Duke Shows Depth Beyond Cooper Flagg As Coach Jon Scheyer Advances To First Final Four
NEWARK, NJ - MARCH 29: Cooper Flagg #2 of the Duke Blue Devils hugs head coach Jon Scheyer after ... More winning the Elite 8 round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament game against the Alabama Crimson Tide on March 29, 2025 at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo by Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
After dominating at Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum's basketball camp in July 2023, Cooper Flagg spoke with his parents. Flagg was about to enter his junior year at Montverde Academy in Florida, but he decided he wanted to graduate a year early. Ralph and Kelly Flagg gave their son their blessing. Three months later, he committed to Duke, the school he rooted for growing up and the college Tatum played for during the 2016-17 season.
On Saturday night, Flagg added to his memorable freshman season, helping the No. 1 seed Blue Devils defeat No. 2 seed Alabama, 85-65, in the NCAA tournament East Regional final in Newark, N.J. Flagg, who turned 18 in December, was named the Regional's Most Outstanding Player after scoring 16 points and grabbing 9 rebounds and leading Duke to the Final Four next Saturday in San Antonio, where the Blue Devils will face the winner of Sunday's Midwest Regional final between Houston and Tennessee.
'For being as young as he is coming into college basketball, I couldn't ask for anything better,' Ralph Flagg said on the Prudential Center floor as Duke celebrated.
Still, Flagg, a unanimous first team Associated Press All-American and the top prospect in June's NBA draft, wasn't the only Duke player to excel Saturday. Freshmen Kon Knueppel (21 points, 5 assists and 3 steals) and Khaman Maluach (14 points and 9 rebounds) played beyond their years, while junior guard Tyrese Proctor had 17 points and 5 rebounds.
'I think we have 13 guys that can step up and make plays on any given night, any given night if their number's called,' Flagg said. 'We have an entire team that is incredibly ready and prepared to step up.'
Duke (35-3) advanced to the Final Four for the 18th time in school history but the first time since coach Jon Scheyer took over in 2022 from Mike Krzyzewski, who won five national titles and made 13 Final Fours, a record for Division 1 men's coaches. Scheyer on Saturday won his 89th game, tied for the most victories in the first three seasons for a Division 1 coach, joining Brad Stevens (with Butler from 2007-08 to 2009-10) and Brad Underwood (with Stephen F. Austin from 2013-14 to 2015-16).
Scheyer, 37, won a national title as a senior guard at Duke in 2010. Fifteen years later, he is coaching the national title favorite and attempting to accomplish a rare feat. Former North Carolina coach Dean Smith, who played at Kansas; former Indiana coach Bobby Knight, who played at Ohio State; and former Kentucky coach and player Joe B. Hall are the only three men to win Division 1 NCAA championships as a player and coach.
Still, it hasn't always been smooth for Scheyer, especially in the NCAA tournament, as the Blue Devils lost in the second round in his first season in 2023 and the Elite 8 last season by 12 points to No. 11 seed North Carolina State. After Proctor was held scoreless and missed all nine of his shots (including five 3's) in 30 minutes of last season's NC State loss, he told Scheyer in the bathroom that he would be returning for his junior season.
'We both had a vision,' Proctor said. 'I think just the way we executed and doubled down, the way I doubled down in the offseason, the way these guys had my back, I had theirs, I think it just shows a lot of resiliency. I just couldn't be more proud of our group.'
Said Scheyer: 'Tyrese and I, the feeling of losing last year at this point, every decision we made, everything we did was to get back here and then have the team have the opportunity to advance to the promised land. To go to San Antonio, to go to the Final Four (I) couldn't be more proud of the team as a whole. Their attitudes the whole season, from day one, I think this group has been different. They make fun of me. I keep telling them, don't change. Don't change, keep being them.'
Of the 10 Duke players who saw action on Saturday, Proctor and sophomore guard Caleb Foster are the only two who were on last season's team. But the Blue Devils re-loaded with the nation's best freshmen class in Flagg (No. 1 in ESPN's NBA draft prospects list), Maluach (No. 8), Isaiah Evans (No. 9), Isaiah Evans (No. 41) and Patrick Ngongba and transfers Sion James (Tulane), Mason Gillis (Purdue) and Maliq Brown (Syracuse). Proctor is ESPN's 46th-ranked prospect, while James is 51st.
On Saturday, Duke never trailed and held Alabama to 35.4% shooting, the Crimson Tide's lowest percentage of the season. Alabama entered the game leading the nation in scoring with more than 91 points per game, but the Crimson Tide managed just 65 on Saturday, their second-lowest total of the season. And two days after setting an NCAA tournament record with 25 3-pointers on 51 attempts in a 113-88 victory over BYU, the Crimson Tide made just 8 of 32 3's (25%) against a smothering Duke defense that has length and athleticism. The Blue Devils are the tallest team in Division 1 with an average of 79.8 inches, per analyst Ken Pomeroy. Alabama senior guard Mark Sears, a first team All-American who scored 34 points and made 10 of 16 3's Thursday night, managed only 6 points on 2 of 12 shooting Saturday, including 1 of 5 on 3's.
