To make the most of Cooper Flagg, Jon Scheyer built the best roster in college basketball

DURHAM, N.C. — At exactly 10 a.m. on a recent Wednesday in March, the door to Jon Scheyer’s fifth-floor office swings shut, and Duke’s head coach — to-go coffee in hand — settles into his seat at the head of a conference table.

“We’re just fighting,” Scheyer says, beginning the day’s staff meeting, “for inches.”

As rain pelts the floor-to-ceiling windows opposite the conference table, a flatscreen behind Scheyer illuminates. In a few minutes, he’ll lead his staff through its customary game tape breakdown, this time of Duke’s win over Wake Forest two days prior. A stack of orange Nike shoeboxes is crammed into the crevice between Scheyer’s sofa and mini fridge. On the other side is a black folding chair Scheyer kept from his 2010 national championship team as a player, with a pair of basketball sneakers resting on the seat.

All in all, a relatively innocuous epicenter of the best college basketball team in the country, one the Blue Devils hope can make a national championship run.

Before the 37-year-old Scheyer flips on any film, though, he turns the meeting over to Russ Rausch: the Blue Devils’ mental skills coach, who has worked with the program since last spring, a month after Duke’s season-ending Elite Eight loss to NC State.

In the wake of that defeat, Scheyer took a step back and self-scouted his second season as the Blue Devils’ head coach since taking over for Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski. Objectively, it’d been a success: 27 wins and his first second-weekend stay in the NCAA Tournament. But the longer he marinated, the less he shared that sentiment. “It was like pulling teeth a little bit to get to where we needed to go,” he tells The Athletic, “and so I knew some serious changes needed to be made.”

Driving that rationale was Scheyer’s understanding of who he had coming in: Cooper Flagg, the front-runner to be the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft since the time he turned 16, and the type of generational player who makes anything possible. Scheyer knew Flagg’s college stopover would last only a year, so he had to capitalize on a comet.

“This is kind of the f— it year,” Scheyer says. “Sometimes you feel you have time in this stuff and how to build something. But ultimately, I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn’t follow my instincts and do what had to be done.”

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What ensued charted the course for Duke’s season ahead: Four former five-star recruits (and seven players overall) transferring out of the program; a complete reimagining of his roster and what he wanted to prioritize; and a deeper understanding of the mental and emotional maturity it takes to excel. It all led Duke to its current perch as the No. 1 seed in the East Region and the betting favorite to cut down the nets in San Antonio — almost exactly a year after Scheyer’s program seemed to be at a crossroads.

So now, with the gift of hindsight?

“No regrets,” Scheyer says. “If we didn’t go through that NC State moment, we’re not having the year that we’re having now. No question about it. Because you wouldn’t have looked at it the same way as needing to make those changes.”

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There’s no official group chat. But the fraternity exists all the same.

Scheyer doesn’t advertise it, but he has a circle of six coaching peers who he regularly chats and consults with. Will Hardy, the Utah Jazz’s head coach, 37, is one of them. So are Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla, 36, and Brad Stevens, the franchise’s 48-year-old general manager. (Coincidentally, during Scheyer’s senior season, Duke knocked off Mazzulla and West Virginia in the Final Four, before downing Stevens-coached Butler in the national championship.)

There’s also Chris Finch, 55, from the Minnesota Timberwolves, who coached Scheyer during his brief G-League stint, before Scheyer’s career-ending eye injury. And lastly, two with Duke ties: 40-year-old Los Angeles Lakers coach JJ Redick, who preceded Scheyer at Duke and who was at Scheyer’s camp this summer in Durham when he got his current job; and Quin Snyder, 58, of the Atlanta Hawks.

Five sitting NBA head coaches, and a sixth who used to be one, who led a true mid-major to consecutive national championship games in college.

“I’m fortunate, man, to have those six guys,” Scheyer says. “It’s been fun for me to develop (relationships with them) and watch them and study them.”

But one particular conversation with one of them — Stevens — has proven particularly fruitful.

Scheyer was ruminating on what he wanted his third roster to look like. He knew Flagg, a 6-foot-9 defensive savant and exceptional finisher at the rim, would be the sun around which everything orbited — an against-the-grain philosophy amidst the oldest era in college hoops history, but an understandable one. How would he complement Flagg, though? Once he developed a theory, he phoned his friend.

“There was a vision that I had for how I wanted us to play, how we could put a team together,” Scheyer says. “You take the things that you really like, and you say, I’m not going to do the things you really don’t like.”

Stevens’ response, and the line that stuck with Scheyer? There’s no substitute for length. It had become one of Stevens’ guiding philosophies in building a team capable of winning back-to-back NBA titles.

