‘It had to do with creating the best team’: How Duke

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• height=”40 “/ > Jeff BorzelloMar 17, 2025, 09:00 AM ET Close Basketball recruiting expert. Signed up with ESPN in 2014.
• Graduate of University of Delaware.The clock began ticking

on Duke’s 2025 national championship chase in October 2023. That’s when Cooper Flagg– the country’s No. 1 hire of the 2024 class and predicted No. 1 choice in the 2025 NBA draft– revealed his dedication to the Blue Devils. His signing raised the stakes for Jon Scheyer’s 3rd season at the helm of his alma mater, which climbed up even greater when Duke lost to ACC rival NC State in the Elite Eight five months later.Sheyer knew in order to make a much deeper run this season, he would need to find the ideal players– not always the most talented ones– to match his super star freshman.”I feel my greatest job is lineup construction,” Scheyer stated after Duke’s win over Wake Forest earlier this month.

“I think that’s always been the most essential thing as a head coach in college basketball, however especially now. “In an era when groups are incentivized to build around experience, heaven Devils didn’t use the portal to pack up with transfers for

the 2024-25 season. Rather, they signed 5 of ESPN’s top 50 employees in the 2024 class, and leveraged the website to develop around Flagg & Co.Editor’s Picks 1 Associated The method has resulted in a regular-season ACC champion, a 1-seed in the NCAA competition’s East area and among the greatest projects in the past 25 years of college basketball, with player of the year favorite Flagg and a handpicked supporting cast playing its best basketball of the season at the right time.

“This edition of the Duke Blue Devils, they are the most effective performing team that we bet in the Duke period,” Florida State Leonard Hamilton told ESPN after a 100-65 loss to Duke on March 1. “Not to take away from all the great teams that Coach K had, this group just appeared to be the most connected. In the past, perhaps they might’ve had a couple of more– to say the least– superstars. But this team, whenever you make a mistake, they make you pay. They’re really efficient.”

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