'Duke is as good a team as we've seen all year,' Alabama coach Nate Oats said. 'We've got some really good teams in the SEC, and they're at that level.'
Indeed, a record 14 SEC teams made the NCAA tournament, and the league already has one team in the Final Four with Florida defeating Texas Tech Saturday night in the West Regional final. The conference could have two more teams in San Antonio, too, as Auburn plays in the South Regional final Sunday and Tennessee plays Houston in the Midwest Regional final Sunday.
Still, no team is playing better than Duke. The Blue Devils won their 15th consecutive game, the second-longest streak in the nation, and have 31 victories in their past 32 games. They have won their games by an average of 21.1 points per game, the best in the nation by more than 3.5 points per game. And they have an adjusted efficiency margin of 39.63, the second-best of any Division 1 team since Pomeroy began tracking that metric in the 1996-97 season. Duke's 1998-99 team is first with 43.01.
That Blue Devils team ended up losing to Connecticut in the national title game, and this year's team isn't taking anything for granted. After Saturday's victory, they wore blue Nike t-shirts with 'Ready 4 More' emblazed across the front. Still, they were soaking in the atmosphere, as were the rest of Duke's traveling staff, the players' and coaches' families and even some fans, including comedian Ken Jeong, a 1990 Duke graduate.
'This is beyond thrilling,' Jeong said. 'This is the best Duke team I've seen in ages.'
Will Jeong be heading to San Antonio for the Final Four?
'I've got to ask my wife for permission,' he said. 'That's the truth.'
After graduating from Duke, Jeong obtained his medical degree five years later from the University of North Carolina, the Blue Devils' hated rival. Wearing a Duke jacket late Saturday night, Jeong had to get a dig into the Tar Heels.
'UNC med school is exactly why I became an actor,' Jeong said. 'Print that. I went to UNC to be a doctor, and I came out as an actor.'
Nearby, Flagg's parents were watching their son and his teammates and mingling. It was less than two years ago that Cooper decided to accelerate his path to college early, and here he is, two wins away from a national title.
'He's always stepped up to the challenge every time,' Ralph Flagg said. 'We have a saying, 'When you're the best player in the gym, it's time to find a new gym.' We knew that he needed to be tested. We didn't think he'd have that at Montverde. He needed another challenge.'
About 20 minutes later, Flagg sat on a chair in Duke's locker room, a snippet of the net he cut down earlier attached to his hat.
'This is the vision that coach laid out,' Flagg said. 'It was always the goal to get to San Antonio and win the national championship.'
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'Talking to my teammates, it's so new, and they see the headlines and they're like, 'Ok, cool, but is someone going to explain this?' because they can read it, but then there's so many underlying factors that go into this. This is a complex problem that you have to understand the nuances behind, and not every athlete truly does.' Some coaches, too, are still trying to understand what's coming. Mike White, coach of the national champion Texas softball team, called it 'the great unknown right now.' 'My athletic director, Chris Del Conte, said it's like sailing out on a flat world and coming off the edge; we just don't know what's going to be out there yet, especially the way the landscape is changing,' he said at the Women's College World Series in Oklahoma City. 'Who knows what it's going to be?' What about the walk-ons? Jake Rimmel got a crash course on the settlement in the fall of 2024, when he said he was cut from the Virginia Tech cross-country team alongside several other walk-ons. The topic held up the House case for weeks as the judge basically forced schools to give athletes cut in anticipation of approval a chance to play — they have to earn the spot, no guarantees — without counting against roster limits. Rimmel packed up and moved back to his parents' house in Purcellville, Virginia. For the past six months, he's held on to a glimmer of hope that maybe he could return. 'The past six months have been very tough," he said. "I've felt so alone through this, even though I wasn't. I just felt like the whole world was out there – I would see teammates of mine and other people I knew just doing all of these things and still being part of a team. I felt like I was sidelined and on pause, while they're continuing to do all these things.' News that the settlement had been approved sent Rimmel looking for details. 'I didn't see much about roster limits," he said. 'Everyone wants to talk about NIL and the revenue-sharing and I mean, that's definitely a big piece of it, but I just didn't see anything about the roster limits, and that's obviously my biggest concern.' The answer only presents more questions for Rimmel. 'We were hoping for more of a forced decision with the grandfathering, which now it's only voluntary, so I'm a little skeptical of things because I have zero clue how schools are going to react to that," Rimmel told The Associated Press. Rimmel is still deciding what's best for him, but echoed Moore and Ootsburg in saying that answers are not obvious: 'I'm just hoping the schools can make the right decisions with things and have the best interest of the people who were cut.' ___ AP Sports Writer Cliff Brunt contributed. ___
