going to be promises or assurances for anybody in terms of guaranteed minutes or guaranteed starting,” Scheyer stated. “Our programs are built around competition. And we’re doubling down on that at a time where the atmosphere makes you or puts you in a position to promise things. Our promise is to give you everything we have as a coaching staff and our complete support crew.”
Scheyer set out to create a more competitive squad, both publicly and internally. It will include two freshman players projected to be top picks in the 2025 NBA Draft: 6-9 forward Cooper Flagg and 7-2 center Khaman Maluach. It will return two starters from last season: 6-5 junior guard Tyrese Proctor and 6-5 sophomore guard Caleb Foster.
GETTING OLDER
Duke features six incoming freshmen and six veteran players who have started college games. Foster, who started 15 games for Duke last season, is the player with the least experience. Mason Gillis, the Big Ten’s sixth man of the year, started 63 games for Purdue over four seasons.
Another graduate student, 6-6 guard Sion James, started 61 games the past two seasons at Tulane. Maliq Brown, a 6-8 junior forward, led the ACC in steals while making the league’s all-defensive team as a sophomore at Syracuse last season. Cameron Sheffield, a graduate student guard, also joined the team from Rice. “Ultimately,” Scheyer stated, “we needed a group that was completely all in to Duke basketball and to winning and to competing at the level that we needed to in order to accomplish what we want this year.”
TOUGH GOODBYES
Turning the roster over required difficult conversations with several of last season’s starters. Kyle Filipowski and Jared McCain entered the NBA Draft and are expected to be first-round picks next month. These were rather simple decisions.
However, senior guard Jeremy Roach, a starter on Duke’s 2022 Final Four team during Krzyzewski’s final season and a fixture on Scheyer’s first two Duke teams, entered the transfer portal while declaring for the NBA Draft. Roach has since withdrawn from the draft and will play for Baylor next season. Mark Mitchell, a forward who started 67 games for the Blue Devils over the past two seasons, has transferred to Missouri. Guard Jaden Schutt transferred to Virginia Tech, forward Sean Stewart to Cincinnati, forward TJ Power to Virginia, and center Christian Reeves to Clemson. Another reserve, guard Jaylen Blakes, is looking for a different school for his graduation year.
“You have to handle every conversation, every one of them, whether it’s the guys returning or the guys that are leaving with total transparency and honesty,” Scheyer stated. “I am proud of all of those guys. We had chats in the spring and throughout the season about what they needed to do to improve and carve out a role. But it wasn’t going to be as simple as promising something to get someone to come back. So, once again, I wish all those guys the best of luck.
WHO MIGHT START?
Following the player turnover, Duke has a solid projected starting lineup of Foster, Proctor, Flagg, Brown, and Maluach. Nonetheless, James and Gillis are more than capable of earning starting positions in the backcourt.
Freshmen Isaiah Evans (6-6), Kon Knueppel (6-5), and Darren Harris (6-5) are known for their powerful perimeter shooting abilities. Patrick Ngongba, a 6-foot-11 center, will battle for playing time inside with Maluach. Scheyer desired this level of internal competitiveness for his team. “In order to have a championship caliber squad,” Scheyer said, “you need more than simply five players who can start, and I believe we have that in this year’s group. I can’t tell you who our starting lineup will be right now.
Foster is back on the court and shooting well after missing his rookie season in February due to a broken right ankle. That’s a positive indication for the Blue Devils. “We’re gonna be conservative with him but over the next few weeks, he’ll be back to full go 100%,” Scheyer stated. “Everything’s gone really well with him.”
Proctor left to Australia after the school semester ended, but has since returned to campus. Gillis has already arrived in Durham. Proctor’s sophomore season, in which he averaged 10.5 points per game, ended on a low note when Duke lost 76-64 to North Carolina State in the NCAA Tournament South Region final. Scheyer stated that Proctor’s December ankle injury, which sidelined him for four weeks, limited him for the remainder of the season. So the idea is to get Proctor back to full health. At the same time, Proctor accepts full responsibility for what has to be done to make him a more productive player.
“We need to get him back to full health, full strength where he can work the way that he has worked in his time here,” Scheyer stated. “I believe he wasn’t able to perform as much down the stretch. So for him, there are no excuses. There is no finger-pointing. It’s about focusing on who he is and who he can be as a player, and putting in the effort. I’m proud of what he’s accomplished thus far.
With a few exceptions, the entire crew will arrive on campus in late June to begin their regular summer work. Maluach is an exception, as he will represent South Sudan at the Paris Olympics in July. Ngongba could play for the United States Under-18 national team this summer. Otherwise, the bunch is together and poised to be one of the nation’s greatest teams next season.
“We already have the foundation of our team,” Scheyer added. “Well, see, we’re a big team. We have the power to rearrange places and add size to the court. The ability to play small or big. We want to make sure we have a plan in place for this year where we can assert our presence, regardless of who we’re playing, rather than the other way around.”
