With Roster Construction Always A Gamble, Jon Scheyer Is All In On His Guys

Now officially official with Isaiah Evans withdrawing from the NBA Draft

In the new, transfer portal and NIL driven age of college basketball, every offseason feels like a roll of the dice.

Any player, regardless of performance or projected role, could move on to greener (and richer) pastures. The top ranked players in the transfer portal bust as much as they hit, while new stars inevitably arise from the bottom of those rankings. Letters of intent for incoming freshmen are now more memorandum of understanding than contract.

In an environment with so much uncertainty, it’s much easier to “win the offseason” and a spot atop the preseason rankings (looking at you, Kansas!) than field a squad that cuts down nets in the Spring. The best a coach can do is make the best bet they can with the information available to them, and then let the dice fall where they may.

That makes it all the more noteworthy that Jon Scheyer has conspicuously chosen to bet on his own players this offseason.

That strategy was cemented earlier this week when Isaiah Evans withdrew his name from consideration for the NBA Draft. While Duke will lose its entire starting lineup from last season’s Final Four squad, they will return almost every bench contributor (minor super senior Mason Gillis) from that team. Caleb Foster, Maliq Brown, Pat Ngongba, Darren Harris, and Evans each had moments last season where they showcased high ceilings and the potential to flourish in a larger role. Now, all will have the chance to do so in their second (or for Foster, third) year in Durham.

For that reason, the 2025-26 Blue Devils will likely have a somewhat retro feel. Yes, their best player will in all likelihood be surefire one-and-done Cameron Boozer, and a transfer will likely be a major contributor (be it Cedric Coward or someone else if he elects to remain in the NBA draft). But the five returning Blue Devils, along with likely multi-year incoming freshmen Cayden Boozer and Nik Khamenia, will round out the rotation. Duke’s ceiling next year will be driven more by the development of multi-year Blue Devils rather than the otherworldly talent of multiple NBA-bound freshmen or a hodgepodge of newcomers gathered from the portal.

Of course, there will inevitably be those who question these choices in roster construction. Some will pine after shiny new toys atop the transfer portal rankings and ask whether Duke didn’t have the NIL support to bring them to Durham. Some will see the sky as falling now that the Blue Devils don’t have the consensus No. 1 freshman recruiting class. Some will spend all summer poking holes in the games of the returning players and claiming they don’t give Duke a chance at its sixth National Championship.

To all those fans, I say this: remember that Scheyer chose this strategy, and he didn’t have to. Last offseason, the expectation was that Scheyer would build his roster by betting on sophomore surges from Sean Stewart and TJ Power, alongside returning veterans Mark Mitchell and Jeremy Roach, to complement Cooper Flagg. That would have been the easy choice, and likely would have led to Duke being ranked higher in the summer “way too early” rankings. But Scheyer self-scouted his own players and had hard conversations about how they would fit around Flagg—and all four players went elsewhere. Instead, Scheyer bet on newcomers like Kon Kneuppel, Sion James, and Brown (amongst others), and it paid off.

Scheyer easily could have gone that route again this offseason, scouring the portal for the best fits to complement another star freshman (although probably not to Flagg’s level) in Cameron Boozer. Scheyer likely did another self-scout, and came to a different conclusion than this time last season—the best options were already on his roster. So, he instead put his efforts into an equally challenging task: convincing those players to return to Durham to compete for a role, rather than go elsewhere where promises for more minutes and money are easier to come by.

That’s all the evidence Duke fans should need that the 2025-26 team will remain a National Championship contender. Scheyer has proven as adept a roster manager as any in his three seasons at the helm, rarely missing out on players he prioritizes. This offseason, he prioritized re-recruiting his own players and went five-for-five. While a few pieces to the puzzle (Coward foremost among them) remain, Scheyer has consciously decided to bet on his own guys this offseason. That should be as exciting for Blue Devil fans than a top ranked transfer or another one-and-one freshman—because Scheyer has shown that when he can put his chips on the players he trusts, great things happen.