Tag: Duke Blue Devils

Duke basketball leans on Cameron Boozer, and he leans on Arkansas in 80-71 win

Chicago

There had not yet been a night when Duke had to lean on Cameron Boozer, to ask him to be the star he is supposed to be. Most games, he’s played fewer than 30 minutes, still scoring more than 20 points in three of those, but generally idling as the Blue Devils cruise.

Then came Thursday against Arkansas, when no one else seemed to be able to do much on offense. Isaiah Evans and Dame Sarr had embarrassing airballs. Patrick Ngongba Jr. hit the side of the backboard, although he eventually tapped in his own miss. And if that was bad, Duke’s defense was somehow worse, letting the Razorbacks back into a game Duke should have put away early in the second half.

Boozer put down his shoulder, bullied his way toward the basket and dragged Duke to victory. The Razorbacks never had an answer for him. He was too big, too strong, too determined. It was just a question of Boozer taking control, which he did in the tensest moments of any second half the Blue Devils have yet played.

Without him, without a performance like this, Duke is no longer undefeated. Without all that, the Blue Devils don’t beat Arkansas 80-71 in this post-turkey tilt with the Hogs to move to 8-0 after their third true test of the season. They don’t pass this one without Boozer.

“We realized that they weren’t helping from the other big and they don’t really have an answer for me,” Boozer said. “So, I mean, coach is on me, ‘Get downhill, get to the rim. They can’t stop you.’ I did a lot of that second half for sure.”

Duke’s Cameron Boozer (12) celebrates with Caleb Foster against the Arkansas Razorbacks during the first half of the CBS Thanksgiving Classic at the United Center on November 27, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. Michael Reaves Getty Images

At one point, he grabbed a defensive rebound and went the length of the court for a dunk, a one-man unstoppable offense the Blue Devils couldn’t do without. He hit two 3-pointers, but it wasn’t his outside game that got Duke through, it was what he did in the lane, backing down opponents, leaning into them, pushing and shoving his way into spots where he could get the ball into the basket. Once, even, by accident. In the first half, he accounted for a personal 10-0 run, scoring three baskets and setting up the fourth.

“As soon as he figured out, ‘I can put my shoulder in this guy’s chest and move him,’ that’s all he did,” Arkansas coach John Calipari said. “You can try 12 different things, or do what you do well and just do it over and over and over.”

On this night, the numbers truly reflected his impact on the game: 35 points, nine rebounds and three assists, while drawing seven fouls in 36 minutes — the most he’s played in a Duke uniform, because the Blue Devils hadn’t needed him like this before. And in this moment of need, he delivered.

“What he’s done, it’s been incredible,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “I think him and I both know there’s been more there, as crazy as that sounds, and I still think there’s a lot more there. For me, the biggest difference for a freshman is learning how to play through contact and the decision-making, the decisiveness. He can do so many different things.”

Duke coach Jon Scheyer talks with Cayden Boozer during action against the Arkansas Razorbacks during the first half of the CBS Thanksgiving Classic at the United Center on November 27, 2025 in Chicago. Michael Reaves Getty Images

It was only the third time Boozer cracked the 30-minute mark this season, and the other two aren’t surprising: Duke’s other two neutral-site showcases against quality opposition, against Texas in Charlotte and against Kansas at Madison Square Garden.

Because of his father, and because of his decision to follow him to Duke along with twin brother Cayden, and because of his own reputation, Cameron Boozer arrived on campus as a new phenomenon, perhaps not as preternaturally marketable as Cooper Flagg, his immediate predecessor as Duke’s anointed freshman, but a sensation in his own right.

If he hadn’t had a game like this yet, it was perhaps only because Duke hadn’t needed it from him yet. But with the Blue Devils out of sorts, they leaned on Boozer and he leaned on the Razorbacks, over and over again. It wasn’t the 35 he scored against Indiana State, but that was a 38-point win. This was a one-possession game with as few as three minutes to go, and the Blue Devils trailed by as many as seven midway through the second half. And it wasn’t until the final minutes that Duke really seemed to dig in on defense.

Duke’s Cameron Boozer (12) celebrates with Caleb Foster against the Arkansas Razorbacks during the first half of the CBS Thanksgiving Classic at the United Center on November 27, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. Michael Reaves Getty Images

Combine all of that from Boozer with a big late 3-pointer from Caleb Foster, with 15 points and a career-high eight assists in the same building where he set his career-high for scoring as a freshman — “good vibes,” Foster said — and it was enough to keep Duke undefeated at the beginning of the toughest stretch of the Blue Devils’ schedule.

From here, it’s back home to play Florida on Tuesday and then a trip to Michigan State — undefeated after a 16-point win over North Carolina earlier Thursday — before a return to the Garden to play Texas Tech. (There’s a home game against Lipscomb in there, too, which is threatening only as a potential trip game, no offense to the Bisons.)

Talented freshmen like Boozer don’t come along often, even if they come along more often at Duke than anywhere else. They don’t always take over games, or flash the true depth and dimension of their talent and ability. But there are nights like this, when the best player on the floor is truly the best player on the floor, when the opposing coach says “Cameron was a beast,” when one player can rise above and be the difference between winning and losing.

And was.

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This story was originally published November 27, 2025 at 10:48 PM.

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Luke DeCock

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Sports columnist Luke DeCock joined The News & Observer in 2000 and has covered nine Final Fours, the Summer Olympics, the Super Bowl and the Carolina Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup win in 2006. He is a past president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, was the 2020 winner of the National Headliner Award as the country’s top sports columnist and is a three-time North Carolina Sportswriter of the Year.

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November 27, 2025
Duke’s Manny Diaz the latest ACC coach to teach Bill Belichick a lesson

Chapel Hill

From the moment he was hired, the other ACC coaches have been waiting for their moment to match wits with Bill Belichick. Thinking. Planning. Scheming. Lining up to outsmart the master. Most of them have.

Manny Diaz was the latest Saturday night. He beat Belichick at his own game, appropriated one of his own gimmicks and used it against him — and then caught North Carolina on a game-changing fake field goal that Belichick and the Tar Heels never saw coming and left them for dead.

Belichick has been waiting 72 years to “beat Duke,” according to his purported first words, and he’ll have to wait a little longer after yet another ACC coach got the best of him in Duke’s 32-25 win. Eight rings, but he may never ring the Victory Bell. Belichick had to walk back to the North Carolina locker room past the Duke players ringing it over and over on the UNC logo at midfield.

North Carolina coach Bill Belichick embraces Duke coach Manny Diaz following the Blue Devils’ 32-25 victory on Saturday, November 22, 2025 at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, N.C. Robert Willett rwillett@newsobserver.com

It was a slower walk than Duke kicker Todd Pelino’s 26-yard sprint to just short of the goal line with 2:20 to go and Duke down one after holder Kade Reynoldson flipped him the ball, but just as memorable in its own way. The Tar Heels had fought their way back into the lead only to get suckered so badly like that. It was no coincidence: Diaz told Pelino and Reynoldson before the game to be ready to run that fake, one the Blue Devils have been working on for weeks and ran flawlessly in practice on Tuesday.

