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Duke’s season did not go as planned.
Instead of sending Mike Krzyzewski off a champion, K’s farewell tour will be best remembered for not one but two seismic losses to North Carolina.
But don’t cry for the Blue Devils. While they may have fallen short of a national championship and lost eternal bragging rights to their most-loathed rival, the cupboard in Durham is not bare. Far from it, in fact.
While the jury on Jon Scheyer’s success as head coach has yet to be seated, the early returns on his recruiting prowess are in — at least with Krzyzewski and departed assistant Nolan Smith by his side. And they’re overwhelmingly positive. Duke enters next season with the nation’s No. 1 Rivals.com recruiting class by a wide margin.
Scheyer takes over for K loaded with talent
Per Rivals rankings, Duke’s six-man incoming class includes four five-star prospects. Forwards Dariq Whitehead and Kyle Filipowski, and center Dereck Lively rank as the nation’s top three prospects in that order. White and and Lively are consensus projected NBA lottery picks in 2023, while few would be surprised if Filipowski joined them in the top half of next year’s draft
Add in fellow five-star forward Mark Mitchell (No. 20) and four-star guard Jaden Schutt (No. 88), and Duke is expected to jump right back into the mix of title contenders despite the expected departures of Paolo Banchero, AJ Griffin, Mark Williams and Wendell Moore Jr. for their own NBA draft riches.
Will this wealth of talent translate to an NCAA championship or even a Final Four? History suggests that Scheyer has his work cut out for him.
Can one-and-done win in modern NCAA?
Classes like Duke’s incoming group aren’t uncommon in the one-and-done era that took effect in 2006 when the NBA instituted a rule requiring incoming players to be 19 years old and a year removed from high school graduation. A handful of programs — Duke included — have mastered the art of stockpiling talent that might have otherwise been NBA-bound.
More often that not, that talent hasn’t translated to NCAA championship success. In a team sport like basketball, talent isn’t the only factor. Experience and cohesion matter. And NCAA championships have largely been won by teams with next-tier talent that aren’t making their first NCAA tournament runs together.
Kansas won with upperclassmen
Kansas is a prime example. The Jayhawks cut down the nets in New Orleans on Monday with nobody resembling a one-and-done prospect on the roster. The team was led by seniors Ochai Agbaji and David McCormack, with junior Christian Braun and redshirt sophomores Jalen Wilson and Dejuan Harris Jr. joining them in the starting lineup. Only Agbaji is seen as a sure thing for the upcoming NBA draft, projected as a late lottery pick. He joined KU as a three-star prospect.
Fellow NCAA finalist North Carolina had a similar profile. None of its starters Monday were freshmen. National semifinalist Villanova? Same. The Wildcats started four seniors and a sophomore in Saturday’s Final Four loss to Kansas.
Only Duke showed up to New Orleans with a one-and-done makeup featuring a pair of presumed lottery-bound freshmen in Banchero and Griffin. And even the Blue Devils were bolstered by the experience of a junior and two sophomores in the starting lineup.
Experience plus talent trumps superior talent
It turns out Kansas’ formula in 2022 isn’t an outlier in the one-and-done era. It’s the norm.
Baylor won the national championship in 2021 with two juniors, two seniors and a sophomore as its top five scorers. Tony Bennett’s 2019 Virginia Cavaliers boasted a similar profile with four juniors among their five leading scorers. Redshirt sophomore De’Andre Hunter developed into a lottery pick, but arrived in Charlottesville as the nation’s 60th-ranked recruit.
In 2018, Villanova featured a pseudo one-and-done player in Omari Spellman, who left for the NBA after his redshirt freshman season. He was surrounded by three juniors and a sophomore among the team’s leading scorers. Roy Williams’ last North Carolina championship team in 2017 featured a one-and-done prospect in Tony Bradley. But he was a role player on a team featuring two junior and two senior starters who had Final Four experience after losing the 2016 national championship game.
Which brings things back to Jay Wright’s first title team at Villanova. Jalen Brunson started as a five-star freshman. But he stuck around for two more seasons and another national title. In 2016, he was joined by two juniors and two seniors in the Wildcats’ top five scorers.
One-and-done can absolutely win, of course
You have to look to 2015 to find the most recent team to translate one-and-done talent into an NCAA championship. That team, of course, was Duke. Five-star prospects Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow and Tyus Jones led the Blue Devils to a win over fellow No. 1 seed Wisconsin in the national championship that year before bolting to the NBA as first-round draft picks.
That season was perhaps the peak of the recruiting wars between Krzyzewski and Kentucky’s John Caliipari. Kentucky featured the only class to rival Duke’s in 2015 with four five-star prospects including future NBA stars Karl-Anthony Towns and Devin Booker. Those Wildcats lost to Wisconsin in the Final Four.
Krzyzewski’s Blue Devils won one other championship in the one-and-done era in 2010. But that team featuring Kyle Singler, Nolan Smith and Scheyer was most definitely not a one-and-done team. There wasn’t a freshman to be found in the starting lineup.
Calipari’s mixed bag at Kentucky
Calipari is the undisputed king of one-and-done. Since he took over at Kentucky, the Wildcats have delivered 27 one-and-done freshmen who joined the NBA as first-round draft picks. They include some of the NBA’s brightest stars in All-Stars Towns, Booker, John Wall, Anthony Davis, DeMarcus Cousins, Julius Randle and Bam Adebayo.
That talent translated into four Final Fours and a national title in 2012 led by Davis. He and fellow five-star freshman Michael Kidd-Gilchrist went one-two in the ensuing NBA draft that featured three Kentucky freshmen selected in the first round. And while four Final Fours and a national championship in 13 seasons are cause for celebration in most college towns, Lexington expects more. Especially with this kind of talent. The Kentucky faithful are getting restless amid a Final Four drought that dates back to 2015.
What does this mean for Scheyer?
One-and-done can certainly get the job done. It’s just not the likeliest path to success. It’s a lesson Penny Hardaway is learning in Memphis. He has landed two consensus No. 1 classes in four seasons coaching his alma mater. He has one trip to the NCAA tournament’s second round to show for it.
It’s a lesson Duke demonstrated perhaps most spectacularly in 2019 when a freshman class featuring Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett and Cam Reddish fell short of the Final Four courtesy of a more experienced Michigan State team. But if having too much young talent is a challenge, sign every NCAA coach up for those problems. Bill Self, Hubert Davis and Wright will surely be aiming for and landing elite prospects in upcoming classes alongside Scheyer and Calipari.
For Scheyer, the talent next season could set up unfair expectations in an already pressure-packed rookie season replacing a legend at his alma mater. If Duke comes up short next season, just remember that he won’t be the first head coach to fall short of the expectations that come with landing a star-laden freshman class.