Will This Be Duke’s Biggest Team Ever?

The team that Jon Scheyer has put together for next season - so far, anyway, it won’t surprise us if he picks up one more player for depth/insurance - is going to be a tough out. Let’s look at it two ways for now.

First in terms of sheer size. This may be one of the biggest Duke teams in history. In the early Bubas era, Duke started 6-11 Jay Buckley, 6-10 Hack Tyson, 6-5 Art Heyman and 6-4 Jeff Mullins, which was big for that era, but there were six players who were 6-3 or under. We’re not sure who the fifth starter was.

In 1978, Mike Gminski was 6-11, Kenny Dennard and Gene Banks were listed at 6-8 and Jim Spanarkel was 6-5. John Harrell was 6-0.

In 1979-80, Gminski, Banks and Dennard were all back and 6-5 Vince Taylor was added. Bob Bender was 6-3.

Mikę Krzyżewski generally emphasized athleticism over size, so while you saw some tall players, the focus was more on athleticism. That said, the 2010 team started 7-1 Brian Zoubek, 6-8 Kyle Singler, 6-8 Lance Thomas, 6-5 Jon Scheyer and 6-2 Nolan Smith.

Last year’s team was notably tall too, with six players over 6-9 but still three rotation players who were 6-3 or less.

Can you recall a team as big as what Duke will have next year? And that team will feature at least two fearsome shot blockers in Cooper Flagg and Khaman Maluach. Take a look:

• Tyrese Proctor 6-5
• Caleb Foster 6-5
• Sion James 6-6
• Mason Gillis 6-6
• Kon Kneuppel 6-6
• Darren Harris 6-6
• Isaiah Evans 6-6
• Maliq Brown 6-8
• Cooper Flagg 6-9
• Pat Ngongba 6-11
• Khaman Maluach 7-1

And it’s not as if the team will sacrifice athleticism for the size. There are some tremendously athletic players in that group. Scoring on Duke is going to be really, really difficult.

And then let’s look at the experience. A few weeks ago, the roster consisted of Proctor and Foster. Proctor will be a junior and Foster a sophomore.

Now there are three new upperclassmen with 10 years of combined experience. Add in Proctor and Foster and that goes to 14.

Fifth Year Players

• Sion James 6-6
• Mason Gillis 6-6

Juniors

• Tyrese Proctor 6-5
• Maliq Brown 6-8

Sophomore

• Caleb Foster 6-5

Freshmen

• Kon Kneuppel 6-6
• Darren Harris 6-6
• Isaiah Evans 6-6
• Cooper Flagg 6-9
• Pat Ngongba 6-11
• Khaman Maluach 7-1

There will be a lot of other things to talk about with this group, but for now, let’s finish up with three point shooting. This team is going to be tough to stop. Look at who is capable of raining threes:

• Mason Gillis
• Darren Harris
• Isaiah Evans
• Kon Knueppel
• Caleb Foster
• Tyrese Proctor
• Sion James

We cut the list there because while we’ve seen that Cooper Flagg can hit threes, we haven’t seen him do it consistently and there are questions about his form. Maluach can reportedly hit them too but it’s not clear how good he is yet and if he’s ready to do it at this level. Both Foster and Proctor had success from outside, but were inconsistent.

Even so, with this group, they may draw less defensive attention and have easier opportunities. Flagg and Maluach cannot be left alone.

And that’s without factoring in normal improvement because both are going to be jacking up shots all summer.

Scheyer knows what he’s doing and doesn’t need our advice, but if it were up to us, we’d like to see another guard, perhaps smaller, just to mix things up a bit. But in general? This is going to be a very exciting team to watch.