Duke’s Todd Pelino runs the ball after faking a field goal attempt during the second half of the Blue Devils’ 32-25 victory over North Carolina on Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025, at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, N.C. Kaitlin McKeown The News & Observer

Plans like that have been in the works across the ACC, marinating, fermenting, stewing. Diaz and his staff went to one of them early, scoring Duke’s second touchdown by using the four-lineman formation Belichick used in a playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens in 2014 and was quickly declared illegal by the NFL. Tight end Jeremiah Hasley lined up as an eligible left tackle and was left uncovered by the caught-unaware Tar Heels for an easy 14-yard touchdown catch.

“They must have assumed I was a tackle,” Hasley said. “I wouldn’t take that as a compliment. I was able to hide when we huddled up. They just never picked me up as a receiving threat.”

Duke’s Jeremiah Hasley runs the ball into the end zone for a touchdown during the first half of the Blue Devils’ game against North Carolina on Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025, at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, N.C. Kaitlin McKeown The News & Observer

This is what happens when you come roaring into a job letting everyone know that you invented the sport and give competent college coaches 10 months to stew over it. From the moment Belichick came in the door, his ACC peers have been scheming against him, just to prove a point.

Dabo Swinney ran a trick play for a touchdown on the first play of the game, a leave-no-doubt Clemson thumping. Jake Dickert, who has made a lot more progress in Year 1 at Wake Forest than Belichick at UNC, ran up the score after Belichick called a pointless late time out. Diaz threw one of Belichick’s own gimmicks back at him — and then made sure to point out who should actually get the credit for it.

“I don’t know that’s his invention,” Diaz scoffed. “That play’s been around in college ball for a long, long time.”

Given that level of communal disdain among Diaz and his peers, dear God, what’s Dave Doeren been cooking up this whole time? In the wake of Friday night’s win over Florida State, the N.C. State coach was openly giddy at the prospect of welcoming “baby blue” to Raleigh next Saturday, already trying to pump up a crowd that had barely had time to get home from Carter-Finley.

Then again, North Carolina does enough self-inflicted damage, sometimes all the effort to shove Belichick’s arrogance back in his face is almost overkill. The Tar Heels are undisciplined enough to make Chuck Amato blush, taking 12 penalties including three unsportsmanlike-conduct fouls in the fourth quarter alone. (Duke had three penalties. Total. All night.)

That Hasley touchdown that threw Belichick’s own gambit back in his face? Duke only had the chance because serial offender Marcus Allen turned a missed Duke field goal into a first down by roughing the kicker.

“There was defensive penalties and there was offensive penalties,” Belichick said. “We had them both. We had too many penalties on everything.”

North Carolina coach Bill Belichick shakes hands with Duke coach Manny Diaz following the Blue Devils’ 32-25 victory on Saturday, November 22, 2025 at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill, N.C. Robert Willett rwillett@newsobserver.com

That’s not even North Carolina’s biggest problem. The Tar Heels arrived at these two rivalry games with the potential to salvage at least something from this season, and Kenan Stadium had none of the buzz that accompanied the opener against TCU, all those months ago when there was still hope this operation could work, when it was only partly a laughingstock.

North Carolina went and paid Belichick billions to give its football program some juice, and it’s a completely juiceless operation. The offense is plain. The defense too often has what are known to football experts as Traditional UNC Tackling issues. The penalties are infuriating. The crowd is barely engaged.

What’s changed, other than the finances? Other than missing a bowl game for the first time in seven seasons, barring an unlikely win over State and some APR shenanigans?

Belichick talked a lot about beating Duke, as a toddler and as a head coach. But there’s always an argument to be made, especially in football, that beating State is as important, if not more.

“I’m not, like, real smart but I’ve learned that pretty quickly,” Belichick said. “I understand the rivalry.”

The Tar Heels at least showed some fight in this one, rallying in the second half to demand everything Duke had. But North Carolina faces the very real possibility of going 0-for-NC if it can’t pull an upset at Carter-Finley. And if Duke was this ready for this, just imagine what N.C. State has planned.

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This story was originally published November 22, 2025 at 8:34 PM.

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Luke DeCock

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Sports columnist Luke DeCock joined The News & Observer in 2000 and has covered nine Final Fours, the Summer Olympics, the Super Bowl and the Carolina Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup win in 2006. He is a past president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, was the 2020 winner of the National Headliner Award as the country’s top sports columnist and is a three-time North Carolina Sportswriter of the Year.

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November 22, 2025
If ‘Beat Duke’ were really Bill Belichick’s first words, time to make them count

It’s the game Little Billy was born to coach, if you believe bigger Bill. Bill Belichick’s claim that “Billy’s first words were ‘Beat Duke’” at his introductory press conference was more engagement with what the job he took actually entails than he’s shown since.

If you believe it, that is. Very little about the Belichick hagiography has proven accurate in his time at North Carolina, although Saturday’s Duke game — and next week’s Lamish Duck Bowl against N.C. State — does give him one last chance to get out an old hoodie and polish what’s left of this dismal debut season at least a little bit.

The one moment Belichick dug into the truly collegiate part of the job, the local rivalry stuff that runs as hot here as it does anywhere, even in years like this when everyone has long ago moved along to basketball, was probably the most optimistic moment of that entire event. Maybe he did get it, after all? Of course, then he would have known that State’s the real football rival, not that Duke hasn’t done its part in recent years.

Subsequent events have proven he didn’t know much after all, from the badly botched roster assembly to the Georgia-style rash of traffic violations to all the stuff in his personal life that has made Belichick and his girlfriend tabloid superstars for 11 months. The Belichick hire certainly put the UNC football program on the front page, but no one realized it was going to be the front page of US Weekly, a fine McClatchy Media journalism product.

These final two games are a chance to put the focus back on football, at the last possible moment. Duke is spiraling, having gone from potential CFP disruptor to battling for bowl eligibility, needing a win over either UNC or Wake Forest. N.C. State may also need a win to become bowl eligible at what could very well be the end of the Dave Doeren era in Raleigh, and if Doeren is done, there would be no better way to go out.

And still, there may be more on the line for North Carolina than either. Two wins gets the Tar Heels into a bowl. Two wins sends them into the offseason with momentum they have struggled to build under Belichick. Two wins go a long way toward silencing the mocking laughter that has wafted on the wind toward Chapel Hill from other corners of the Triangle from the moment North Carolina started writing Belichick great big novelty checks.

