This Year’s Countdown To Craziness Is A Preview Of Good Things To Come

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DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA - OCTOBER 04: Cooper Flagg #2 of the Duke Blue Devils dunks during Countdown to Craziness at Cameron Indoor Stadium on October 04, 2024 in Durham, North Carolina. | Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images

This is going to be a fun team

Duke’s annual tradition to publicly start the season, Countdown to Craziness, took place Friday.

It serves a few purposes: first, it’s a public celebration of the program. Second, it’s a chance to introduce the new players. Third, it’s developed into a nice tool for recruits. And fourth, we get our first peek of the team in action. And since almost the entire roster is new, there was a lot to look at.

The scrimmage was split into two games. In Game 1 the rosters were:

Blue

Caleb Foster
Maliq Brown
Kon Knueppel
Darren Harris
Mason Gillis

vs.

White

Cooper Flagg
Isaiah Evans
Tyrese Proctor
Khaman Maluach
Sion James

Second game rosters:

Blue

Foster
Brown
Knueppel
Harris
Gillis
Maluach
James
Begovich
Cameron Sheffield

White

Flagg
Evans
Proctor
Maluach
Brown
Knueppel
Spencer Hubbard
Stanley Borden

A lot of what we saw you sort of expected. The returning guards - Foster and Proctor - were solid although Proctor shot poorly.

Cooper Flagg is trying to live up to his hype and so far he’s pretty close to doing it, which is amazing because the hype is off the charts.

Khaman Maluach is really imposing. He went after one of Flagg’s shots but Flagg nearly got one of his and made him miss the follow-up. You don’t get credit for that but it’s pretty cool nonetheless.

Kon Knueppel’s hype is building steadily, with one NBA type in town apparently saying he looks like a Top Ten draft pick. Bit early really, but exciting to hear. He hit 3-6 across both games.

Darren Harris shot 4-8 overall but just 1-4 from behind the line. Evans hit 4-10 and 3-7 from deep.

Of the transfers, James shot 4-8 and 2-2 from deep, finishing with 10. Mason Gillis finished with 5 points on 1-4 overall and one out of two from deep.

Cameron Sheffield played but did not score. Neil Begovich hit a basket while Spencer Hubbard and Stanley Borden failed to get on the scoreboard.

First things first: while people do show effort, it’s not a real game and they know each other too well to be unpredictable.

That said, there was a lot of good stuff Friday night. Here’s what Coach Scheyer had to say:

“I feel we have the pieces to have a really good team. You can see we’re still far away from putting it all together, and we need to be a defensive-minded team. Naturally, as a younger team, you think about offense more. But for us, that’s going to be the step where we can really become a special team, when we’re thinking about defense first, second, and third, and then offense will take care of it itself. We have a group that plays hard naturally. They compete. It was amazing for me watching. Eight of the 10 players on the court have never played a game here in a Duke uniform. So, I’m just happy they could experience that. Then, obviously, we have a long way to go, just meshing and getting a feel for each other.”

He also spoke about Flagg getting started at Duke and how important he was to this team.

For his part, Flagg said this about playing in Cameron: “Incredible environment. You can’t really describe it, the feeling when you’re out there playing. It was a great feeling, just to be out there and get my first feel in Cameron. I can’t wait [to play another team]. I look forward to that every single day. I’m just trying to get better in practice and looking forward to getting somebody else [to play against].”

And in a useful note, someone asked Knueppel how to pronounce his last name. “K-nipple, he said, like the body part.”

If he wants a free NIL idea, here’s one for a new shirt: “Free the Knueppel!”

Here are some videos from CTC as well.

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This Year’s Countdown To Craziness Is A Preview Of Good Things To Come

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