“If you can have length, toughness and shooting,” Scheyer concurs, “that’s a hell of a combo.”

Scheyer’s first squad, as a rookie head coach, had been defensively oriented, built around the unique abilities of 7-foot center Dereck Lively II, who started for the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals a year after leaving Duke as a lottery pick. Scheyer relished that style and related to it from his playing days. But it wasn’t just the strategy that Scheyer loved about his first team’s defensive fortitude; it was the competitiveness required, the sheer effort, to be dominant on that end of the floor. But on the flip side, the team struggled at times to score. Only one player shot better than 35 percent from 3. Those Blue Devils rarely got to the foul line.

Scheyer’s second team was the opposite: An elite shooting outfit, top-15 in the country from 3-point range, predicated on three starting guards and their ability to stroke it from anywhere. But that shooting came at a cost — namely, to Duke’s size and defensive capability because of it. With three starting guards 6-foot-5 or shorter, and no natural rim protector, the Blue Devils’ defense waned at the most inopportune times.

Scheyer’s theory, then, supported by Stevens: What if we had the best of both?

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Scheyer had two incoming talents he was ready to bet the house on: Flagg, the No. 1 player in the 2024 recruiting class, and fellow five-star recruit Khaman Maluach, a 7-foot-2 center cut from the same cloth as Lively.

“I felt Cooper was that caliber of player. Felt Khaman was that caliber of player,” Scheyer says. “I wasn’t going to screw it up with not getting the right pieces around those guys.”

Despite hailing from tiny Newport, Maine, Flagg grew up a Duke fan — and despite a late push from New England’s most prominent program, UConn, he committed to the Blue Devils in October 2023. Scheyer watched over the following 18 months as Flagg grew from a gifted youth to someone capable of holding his own on the same court as LeBron James and Kevin Durant at Team USA’s pre-Olympic training camp last summer.

The coach also knew by the end of last season that Jared McCain and Kyle Filipowski, his two leading scorers, were NBA-bound. He learned almost immediately that rising junior Tyrese Proctor, a 6-foot-5 point guard, also intended to return — but everyone else’s status was up in the air.

In Proctor, Flagg and Maluach, Scheyer had three cornerstones. He also had four other incoming freshmen — Kon Knueppel, Isaiah Evans, Patrick Ngongba and Darren Harris — who he deemed instant impact. “I didn’t know if they’d be one-and-done good,” Scheyer adds, “but I felt they were wired the right way, and their talent was that legit where that overcomes the youth.” That was only seven spots accounted for, though. Half a team.

What came next was the toughest part of Duke’s entire offseason — and, truthfully, of Scheyer’s tenure to date.

“We had very honest conversations with everybody that either did (plan of transferring) or was unsure of what to do,” Scheyer says. “Basically, I was in the mode of not making any promises.”

Not regarding playing time, NIL, starting spots — nothing. Within a matter of days, the exodus began: former five- and four-star recruits flooding the transfer portal in mass. Duke by no means was a bastion of consistency the past 15 seasons — how could it, as arguably the most proficient participant of the one-and-done model — but this? It was unlike anything the Blue Devils had experienced. The era of unprecedented player movement and NIL guarantees elsewhere had finally made its way to Durham.

“Hard truths,” associate head coach Chris Carrawell calls the conversations Scheyer had to have. “That’s growth, to have those conversations. And he didn’t back down. Stayed steadfast with what he wanted it to look like.”

Scheyer told all his players that he would remain committed to them — as long as they still wanted to be at Duke, that is, and accepted what that entailed.

“This place is built from competition and guys not being afraid of that,” Scheyer says, “and this team really embodies that to me.”

The only other rotational player who opted to stay was rising sophomore guard Caleb Foster. Otherwise, with a clean slate, Scheyer attacked the transfer portal as aggressively as the program ever has: Keying in not on players who had the length, toughness and shooting he’d discussed with Stevens, but ideally those who also brought some veteran savvy to a team whose best players would be teenagers. Scheyer and his wife, Marcelle, were scheduled to take a five-day vacation to Mexico starting Monday, April 22 — but he told her he wasn’t sure he could get on the plane if he didn’t have a better sense of his roster.

Two days before they were slated to leave, 6-foot-6 forward Mason Gillis — fresh off of a national championship game appearance at Purdue — announced his commitment. The next day, Syracuse forward Maliq Brown — a 6-foot-9 All-ACC defender — told Scheyer he was in, too; Brown announced his decision on Monday while Scheyer and his wife were midair.

When the Scheyers returned from Mexico, Duke’s head coach still thought he was one piece short of having a true championship contender, so the Blue Devils flirted with a few other guards. “The best thing we did was say no,” Scheyer says. “Especially saying no to the portal with guys we weren’t sure were a great fit … and then Sion (James) went in, and we were like, we’re sure.”