Even after getting embarrassed by Wake Forest, the latest low in a memorably mediocre season of mediocre Triangle football — 5-5, 5-5, 4-6 — North Carolina still has a chance to come out on top after a season full of shenanigans, as hard as it is to believe that Doeren could lose a game he’s been thinking about winning for 11 months.

Oddly enough, even with some of Belichick’s strange in-game decisions, coaching overall probably hasn’t been the issue. The defense has improved, and by the historic standards of UNC, anything approaching “vaguely competent” is a veritable miracle. The persistence in sticking with Gio Lopez at quarterback over Max Johnson feels like a business decision, not a football one, but the Tar Heels have been able to run the ball effectively at times. That’s all progress.

It’s everything else that’s gone haywire. Last week, Belichick notified the world that he was not interested in the New York Giants opening in a statement released by North Carolina. Good to know. Thanks. But the fact that he inserted himself into that conversation when the NFL is clearly not going to be his escape route just shows how fractured his worldview is, just as pulling the plug on the documentary he commissioned did.

The hastily announced pivot to focusing on freshman once things started to go sour suggests there’s still no real plan, no real foundation, just a bunch of guys who thought they could come in and do Real Football stuff and outsmart everyone. The reality of college football in 2025 is obviously far different. Maybe he should have prepared that 400-page binder after all. It has been a rude awakening, but there’s also no easy way out for Belichick or North Carolina.

There’s no soft landing in the NFL. If there was ever going to be an agreement on a mutually acceptable buyout, it would have happened in October when both sides were looking for parachutes. If North Carolina’s ever going to get a chance to hire the reset button, it’s going to be costly. But maybe that’s the price to pay for going down this silly road in the first place. Even two wins in the Triangle wouldn’t change the fact that North Carolina’s millions bought it nothing.

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Luke DeCock

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Sports columnist Luke DeCock joined The News & Observer in 2000 and has covered nine Final Fours, the Summer Olympics, the Super Bowl and the Carolina Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup win in 2006. He is a past president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, was the 2020 winner of the National Headliner Award as the country’s top sports columnist and is a three-time North Carolina Sportswriter of the Year.

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November 21, 2025
Kansas’ defense poses new questions for Duke, which digs deep for answers

Caleb Foster (1) of the Duke Blue Devils dribbles against Elmarko Jackson (13) of the Kansas Jayhawks during the first half in the 2025 State Farm Champions Classic at Madison Square Garden on November 18, 2025 in New York City.

Sarah Stier

Getty Images

New York

There were Duke players who had literally never seen anything like this. The big, strong, tough, swarming defense Kansas plays, annually, regardless of changing names and faces, was not only a significant step up in competition five games into some very young careers, it was an awakening.

For Cameron and Cayden Boozer, for Dame Sarr and Nik Khamenia, their first trip to Madison Square Garden with the Blue Devils was a portal into a new world, where the ease with which Duke had dispatched its first four opponents — even Texas — seemed far away.

Even their more veteran teammates didn’t have to carry the load in the past the way they did Tuesday night, thrown into the maw with no escape on the bench. And still. Another test faced. Another test passed.

Duke’s 78-66 win over Kansas in the Champions Classic demanded of Duke some answers to questions the Blue Devils had not yet faced, especially on offense where the easy baskets and open shots Duke had become accustomed to were nowhere in evidence.

Duke’s Isaiah Evans (3) goes to the basket as Kansas’ Tre White (3) during the first half of the Champions Classic at Madison Square Garden on November 18, 2025 in New York City. Getty Images

For the first time, the Blue Devils had to grind out a win, nursing a single-digit second-half lead to the finish, against the best team they have faced yet. Cameron Boozer had 18 points, 10 rebounds and five assists for Duke, while Isaiah Evans added 16.

“A lot of people might say that because we’re a young team, we might be soft, we might not be ready for games like this,” Cameron Boozer said. “But I think we’ve shown that we are. Just through our toughness and our competitiveness. We’ve shown it in spurts every game. I don’t think we’ve put together a full 40 minutes of it yet, but when we do it’s going to be special.”

When Kansas big man Flory Bidunga picked up his second foul with 6:40 to go in the first half, the Blue Devils were down five and grinding their gears on offense, finding the going all but impassable. Duke hadn’t seen anything like Kansas’ defense, especially in the post, where the Jayhawks extracted a toll on every drive the Blue Devils had become accustomed to finishing in their games to date.

Then Patrick Ngongba II drew a second on Bidunga and suddenly the path to the rim was unobstructed. The Blue Devils finished the first half on a 21-7 run capped by an Evans bomb that would have counted for 3 if the Knicks were playing instead.

“I noticed (Melvin) Council was stretched out across the 3-point line,” Evans said. “So I just stepped out a little farther.”

Bidunga announced his presence with authority to start the second half, spinning off Ngongba for a dunk out of nothing, but Duke stretched its eight-point halftime lead to 10 before Kansas made a push of its own, staying within single digits for much of the second half, trying to close the gap, but never closer than three.

The Blue Devils found offense from unexpected places as the Jayhawks tested them: A pair of Cayden Boozer drives and Ngongba’s second high-low assist. The first was to Cameron Boozer on the opening possession, a set play for an easy slam. The second was a back-door feed to Maliq Brown for a dunk when Duke desperately needed it. An Evans corner 3-pointer as the shot clock expired put Duke up eight with less than four minutes to go, and that was enough.

“Those aren’t easy situations to be in, especially if it’s your first time in the Garden like some of these guys, or if it’s your second or your third,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “You need to show great poise, great togetherness. I thought especially down the stretch, some of those plays, we just showed great poise. It’s what it’s all about.”

The win moved Duke to 5-0 to extend a remarkable start to the basketball season across the Triangle — a combined 14-0 record among Duke, North Carolina and N.C. State — and apply some pressure on the Wolfpack to keep up. The Blue Devils beat Kansas by 12 in New York. The Tar Heels beat Kansas by 13 in Chapel Hill. The Wolfpack hosts Kansas in Raleigh on Dec. 13.

Cameron Boozer (12) of the Duke Blue Devils dribbles against Flory Bidunga (40) of the Kansas Jayhawks during the first half in the 2025 State Farm Champions Classic at Madison Square Garden on November 18, 2025 in New York City. Sarah Stier Getty Images

Still, the stiffest opposition the Blue Devils have faced yet did raise some questions for which Duke does not yet have answers. Cameron Boozer — admittedly, in his fifth college game — was unable to impose his will against Kansas’ front line the way he has against lesser competition. Too often, he shot-faked himself into corners, lacking a Plan B against players more his equal. He was better in the second half, pounding the boards the old-fashioned way.

“I have to take what the defense gives me,” Cameron Boozer said. “They were doubling me a lot in the first half and the second half they weren’t doubling me as much. So in the first half those passes were there, and in the second half I was able to be more aggressive.”

Scheyer added: “I still don’t even think he played, like, incredible. That’s the thing that’s really exciting.”

