How’s Duke’s Roster Looking?
This should be another fun team
Duke is obviously losing a tremendous amount to the NBA Draft with Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel and Khaman Maluach all expected to go early and Tyrese Proctor and Sion James also likely to be selected, but it’s not like the cupboard is bare.
For one thing, Duke will again have a very tall team (see below) and will likely build around Cameron Boozer.
An elegant 6-9 talent, Boozer is NBA ready and with a solid all around game, will give Jon Scheyer the type of versatile talent he prefers.
Duke is also waiting to hear what Dame Sarr, an Italian player, is going to do. He has been linked to Illinois, which ultimately chose Cal’s Andrej Stojakovic. Then he was thought to be a Kansas lean but now appears to be a possible Blue Devil. He’s 6-7 with a 7-0 wingspan, so you can see how he would help.
The immediate lesson from Sarr’s recruitment is that nothing is done until it’s actually done, so don’t count your chickens until they’re hatched and all of that.
That said, we did include Sarr on this prospective roster update to illustrate Duke’s potential height. As he’s often said, Scheyer is a defense-first coach and he clearly has a preference for taller teams.
It’s an interesting difference from Mike Krzyzewski’s approach which emphasized athletic versatility. One of our favorite K teams was 1987 when he started Danny Ferry (6-10), John Smith (6-7), Robert Brickey (6-5), Phil Henderson (6-4) and Quin Snyder (6-3).
On a minor side note, not that it’s important, but Duke has been slightly exaggerating some heights. The NBA Combine revealed that Cooper Flagg is actually 6-7 1⁄2 and Kon Knueppel is closer to 6-5 rather than 6-7.
It’s nothing new of course. NC State did this constantly during the Norm Sloan era when Tommy Burleson, Phil Spence, David Thompson and Monte Towe all lost a couple of inches when they left Raleigh.
And it doesn’t matter really, because as Coach K’s approach proved, if you can play, your size is really secondary.
- Pat Ngongba (6-11)
- Iffy Ufochukwu (6-11)
- Cameron Boozer (6-9)
- Maliq Brown (6-9)
- Nik Khamenia (6-8)
- Dame Sarr (6-7)
- Isaiah Evans (6-6)
- Darren Harris (6-6)
- Cam Sheffield (6-6)
- Jack Scott - (6-6)
- Caleb Foster (6-5)
- Cayden Boozer (6-5)