Cooper Flagg, the most-hyped recruit of the post-Zion Williamson era in college basketball, has not felt like big sports story midway-ish through a season that’s seen him meet the hype and buoy an excellent Duke team to a top-five national ranking. It’s a prevailing feeling, subjectively, but also one backed by a few objective metrics such as various ways to track audience interest. Flagg is averaging 17.5 points, 8.5 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game while shooting 46% from the floor.
Even Flagg’s ridiculous transition slam of a 7-footer in Tuesday’s blowout win over Pitt failed to receive the type of billing on national morning sports shows you may have expected, though to be fair the NFL Playoffs begin this weekend and the longer-than-ever College Football Playoff has not even kicked off its semifinal matchups.
A good portion of the Jan. 7 episode of CBS Sports’ Eye on College Basketball podcast saw hosts Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander discuss the relative lack of Flagg fever.
Parrish:
Cooper Flagg is the projected No. 1 pick of the 2025 NBA Draft. Incredible talent, starring at Duke, just turned 18-years-old and he’s leading the Blue Devils in five major statistical categories while they’re 13-2 and ranked second in the NET. If you would have told me this, I don’t know, back in the preseason, I would have expected Zion-levels of buzz, but we haven’t really gotten that yet. Norlander, why is Cooper Flagg not a bigger topic of conversation in sports? Great player, great prospect, great team, big brand and outside of our little world, I’ve barely heard anything about him.
Norlander:
I wouldn’t put it that drastically, I still think he’s a pretty big deal. Juxtaposed against Zion Williamson, I think that’s where you get into a little bit of trouble. Because he’s not Zion Williamson. Physically, he’s not the same kind of player, his game isn’t the same.
Cooper has an uncommon path. Essentially he’s a lanky white kid from Maine who got to No. 1 in his given high school class and we never see that, me being tucked in here in the Northeast. Occasionally you’ll get a 5-star prospect somewhere around Massachusetts … but where I live in Connecticut, your Rhode Island, New Hampshires, Vermonts, they don’t produce potentially generational players. And so a lot of (the buzz) was attached to that.
I don’t believe he is capable of being a transformative player in college basketball the way Zion was, but that’s nothing against Flagg whatsoever. …
… Zion set the record for player efficiency in a season. His impact on the sport was so dominant and profound that I just don’t know when we’re going to see something like that again. I remember doing this podcast with you, weekly, asking the same question, ‘When is the last time we had a player resonate like this particularly as a freshman?’
Duke is the No. 1 seed right now. They’re the best team right now in the ACC. There’s a lot more people who are about to pay a lot more attention to college basketball, so I think his big moments are coming. (Editor’s note: Flagg indeed had one such moment, the aforementioned dunk vs. Pitt, a few hours after the podcast taped).
It has been intriguging, for all the hype and buildup of Flagg headed into the season, he has absolutely met the expectations from an on-court performance but has not yet had that ‘kaboom’ moment. I think it’s inevitable. Regardless, I want to applaud him for being as great as he has been.
Parrish:
I guess that’s my larger point, that the hype was pretty intense in the offseason and preseason. He’s actually either met expectations or exceeded them. His team is great. And the hype doesn’t even seem like where it was in the preseason. Here’s an observation:
It didn’t matter what market I was doing a radio hit in during the Zion season; Zion was gonna get asked about it. I could be doing something in LA, New York, Chicago, small-market Middle America – it didn’t matter. Eventually, we were getting to Zion. Everybody wanted to talk about him. Nobody asks me about Cooper Flagg. Unless I”m talking in the Duke market, I don’t get Cooper Flagg questions.
Perhaps it’s just because it’s early, perhaps it’s because we’ve had a pretty busy news cycle … I don’t know exactly why. I’m not suggesting it should be matching Zion levels, because Zion was a different level of everything. But I just thought Cooper Flagg, who has been considered a generational talent for years, playing at Duke, perhaps exceeding expectations and the Blue Devils being actually awesome, I just thought it would be in a different place than it feels like it does right now.
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