Duke also found it more difficult to protect the ball against a more active defense, going to an early two-point look with Caleb Foster and Cayden Boozer both on the floor in an attempt to stem the early turnovers that led to easy Kansas buckets. That too is an area for improvement.

If Bidunga had stayed out of foul trouble, or if Self hadn’t been hesitant to re-insert Bidunga late in the first half, things might have been different for Duke. As it was, Kansas wasn’t quite at Duke’s level offensively — especially without injured point guard Darryn Peterson, denying the nightcap a showcase of freshman future NBA stars — but its defense was a new experience that required adjustment to surmount.

“It’s the reason we played Tennessee in the exhibition game,” Scheyer said. “Texas was very physical. Kansas did a great job protecting. The thing for us, we’re working through — we have actions we want to go to in critical moments and the way we want to play, but also some randomness, being able to read the defense, understand what’s next, understand how we have to fight for the paint. I thought at the end of the first half and moments in the second half we just did that.”

They are young. They are learning. They are not going to win every game by 15. But they haven’t lost yet, either.

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This story was originally published November 18, 2025 at 11:19 PM.

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Luke DeCock

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Sports columnist Luke DeCock joined The News & Observer in 2000 and has covered nine Final Fours, the Summer Olympics, the Super Bowl and the Carolina Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup win in 2006. He is a past president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, was the 2020 winner of the National Headliner Award as the country’s top sports columnist and is a three-time North Carolina Sportswriter of the Year.

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November 18, 2025
Duke basketball topples Texas. What we learned about the Blue Devils

Duke’s Isaiah Evans (3) celebrates in the second half of Duke’s 75-60 victory over Texas in the Dick Vitale Invitational at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025.

Ethan Hyman

ehyman@newsobserver.com

Charlotte

They came to Charlotte on Tuesday to help honor Dick Vitale, long one of the leading and certainly loudest voices of college basketball – the man called “Dickie V.”

Duke, ranked No. 6 in preseason, accepted the opportunity to open a new basketball season in the Dick Vitale Invitational at the Spectrum Center. So, too, the Texas Longhorns, who began the season with a new coach, Sean Miller.

It seemed fitting. As former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said in a video tribute to Vitale shown before the game, “His vocabulary became a part of our sports lexicon.”

After the tribute, and some tears by an emotional Vitale at courtside, the Blue Devils and Longhorns tipped it off to start the season and the Blue Devils came away with a 75-60 victory.

For Duke, it was the 26th straight season-opening victory. And it would not be a 40-minute Cameron Boozer showcase for NBA scouts.

Duke’s Dame Sarr (7) defends Texas’ Tramon Mark (12) during the first half of Duke’s game against Texas in the Dick Vitale Invitational at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com

The 6-9 freshman was held scoreless in the first half, which had the Longhorns grittily taking a 33-32 lead. Boozer’s first college points came in the first minute of the second half, and he would finish the game with his first college double-double: 15 points and 13 rebounds.

“I think he’s one of the best players in the country,” Texas coach Sean Miller said. “I have hard time thinking there’s a freshman who’s better. He’s a one-man wrecking crew.”

Sophomore Isaiah Evans gave the Blue Devils the needed offense in the first half, getting on one of his 3-point tears and scoring 15 of his 23 points – and having some fun doing it. Boozer was more of a factor after halftime and the Blue Devils stayed in front by spacing their offense better while continuing to battle on the defensive end in limiting Texas to 32 percent shooting with 16 turnovers and just six assists.

“Our defense carried us the whole time. Once we started to finish possessions without fouling, we made it tough on them to score,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said.

Duke had a 51-48 lead midway through the second half before an 8-0 run that ended with an Evans basket. They added to the lead from there for a solid victory to start things off. Texas, which got 16 points from 6-8 junior Dailyn Swain, could not make a late run.

“They were really good last year and had a chance to win it, and I think they’re really good this year and will have a chance to win it,” Miller said of the Blue Devils, who lost in the 2025 NCAA semifinals

What was learned about the Devils in the victory?

Duke’s Cameron Boozer (12) tries to drive around Texas’ Nic Codie (10) during the first half of Duke’s game against Texas in the Dick Vitale Invitational at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com

Cameron Boozer recovers from slow start

Cameron Boozer made it all look so easy, almost effortless, in the two exhibition games the Devils played. The big man averaged 28.5 points and 17.5 rebounds and was too much to handle for either Central Florida or Tennessee.

But the season opener, when everything becomes official and the stats all count, was the opposite for him in the first half. Shots inside did not fall. Nor did the outside jumper. Nor the front end of a one-and-one.

At halftime, Boozer’s stat sheet showed him 0-7 from the field, 0-3 on 3-pointers and zero points. He did have two personal fouls, one of them a touch foul.

“Coach Scheyer challenged me at halftime, said I was playing soft,” Boozer said, drawing a second look from Scheyer, seated by his side at postgame press conference

His response in the second half? Boozer took the ball inside and was fouled, making two free throws for his first college points. He had a two-hand slam that had the crowd roaring. He then made a neat feed thorugh traffic to Patrick Ngongba II for a dunk.

Boozer was more determined, more focused. He didn’t force anything. He played big, with composure.

“He doesn’t have his best stuff and comes out the second half and has a 15 and (13) night. Not bad. Not bad at all,” Scheyer said.

Duke’s Maliq Brown (6) and Nikolas Khamenia (14) go after the loose ball with Texas’ Dailyn Swain (3) during the first half of Duke’s game against Texas in the Dick Vitale Invitational at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com

Blue Devils happy to have Brown back

Duke coach Jon Scheyer said throughout preseason practices that the Blue Devils needed Maliq Brown back in the lineup to be a more complete team.

The 6-9 senior was slowed much of last season with shoulder issues. That healed after a lot of rehab work, but Brown then needed a knee procedure before preseason began.

Everything pointed to Brown, the Devils’ best defender, being ready for the opener. He did not start the game, but was Duke’s first substitute and immediately went to work.

Defending Texas’ Lassina Traore at the top of the key, Brown used his long reach to get a piece of the ball, which bounded into the backcourt. Duke’s Darren Harris and Brown chased after it, Harris diving across the floor to knock the ball off Traore and out of bounds for a turnover.

Those are the kind of hustle plays that an active Brown can initiate, that the Blue Devils will need.

“He’ll be better and better. We’ll continue to get him back to where he wants to be,” Scheyer said.

Texas’ Matas Vokietaitis (8) charges into Duke’s Patrick Ngongba (21) during the first half of Duke’s game against Texas in the Dick Vitale Invitational at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C., Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com

Longhorns tried to rough up the Devils

The Longhorns found a way to disrupt Duke’s offense in the first half – effectively, if ultra physically.