When James came on his visit from Tulane, Scheyer ended the trip with a one-on-one conversation in Duke’s film room. Scheyer made his final pitch: how he believed the 6-foot-6 guard, who’s built like a freight train, was the missing piece. James sat and listened, never interrupting while Scheyer explained his vision of James as a perfect third guard behind Proctor and Foster. When Scheyer finished talking, he asked if James had any questions. Only one:

I just want to make sure if I come here, if you feel I beat those guys out or if I earn it, will I start?

“I don’t need to be promised anything. I don’t care to be,” James recalls. “I just wanted to know that if I did my job, then it’s going to be rewarded.”

Scheyer grinned when James asked him. Now that was the kind of player he wanted.

And just like that, Duke’s roster was set.

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When Scheyer was in Mexico, Hardy texted him with a recommendation. He knew Scheyer was seeking a sports psychologist — “somebody to think the game with me,” Scheyer says — and who could help him best handle the emotional rigor of pursuing a championship.

Hardy had just the guy: Rausch, who he’d started working with upon Mazzulla’s prior recommendation.

“When I was in Mexico,” Scheyer jokes, “I got a lot of s— done.”

Rausch did his first Zoom with Duke’s staff in May, then made his first trip to Durham in June, spending three days — with about five or six hours of programming each day — with players and coaches alike.

Rausch is not a clinically trained sports psychologist, but rather a former hedge fund executive from Chicago. He eventually founded Vision Pursue with a mission to “dramatically improve the way people experience life by improving their mindset with mental training, mindfulness and meditation.”

A key tenet of Rausch’s mental performance coaching is teaching coaches to provide their players with specific instructions and information, instead of speaking in generalities.

Rather than “start fast,” for example, how could a team start fast? What specific, tangible instructions could help them to accomplish that, instead of platitudes?

Scheyer related to that. He connected with Houston Rockets coach Ime Udoka a few years back via a Team USA coaching session, and was taken aback by Udoka’s communication with players. “He’s just matter of fact, saying what they need to do,” Scheyer says. “There’s not the motivation in it, which I’m used to.”

But in Duke’s practice hours after its staff meeting, it’s clear Scheyer has adopted that same philosophy. Drilling a new set, he grabs the ball and walks through exactly where he wants his ballhandler to go: “Pull the help side, and this should be open.” After two runs through the play, Scheyer introduces a second option off the action, explaining the order of reads he wants. “That’s the sequence,” he declares, before blowing his whistle to restart practice.

Back in Scheyer’s morning staff meeting, Rausch reiterated one of Duke’s mottos this season: “Do simple better.”

It’s a testament to a team that has panned out exactly as Scheyer envisioned, if not better. The Blue Devils — the longest team in America, with every rotation player 6-foot-5 or taller — enter the NCAA Tournament as the only team in the sport ranked top-five in adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency, per KenPom. Scheyer’s defense can play any scheme, and his offense has multiple ways to beat opponents — even sans Flagg, who missed Duke’s past two games with a sprained ankle. And that generational recruit Scheyer built everything around? He’s already been named ACC Player of the Year, a first-team All-American and could become only the fourth freshman ever to win the Wooden Award (joining Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis and Zion Williamson).

Plus, the level of competition Scheyer sought — the one he sold James on — has also materialized. James began this season as one of Duke’s top reserves, but when the Blue Devils went 1-2 in their first three high-profile nonconference games, Scheyer recognized that James had earned a starting role. So he did what he promised: He shifted Foster, one of his two returners, to the bench. Duke is 26-1 since, with James emerging as arguably the team’s best point-of-attack defender.

Rausch has continued doing weekly Zooms with Duke’s staff, and visits campus at least once a month for work with the team at large. Recently, though, with the postseason approaching, his message has taken on a tightened focus: Namely, that as the Blue Devils enter a win-or-go-home tournament, it’s OK for them to acknowledge that every upcoming game isn’t the same as the 34 they’ve played so far.

Instead, he’s encouraged Duke’s players and coaches to “be unf—withable.”

“Being unf—withable is realizing that I’m going to feel emotion, I’m going to feel doubt, I’m going to feel fear,” Rausch says. “All that stuff is coming my way — but I know how to handle it. … If you’re bulletproof on, ‘Hey, when I miss a shot, I feel some kind of way, but I know how to get over that very quickly,’ then that’s what kind of changes everything.”

And it’s also what — coupled with Scheyer’s roster, the best in the sport — has Duke on the brink of hanging a sixth national championship banner.

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Lance King / Getty Images)

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