AP Names Cooper Flagg 1st Team All-American

What a privilege we have had this year!

Great but not surprising news for Cooper Flagg as Duke’s versatile and dominant freshman has been named an All-American.

Not only that, he was named unanimously. Making it as a freshman is pretty spectacular, but unanimously? That’s really big.

Also on the team: Auburn’s Johni Broome, Alabama’s Mark Sears, Purdue’s Braden Smith and Florida’s Walter Clayton.

Broome was also unanimous.

Here’s what Duke coach Jon Scheyer said about his young star: “He’s doing things nobody really has ever done before. And he’s not about numbers. I’m telling you, when this dude goes home, somebody says to him, ‘Man, you had 42, six and seven,’ he’ll say, ‘OK, cool.’ That’s not what he’s about, which to me makes it even better because you can get caught up with that, especially as a young player.”

What’s special about Flagg is that he dominates the game, but not necessarily statistically. He just cooks. He gets the basket you need when you need it. He moves the ball to where the defense isn’t, or to where someone else can get it to an open shooter. He might just pressure the offense with a slight tweak on defense and force the ball to a weak shooter.

The only drag about Flagg is that so much of what he does doesn’t necessarily translate to TV. If you were standing on the edge of a court and watching closely, our guess is you’d see someone operating at near genius level. And to be fair, a lot of guys understand the game on that level.

The unusual thing is to understand it on that level and to also have an immense natural talent.

Flagg, in other words, is the whole package.