The Horns banged bodies, slapped, whacked, locked arms, did whatever worked to disrupt the Blue Devils. Scheyer had a few words – or more than a few words – with the three refs working the game, but the first 20 minutes produced some ragged, ragged basketball as neither team could find any flow to their game.

Duke missed its first five shots and a pair of free throws before Dame Sarr gave the Devils their first basket of the season with a 3 from the left corner with 16:31 left in the first half – credit Brown with the first assist.

Texas had little success stopping or slowing Evans, who knocked down four 3’s in scoring 15 first-half points. But Cameron Boozer couldn’t get started and showed some frustration at times.

The Longhorns didn’t let up on the rough stuff on the offensive end, either. Matas Vokietaitis, an awkward 7-foot center, tried to straight-line his way to the basket when he got the ball anywhere need the lane. Late in the first half, the FAU transfer turned, put his shoulders down and flattened a Duke defender without dribbling, overcooking it and turning the ball over.

The Lithuanian, the American Athletic Conference freshman of the year last season, made enough bullish moves to get to the line for five first-half free throws and made them all with a weird flick of the wrist shooting motion.

By the second half, Duke fans were booing Vokietaitis every time he touched the ball. He finished with 15 points and eight rebounds.

“If the crowd is booing him, he must be doing something right,” said Texas guard Jordan Pope, who also had 15 points.

This story was originally published November 4, 2025 at 11:21 PM.

Chip Alexander

The News & Observer

In more than 40 years at The N&O, Chip Alexander has covered the N.C. State, UNC, Duke and East Carolina beats, and now is in his 15th season on the Carolina Hurricanes beat. Alexander, who has won numerous writing awards at the state and national level, covered the Hurricanes’ move to North Carolina in 1997 and was a part of The N&O’s coverage of the Canes’ 2006 Stanley Cup run.

Chip Alexander

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November 4, 2025
The AP Top 25 men’s basketball poll is out. Are Duke, UNC, NC State ranked?

Duke’s Cameron Boozer (12) and his twin brother Cayden Boozer (2) practice at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C., Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025.

Ethan Hyman

ehyman@newsobserver.com

Two Triangle men’s basketball teams are ranked in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 college basketball poll, which was released on Monday.

Duke came in at No. 6, while North Carolina is slotted at No. 25. N.C. State — bolstered by head coach Will Wade’s arrival and a revamped roster — is the first team outside the poll, just three points behind the Tar Heels. Purdue, meanwhile, made history by earning its first preseason No. 1 in program history.

The ACC as a whole had three teams ranked, with Louisville at No. 11. The Big 12, Big Ten and SEC dominated the poll with six teams each — making up 72% of the field.

After earning four NCAA Tournament bids last season, the ACC will need some teams to outperform expectations for the conference to have a rebound year. It’s possible, even as commissioner Jim Phillips contended yet again at this year’s ACC Tipoff he remains “restless” with the general state of men’s hoops in the league.

“This is, historically in men’s college [basketball], the very best conference in the country… we don’t have a problem winning when we get into the tournament,” Phillips said last week in Charlotte. “We’ve had a problem getting into the tournament.”

Duke coach John Scheyer accepts the ACC Tournament Championship trophy from Commissioner Jim Phillips following the Blue Devils’ 73-62 victory over Louisville in the ACC Tournament Championship game on Saturday, March 15, 2025 at Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C. Robert Willett rwillett@newsobserver.com

Blue Devils lead ACC in preseason poll

Coming off a Final Four run, Jon Scheyer’s Duke squad enters the preseason as the highest-ranked ACC program in the AP poll.

The Blue Devils, who are without No. 1 NBA Draft pick Cooper Flagg this season, will be tested early thanks to a grueling non-conference schedule filled with ranked opponents: No. 3 Florida, No. 7 Michigan, No. 10 Texas Tech, No. 14 Arkansas, No. 19 Kansas and No. 22 Michigan State. The regular season tips off against Texas, a team that just fell short of the Top 25 and stands as the nation’s fourth-highest “others receiving votes” team in the preseason poll.

Duke will also take on No. 18 Tennessee on Oct. 26 at Food City Center in Knoxville in the Blue Devils’ second exhibition game.

This demanding schedule is by design. Scheyer said in September that he and his staff intentionally built the daunting slate and didn’t want a “cruise.”

“We set it up to learn and be at our best at the end,” Scheyer said in a September press conference, later adding. “Certain nights, I’ll stay up a little bit later thinking, ‘What did I do?’ But in the moment, it definitely made sense. I think it makes sense, but there’s no question it’s going to be challenging and exciting.”

North Carolina coach Hubert Davis smiles as he talks about his roster during a press availability on Tuesday, September 2, 2025 in Chapel Hill, N.C. Robert Willett rwillett@newsobserver.com

Tar Heels sneak in at No. 25

North Carolina just managed to grab a spot in the preseason poll, sneaking in at No. 25.

The Tar Heels are coming off a roller-coaster season in which they posted a 23-14 record and were selected last for the NCAA Tournament. UNC’s postseason was brief: the team lost in the first round of the Big Dance after winning a First Four game in Dayton.

A new-look roster will take the floor this year, with only two scholarship players returning from the 2024-2025 squad. Senior guard Seth Trimble is the lone returning starter for coach Hubert Davis.

This squad boasts more positional size, as Davis emphasized at last week’s ACC Tipoff, and will face a tall task early. The Tar Heels travel to Salt Lake City for a preseason contest against No. 8 BYU at the Delta Center on Oct. 24. The Cougars are headlined by AJ Dybantsa, the nation’s No. 1 recruit in the 2025 class and a projected top NBA draft pick.

N.C. State head coach Will Wade talks with Tre Holloman (5) during the Wolfpack’s first official practice on Sept. 22, 2025, in Raleigh. Kaitlin McKeown The News & Observer

Wolfpack narrowly misses Top 25

Wade — a former LSU and McNeese State head coach — nearly landed his squad in the preseason AP Top 25, finishing just behind North Carolina in the voting. The Wolfpack’s reloaded roster features four top-150 transfers, a five-star freshman signee in Matt Able and a top-15 overall recruiting class, per 247Sports rankings.

The Wolfpack has already leaned into the underdog role in the preseason — especially the perception that N.C. State is overlooked compared to its ACC counterparts.

Look no further than ACC Tipoff, when the league mistakenly displayed Malik Thomas’ headshot as Darrion Williams took the stage alongside Wade and Ven-Allen Lubin.

“Shows where we’re thought of right now,” Wade joked during the press conference. “It’s all right. We gotta change that. We gotta get a little better.”

