The official start of the college basketball season is almost here. One of the biggest storylines will be Cooper Flagg and Duke University.
There will be pressure on Flagg to live up to the hype and on coach Jon Scheyer to get the most out of his most talented team. Flagg is the nation’s top incoming recruit and the presumptive No.1 overall pick for the 2026 NBA draft. The Blue Devils are the preseason favorite to win the Atlantic Coast Conference and are ranked No.7 in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 poll. In the Blue Devils’ 107-56 exhibition victory over Lincoln (PA) on Saturday, Flagg scored 22 points with six assists and four blocked shots in 24 minutes.
To help us understand more, we recently caught up with The News & Observer sports columnist Luke DeCock. We spoke to him about Flagg and year three of the Scheyer regime. Duke opens the regular season at home against Maine on Nov. 4.
Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Awful Announcing: What are reasonable expectations for Cooper Flagg?
Luke DeCock: “I think the expectations for him are to be an ACC player of the year candidate, to win games for Duke, and to do things that not only justify his position as the presumptive number one pick in the draft but capture the attention of people who may not be paying attention to who’s in the top five on the draft ratings. To become someone known to people who may not follow Duke, the ACC, or even college basketball. I think that’s all within his capability. I don’t know how much of that is fair to ask of him. I think there’s a chance he becomes this electrifying, two-way, game-changing player who everybody’s talking about in December and January.”
If I’m someone who’s never seen Flagg play, what should I expect to see?
“I’m not a draft expert who’s been watching video of all these 17, 18-year-olds, so I’m not the best guy to give a scouting report. I can tell you what the people around Duke expect of him. We’ve been told this guy is a generational two-way player who can impact games at both ends of the court. He has a versatile offensive game, both inside and outside, and on the defensive end, he’s both engaged and intuitive. He can guard multiple positions. He’s a shot blocker who can get out and defend on the perimeter. I think that’s the interesting part of this. Some of what makes him unique are things that aren’t necessarily a highlight. It’s the things you can do defensively because when he’s on the floor, that enables others to make plays.”
How does Duke intend to use him?
“I think the playbook is wide open. Duke can do whatever they want with him. It is a question of how creative is Duke going to be to try to give this guy opportunities to do amazing things. We saw this much longer ago, deeper into the (Mike Krzyzewski) era. They had a highly ranked recruit named Shavlik Randolph, a 6-foot-11 kid who could play on the perimeter. At that time, which was 20 years ago, they didn’t know what to do with him. They tried to turn him into a post player when he was probably more of a prototypical 2010s-era NBA perimeter big man. He certainly had some issues. There was no guarantee he was going to be successful at Duke. He was a talented player who played overseas. But the hype around him was extraordinary and Duke never really figured out a way to use him. I don’t think there’s any chance of that happening now. The game has changed dramatically. Everyone wants players like that now.”
Duke is a team that many people love to hate. Is Flagg ready for that kind of attention?
“This is not something new. You don’t show up at Duke and all of a sudden realize that there are people who are rooting against you. Zion (Williamson) dealt with that. Grayson Allen dealt with that—certainly, some of that he brought on himself. There have been a lot of Duke players, going back to Bobby Hurley and Christian Laettner and beyond, who were despised. If you’re the kind of player who isn’t prepared for that or can’t handle that, you wouldn’t choose Duke. You’d go to Arkansas or some other program that doesn’t have that reputation. The guys who go to Duke do it because they’re embracing that.
“The same way that rebounding is what Michigan State is. No one goes to play for Tom Izzo who doesn’t want to get on the boards. And no one goes to Duke who isn’t prepared to be booed. It just comes with the territory.”
How much pressure is on Jon Scheyer?
“I think he’s under a lot of pressure. The expectation at Duke is to compete for an ACC title, win an ACC title, get to the Final Four, and have a chance to win a national championship. That’s where the bar is set. The same way it is for Carolina basketball. These are programs that have decades of success. When you’re a blue-blood program like Duke, Carolina, and Kentucky, there are no training wheels. There’s no margin for error, and Jon Scheyer, frankly, has fallen short twice. The makeup of this team has changed from his first two teams. You don’t have Kyle Filipowski. You don’t have Jeremy Roach. Nothing against those guys, but you’re in a position now where you can hit the reset button and mold a team that’s a little more in the image of what you want. I think there’s a lot of pressure on Schreier. There would be anyway, having Cooper Flagg.”
Other than Flagg, what does the rest of the team look like?
“You’ve got a couple of transfers who are going to play. We know (Former Syracuse forward) Maliq Brown well from the ACC. (Forward) Mason Gillis (from) Purdue. You bring back Tyrese Proctor. Caleb Foster is still here. Then you do have a couple of freshmen. I think Khaman Maluach is probably going to be that guy in the post. I think there was an effort here to bring in some older players with different perspectives who have had success elsewhere. Also, bringing a couple of impact freshmen who are going to play a lot. I think it’s interesting that they got guys like Brown and Gillis who could play multiple positions and have a lot of experience.”
What is a potential weakness?
“My question for this Duke team is shooting. Do they have the sort of outside shooting that you need to compete in college basketball in 2024 and 2025? They may. Foster can shoot. Proctor can shoot. Flagg can shoot. When you think about what Cooper Flagg can do offensively, you’re going to want to have a lot of spacing so he has the most space to operate. Does Duke have the guys who can give him that? I think probably the answer is yes. But I don’t think you can necessarily draw it down on a whiteboard right now for certain.”
Could you tell us something about your readership?
“You know, it’s interesting. Obviously, yes, there are Duke fans here. There are way more NC State and UNC fans. A lot of the people who come to us for Duke coverage are based elsewhere. Duke has a huge national fan base, whereas the other two schools in the Triangle have much stronger local fan bases. So most of the emails that I get are about the other two schools. The interesting thing about Duke is that in the Zion season, more people were paying attention to it locally. I think fans in the Triangle are fans of their school first. Almost all of them are also fans of ACC basketball in general with the exception of their rival school. NC State fans will be interested in reading about Georgia Tech or Florida State.”
Did you always want to go into sports journalism?
“Yes and no. My grandfather was a sports writer in Milwaukee. I have an aunt who was briefly a sports writer before she moved into news writing. I grew up in Chicago and read the Tribune every morning. I wrote for the high school paper and the college paper. I grew up in Evanston. I got into Medill, Northwestern’s journalism school. I didn’t go for two reasons. One was I didn’t want to go to school that close to home. No.2 is I wasn’t prepared to commit to journalism at that point. I wanted a more rounded education and was a diplomatic history major. I went into my senior year expecting to take the foreign service exam or maybe work for a (non-governmental organization). I joked that I was qualified to do two things: be a sports writer or secretary of state. I had a better chance of getting hired as a sports writer.”