Given the current state of university basketball, phrases such as “retention of the list” and “continuity of culture” being omnipresent in the coming years seems to be a bet as safe as it exists.
For Duke, still the most upward brand of sport, reaching both goals was quite easily in the first two offenses of Jon Scheyer to the helm.
After a 2022-23 season that included an drive championship, the Blue Devils were the only Power Conference team in sport that did not lose a single player in the transfer portal. A year later, after a race against the Eight Elite, Duke lost seven players to the portal, a fact fed by a better qualified recruitment class and the return of players such as Tyrese Proctor and Caleb Foster who already had already taxpayers.
Scheyer could also avoid losing the nucleus of his staff, with the best confidants Chris Carrawell and Jai Lucas sitting by his side during the first three years of the trip. All that changed when Lucas was hired to be the new chief coach in Miami, and made the unusual decision to leave Duke after the end of the regular season.
After Lucas’s departure, the Blue Devils arrived at an ACC Tournament title, arrived at a regional east championship and then seemed to be prepared to get to a place in the national championship game. On the other hand, a team to two victories to consolidate a place among the best in the history of university basketball will now be remembered forever, at least to a large extent, for its collapse of the end of the game against.
In a place like Duke, this is not the type of polytergeist that can be eliminated through minor means. Will take he He won the first Monday at the night of April for whispers on Scheyer, not be a great game coach or to be in his head or not, the right choice to possibly replace the best walker in the secondary line in the history of university basketball … finally disappear forever.
Four years also feel like the most unique test for Scheyer, but in its continuous search to fill the biggest shoes.
On the one hand, Scheyer once again did not lose a single scholarship player in the transfer portal. On the other hand, it will be asked to replace the five headlines, the NBA Bound Cooper Flagg, Knueppel, Khaman Maluach and Tyrese Proctor, as well as Sion James, for the first time since Durham took over.
While Scheyer has cleared many bars in his first three seasons, this new situation will give the 37 -year -old player the opportunity to answer a couple of new questions.
Can you really develop?
If Duke will once again be in the national title mixture in 2026, a handful of bit players last season will have to become primary taxpayers. If players such as Foster (5.1 ppg), Isaiah Evans (6.8 ppg) and Patrick NGBONGA II (3.9 ppg) do not seem to be prepared to be or near a nucleus of a Poake team another Final Four led by the next March. People. People. People. People. People.
Can you work with a transfer as the main star?
There is no reason to believe that the first year student Cameron Boazer will be somewhat less than sensational for Duke the next season. But there is a difference between “normal sensational freshman” and “Cooper Flagg Sensational”. That means that Bozzer will need a backup in the department of stars.
The best equipped player to handle that role is Cedric Coward, who, as possible, is an early jump to the NBA-Will arrives in Durham through the Washington state. Coward only played six games for the Couchars last season, but averaged 17.7 points, 7.0 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 1.7 blocks per game with 55.7 percent of shots from the floor. It is a three -level scorer and a polished defender; Precisely, the type of player Duke needed to complete another youth list.
Coward could also end up being one of the best stories of the 2025-26 university basketball season. A player who began his university career in division III Willamelette University who ends up helping the powerful Duke Blue Devils to make a career in a national championship is an anecdote that does not know
But can Scheyer make it work?
Success began with transfers before Sion James and was the fourth scorer of the team last season after playing four years in Tulane-But Scheyer has never depended so much on the production of a newcomer experienced as a season. If it works, you could open for a new construction route for the list for Scheyer to advance.
After all, everyone in sport is still in the “adjust and trying to discover the best way to do this” phase “.
“With much, I feel that my greatest work is the construction of the list,” said Scheyer in March. “That has always been a great thing in university basketball, but especially now. When we won (the National Championship) in 2010, the five initials played in 100 games together. They will not have that now. So for us, the right courtesy players with skills that balance each other, but the most important thing, their motivation and who they are as people.”
Of course, making all these decisions and determination is not a single man’s job.
Lucas was essential to help Scheyer attract the best young talent in Durham in the last three years. While Scheyer was able to keep the Boazer twins in Azul, Lucas overturned the five -star recruit Shelton Henderson, who comes with him to South Beach.
In the task of making your first important assistant hiring in Duke in a couple of years, Scheyer Tok an unconventional route. To fill the role that Lucas left, Scheyer hired Evan Bradds, who recently served as a players coach for Utah jazz. After a playing race decorated in Belmont, Bradds immediately jumped into the world of coaches with a period as an assistant with the Boston Celtics before moving to Salt Lake City in 2022. He has never trained at the university level.
Unlike the last two seasons, Duke does not imagine starting the 2025-26 season at the top of the list of the teams that are most expected to reduce the networks in April. That fact, along with the other significant changes that take place in Durham, provide Scheyer for an opportunity.
Pass it with flight colors, and the talk that surrounds the three disappointing exits of the NCAA tournament will dissipate. Fight, and … well, Scheyer and everyone else already know the rest.
Is it something from this fair for anyone with a general record of 89-22, four ACCT championships and eight NCAA profits in three seasons? Or no course. But nothing to replace Mike Krzyzewski was once going to be fair.