Here’s the full 2025-26 Associated Press preseason top 25 men’s college basketball poll:

1. Purdue (35 first-place votes) 2. Houston (16) 3. Florida (8) 4. UConn (2) 5. St. John’s 6. Duke 7. Michigan 8. BYU 9. Kentucky 10. Texas Tech 11. Louisville 12. UCLA 13. Arizona 14. Arkansas 15. Alabama 16. Iowa State 17. Illinois 18. Tennessee 19. Kansas 20. Auburn 21. Gonzaga 22. Michigan State 23. Creighton 24. Wisconsin 25. North Carolina

Others receiving votes: N.C. State (101), Oregon (98), San Diego St. (74), Texas (35), Ohio State (23), Kansas State (13), Mississippi (11) USC (10), Missouri (8), Washington (7), Vanderbilt (7), Iowa (6), Boise St. (4), Mississippi State (3), VCU (2), Virginia (2), Saint Mary’s (2), Indiana (1), Oklahoma (1), Baylor (1)

This story was originally published October 13, 2025 at 7:15 PM.

Shelby Swanson

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October 13, 2025

Ranking 134 college football teams after Week 8: BYU can no longer be ignored

Editor’s note: The Athletic 134 is a weekly ranking of all FBS college football teams.

It’s time to take notice of BYU.

The Cougars are undefeated and have delivered Kansas State and SMU their only losses of the season. Yet BYU remains outside the top 10 in both the AP and Coaches polls. But not here. BYU is up to No. 7 in this week’s edition of The Athletic 134.

I’m surprised the Cougars haven’t gotten more love. They’re undefeated at 7-0 and have two really good wins, both of which are better than the best wins of Iowa State (Iowa) and several other teams around their place in the polls. They’ve actually been in my top 10 for weeks.

Perhaps it’s because BYU has twice played on Friday nights, or because its 38-9 win against Kansas State was a 10:30 p.m. kickoff on a Saturday. Yes, the Cougars have played some close games and needed a late touchdown to beat Oklahoma State, but this team and especially this defense looks legit, now 13th in yards per play allowed.

You should also take notice because the second half of the schedule is manageable. BYU and Iowa State don’t play each other in the regular season. The Cougars already beat K-State and won’t play 5-2 Colorado. If the Big 12 wants to get two teams into the College Football Playoff, BYU would likely be one of them.

GO DEEPER

AP Top 25: Oregon new No. 1; Vandy ends poll drought

We’re more than halfway through the season, and we’re still getting surprise results that shake up the rankings. Here is this week’s edition of The Athletic 134.

1-10

Rank	Record	Prev
1	7-0	1
2	6-1	3
3	6-0	4
4	7-0	6
5	5-1	5
6	6-1	2
7	7-0	8
8	6-1	12
9	6-1	11
10	6-1	9

Georgia slides up to No. 2 after its win at Texas, while the Longhorns fall to No. 6 because their best win at this point is a sliding Michigan team or a sliding Oklahoma. The Bulldogs’ loss to Alabama keeps them from the top spot, especially after the Tide lost again and are now ranked next to Boise State, which Oregon beat.

Miami jumps Ohio State after its win at Louisville, but the Ohio State-Penn State game in two weeks will be another shakeup game.

Tennessee and LSU jump into the top 10 after the Vols beat Alabama and the Tigers beat Arkansas 34-10. Tennessee and LSU’s resumes are incredibly even, but Tennessee has the better Best Win, so the Vols get the slight edge.

GO DEEPER

Tennessee proved against Alabama it’s not a one-hit wonder under Josh Heupel

11-25

I’d been a little skeptical of Indiana’s ceiling after beating up on bad teams, but Saturday’s 56-7 demotion of Nebraska has turned me into a believer, moving the Hoosiers to No. 11. The bad news: Quarterback Kurtis Rourke is out indefinitely with a thumb injury. But the path to 10 or even 11 wins is there. Iowa State slips two spots mostly due to the performances turned in by Tennessee, LSU and Indiana on the same day that the Cyclones needed to rally late to survive UCF.

Illinois is the only newcomer to the top 25, back after a 21-7 win against Michigan to move to 6-1.

GO DEEPER

Stewart Mandel’s 12-team Playoff projections after Week 8

26-50

Teams just outside the top 25 took all kind of losses this week. As a result, Syracuse, UNLV, South Carolina, Memphis, Army, Duke and Cincinnati make big jumps into the top 35. Michigan State also jumps to No. 39 after a 32-20 win against Iowa. Next up is a Michigan-MSU game that could have major bowl implications for both.

Is it weird that we’ve stopped talking about Colorado right as the Buffs became a solid team? Colorado is 5-2 and No. 38 after a 34-7 win against Arizona, which comes after a last-minute loss to Kansas State and a win against UCF. It’d be a shocker if Colorado didn’t go bowling, which is another improvement for coach Deion Sanders.

No. 46 Florida and No. 47 Virginia Tech also move into the top 50 after handling Kentucky and Boston College, respectively. Utah continues to slide and is now just hanging onto No. 50 after losing to TCU.

GO DEEPER

Mandel’s Final Thoughts: Georgia’s defensive havoc takes down Texas and more from Week 8

51-75

USC has tumbled to No. 52 after blowing another 14-point lead and losing at Maryland to drop to 1-4 in Big Ten play. No. 53 Rutgers lost a shocker to UCLA and dropped out of the top 50.

Louisiana continues to sneak around the top of the Sun Belt, now No. 60 after beating Coastal Carolina to move to 6-1 overall, while Georgia Southern took control of the Sun Belt East in beating James Madison and moves up to No. 63 from No. 82. Toledo is up to No. 68 after beating Northern Illinois.

No. 65 NC State and No. 66 Cal are the toughest teams to rank. NC State recently lost to Wake Forest but turned around and beat Cal, which is 0-4 in ACC play by a total of nine points. If the Golden Bears could make a field goal, their record would be completely different.

GO DEEPER

Morales: USC has invested heavily in Lincoln Riley and his staff. Where are the results?

76-100

Baylor jumps to No. 76 after a surprising 59-35 win against Texas Tech. Texas State drops to No. 77 after a loss to Old Dominion. Auburn blew a double-digit lead against Missouri, dropping to 2-5, and slips to No. 80.

No. 82 Western Michigan is actually atop the MAC at 3-0 after beating Buffalo, which has defeated Toledo and NIU. Marshall jumps up to No. 81 because the Herd have a win against WMU and beat Georgia State last week.

The bottom of the Power 4 is bunching together. Purdue is the lowest of the group at No. 95, but Florida State is just ahead at No. 94 after losing to Duke for the first time ever. No. 93 Mississippi State has played Georgia and Texas A&M competitively in recent weeks, while Houston slides back down to No. 89 after a 42-14 loss to Kansas.

GO DEEPER

Big 12, ACC should relish multiple bids if they get them: College Football Playoff Bubble Watch

101-134

New Mexico has won three games in a row after a 50-45 barnburner against Utah State to move up to No. 106 in Bronco Mendenhall’s first year. UTSA’s win against Florida Atlantic bounces the Roadrunners back up to No. 110.

UTEP got its first win of the season, beating FIU, to move up to No. 129. That leaves the FBS with just two winless teams: Kennesaw State and Kent State.

The Athletic 134 series is part of a partnership with Allstate. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.

(Photo: Chris Gardner / Getty Images)

The New York Times

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October 21, 2024

Cooper Flagg’s Duke debut just the beginning in season full of highly anticipated steps

DURHAM, N.C. — Twenty minutes were just a taste.

Or really, a tease.

Only so much can be gleaned from these preseason, meet-the-team, intrasquad events, like Duke’s Countdown to Craziness on Friday night. They’re as much about the schtick — mood lighting, air cannons, silly introductory dances — as any actual basketball. And, obviously, they don’t count.

But they do have meaning.

Especially in the case of this projected top-five preseason team — with the country’s top freshman in Cooper Flagg and a bevy of other NBA hopefuls — this is a glimpse. A snapshot of what’s possible. So when you see junior guard Tyrese Proctor on the fast break, with Flagg — the expected No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft — sprinting ahead of him, and then you see Proctor kick ahead an outlet pass, and you see Flagg loading up as he takes off toward the rim …

Well, you start imagining the possibilities. About the high-flying acrobatics about to unfold, yes, but also beyond. Your mind skips forward, to the sorts of spectacular plays and games this team may have in store if it can deliver on even a fraction of the still-growing hype surrounding it.

The moment, at least, delivered: Flagg effortlessly elevated off the Cameron Indoor court, twisted backward in midair and flushed home a highlight dunk with a ho-hum attitude.

His face seemed to say, more to come.

“You can’t really describe it, the feeling when you’re out there playing,” Flagg said. “That type of stuff is something you can’t really experience until it happens.”

Flagg finished the night with 13 points — third-most overall, considering players were switching teams at halftime — as well as three rebounds, three assists, and two turnovers. He was … good, if not overly deferential.

“I thought Cooper tonight was being a little hesitant, and just getting a feel for things,” coach Jon Scheyer said. “That’s the beauty of Coop: He’s such a team player, and he has such a great feel for the game.”

That much was evident, even on his first basket. The 6-foot-9 Maine native drove left from outside the arc, then switched the ball to his right hand in midair, showcasing the touch and inside finishing he’s so known for. From the first row of Duke’s student section, through the raucous applause, you could hear one Cameron Crazie note the occasion:

Those were Cooper Flagg’s first points at Duke.

The novelty around Flagg, especially early on — and especially if he’s as good as expected, anywhere near the Zion Williamson stratosphere that no one in college hoops has occupied since — will be a thing. His first dunk. First pick six. First 20-point game, first double-double. All of it. It will be noted, diligently, the continuing ascent of someone already deemed “generational” by the masses before his 18th birthday. (That’s Dec. 21, by the way; Georgia Tech drew the short stick and hosts the Blue Devils that night.)

Flagg, of course, can’t look at this season that way. Neither can his teammates, many of whom — like fellow freshmen Khaman Maluach and Kon Knueppel — will likely be following him to the NBA as early as next June. If Duke learned anything from its star-studded 2018-19 season with Williamson, it’s how to handle the spectacle that follows a phenomenon.

“You’ve just gotta stay present,” Proctor said. “Everyone knows who Coop is. Everyone knows who Khaman is. Everyone knows who all these guys are. So I think from day one, everyone has been on the same page. We haven’t necessarily had to sit down and talk about, ‘It’s going to be we over me.’ Everyone sort of knows that.”

But saying so in front of your home fans, on a night that’s more ceremonial than serious, is one thing — and maintaining that after a tough early-season stretch is another entirely. In the first month of the season, Duke plays (deep breath) Kentucky in the Champions Classic in Atlanta, at Arizona, versus Kansas in Las Vegas, all before hosting Auburn in the ACC-SEC Challenge in early December. That’s three of The Athletic’s top 10 preseason teams, one after another after another. We’ll have a good sense by Flagg’s birthday of the kind of talent he is, what kind of team Duke is — and how fair the national title expectations for this squad really are.

Friday was a taste of all that, a 20-minute morsel before the 30-plus games Duke has coming over the next five — maybe six — months.

It’s nothing worth overreacting to.

But it is, if nothing else, worth noting. Because Friday was Flagg’s, and Duke’s, beginning.

“I liked seeing him in a Duke uniform tonight,” Scheyer said. “I know that much.”

(Photo: Grant Halverson / Getty Images)

The New York Times

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October 6, 2024
Duke freshman Cooper Flagg, projected 2025 No. 1 draft pick, signs shoe deal with New Balance

Duke freshman forward Cooper Flagg, the projected No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, has signed a deal with New Balance, the apparel company announced Monday.

The deal — which was first reported by ESPN — will make Flagg one of New Balance’s signature athletes, likely including a signature shoe. Flagg joins Kawhi Leonard, Jamal Murray and WNBA rookie Cameron Brink as one of New Balance’s basketball headliners.

“I grew up wearing New Balance, and I appreciate their authentic connection to my community. The focus and growth of the brand in basketball and our shared values and history drew me in,” Flagg said in a statement. “From day one, it was clear that this would be a family-like partnership. I’m so excited to join this family and help them grow the category with young athletes.”

Cooper Flagg, The Intelligent Choice. pic.twitter.com/JvvvMM9lfm

— New Balance (@newbalance) August 26, 2024

Choosing New Balance wasn’t just a professional decision for Flagg, but a personal one, too: the reigning Gatorade National Player of the Year and five-star recruit grew up just 25 miles from New Balance’s manufacturing plant in Skowhegan, Maine.

Before every new school year, Flagg’s mother Kelly took him and his twin brother Ace to the factory’s annual tent sale, where they’d buy a new pair of sneakers and backpack. To promote Monday’s announcement, the company even shot promotional content with Flagg in his hometown of Newport, Maine.

“Cooper adds so much to our basketball roster, and we’re thrilled to welcome him to the New Balance family,” Naveen Lokesh, New Balance’s head of basketball sports marketing, said in a statement. “He is a force to be reckoned with on the court, and we look forward to building our relationship as he grows the game and supporting him in all endeavors.”

Before last season, Connecticut women’s star Paige Bueckers became the first college athlete with their own signature shoe deal, after she signed an NIL contract with Nike. Now Flagg is the second, despite not having played a single minute for the Blue Devils.

While some college athletes have partnered with apparel companies in the NIL era — Adidas signed 15 female collegians in the summer of 2022, for example, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Title IX — it is still a relative rarity earmarked for sports’ top rising stars.

Flagg fits that mold, even if he’s yet to appear in college. Despite reclassifying up to 2024, the 6-foot-9 forward maintained the No. 1 recruiting ranking in the class, and is expected to lead Duke in Jon Scheyer’s third season as head coach. Duke is No. 6 in The Athletic’s preseason top-25 rankings.

Required reading

(Photo: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)

The New York Times

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August 26, 2024
Duke rose quickly under Mike Elko. Now Manny Diaz is aiming to keep that upward trajectory

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Duke made a quick climb under Mike Elko. Now it’s up to Manny Diaz to build something more.

The former Miami head coach and Penn State defensive coordinator has taken over in Durham, leading a program that crashed in the final seasons of David Cutcliffe’s long and successful tenure before winning 16 games in two seasons under Elko.

Elko left for Texas A&M as the Blue Devils prepared for their bowl game. The 50-year-old Diaz took over in December for his second stint as a head coach, the first ending when he was fired in 2021 after three seasons with the Hurricanes.

“We all learn,” Diaz said. “I’ve never been the same defensive coordinator twice in my career. You’re always taking the lessons from the last year, the last season, the career, and applying it and trying to be a better person. No different as a coach than what you would expect and demand from your players.”

Diaz went 21-15 at Miami, including a 16-9 record in Atlantic Coast Conference games that stood second only to Clemson (22) in league wins.

He inherits a roster that lost seven offensive starters and eight on defense from last season. That list includes four Associated Press all-ACC performers, as well as quarterback Riley Leonard (transferred to Notre Dame) and running back Jordan Waters (transferred to North Carolina State).

Duke leaned into the transfer portal to add 17 graduates, including eight on the offensive line alone. This year’s team is picked to finish 11th in the expanded 17-team ACC.

“We’ve got an outstanding group of graduate transfers and instantly transformed our team from being very young, which in way-back-when days not very long ago, might set you back for a few years,” Diaz said. “And we feel like now we’re poised to go again, and I think our players believe that as well.”

Welcome back

Diaz knows Duke’s home in the “Triangle” region of North Carolina well. He coached at nearby North Carolina State from 2000-05 under Chuck Amato and had two sons born in Raleigh, about 30 minutes east of Duke’s campus.

QB battle

The highest-profile position battle entering the season was between Texas transfer Maalik Murphy and returning sophomore Grayson Loftis.

But Diaz announced Monday night that Murphy had won the job.

“Maalik has earned the opportunity to be our starting quarterback with his preparation, work ethic and productivity,” Diaz said.

Murphy appeared in seven games with two starts for the playoff-bound Longhorns last year, which had followed him creating a buzz in the spring game.

“Nobody wants to be in a quarterback room that kind of just sits back and no one gets better,” Murphy said. “Everybody’s getting pushed.”

Loftis started the last five games with Leonard injured last year, winning three and leading Duke past Troy in the Birmingham Bowl as a true freshman.

Defensive carryover?

Duke safety Jaylen Stinson is one of the returning defensive starters, who are largely concentrated in the secondary. He said Diaz’s success with the Nittany Lions — who finished second nationally in total defense (247.6 yards) and third in scoring defense (13.5) — was an appealing aspect of his arrival and had him envisioning what he could do in the scheme.

“Those guys were on fire last year,” Stinson said, adding: “So a lot of guys were excited to have him come here because we know what he can do.”

He said it

“Credit to Elko and everything he did here. I’m just excited to see what Coach Diaz has to bring. He seems like a coach that likes to listen, very player-oriented coach. I’m excited to see how the season goes.” — Duke receiver Jordan Moore

The schedule

Diaz’s debut comes Aug. 30 against Elon at home, followed by a trip to Big Ten country to face Northwestern in the Blue Devils’ top nonconference game.

The ACC schedule opens at home against rival North Carolina (Sept. 28). There’s also a visit from No. 10 Florida State (Oct. 18) as reigning league champion and preseason favorite. Duke’s only game against the three newly added ACC schools comes at home against SMU (Oct. 26). Duke closes the year with a Nov. 30 trip to Wake Forest.

___

AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football. Sign up for the AP’s college football newsletter: https://apnews.com/cfbtop25

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August 19, 2024
Ranking CFB teams better off (Texas), worse off (USC), or same (Nebraska) in new era
There has been much discourse since the latest round of realignment and media deals that every team in the ACC and the Big 12 should want to be in the Big Ten or SEC, because those conferences make the most money. But the fans themselves aren’t seeing a dime of it. Their lone concern is whether their team wins on Saturday — and more money hardly guarantees more victories.

With college football undergoing a massive facelift in 2024 — bigger conferences, an expanded College Football Playoff — every fan base in the country should be asking just one question: Is any of this going to help us win games?

For example: Oklahoma will make a lot more money in the SEC than it would have in the Big 12. But it also faces a much tougher path to a national championship, whereas Kansas State’s chances of reaching the CFP have increased due to the Big 12’s bigger field and the loss of Oklahoma and Texas.

So what about your school? Does its chances of success increase, decrease or remain the same in the sport’s new world order?

To assess, I’ve given all 67 power-conference schools a score between minus-5 and positive-5. The score is solely about a team’s ability to win, and does not take into account the team’s current coaching staff or roster. Scoring a 0 means the school is neither better nor worse off. A score from 1 to 5 ranges from mildly better to far better, and -1 to -5 ranges from mildly worse to … uh oh.

ACC

SMU: +5

Has there been a bigger realignment winner in the last 30 years? SMU had not finished in the Top 25 in four decades at the time it got the call up to the big leagues last September. Now it comes in with momentum after finishing last season No. 22.

Clemson: +3

Dabo Swinney’s 2015-2020 teams had to be near-perfect to reach the four-team CFP; his 11-2 ACC title squad in 2022 would have earned a top-4 seed. His aloof portal approach doesn’t help his cause, but it doesn’t factor into this score.

Florida State: +3

The irony of FSU trying to sue its way out of the ACC is that the new system works in its favor. Would it rather be the best team in the ACC and earn a top-4 seed and a first-round bye, or the fourth-best team in the SEC and live on the bubble?

Louisville: +2

Louisville has upside. The school has the resources and recruiting footprint to be a regular ACC and CFP contender, and it helps that Louisville is no longer trapped in a division with Florida State (which it does not play this season) and Clemson.

Miami: +2

The U has been stuck in the mud for two decades, but it began flexing its muscle as soon as NIL went into effect in 2021. The program has most of the elements needed to be a 12-team CFP regular, provided the right coach is in place.

Virginia Tech: +2

The Hokies would have made a 12-team CFP nine times in a 16-year span (1995-2010) under Frank Beamer. They may never replicate that level of consistency, but there’s no reason they can’t become a semi-regular contender again.

NC State: +1

The Wolfpack have not won a conference title since 1979. That might be a tad more attainable now that they’re no longer in the same division as Florida State and Clemson. (At least elsewhere, Wolfpack vibes are high.)

Georgia Tech: 0

Recruiting has always been challenging for the Yellow Jackets, made even more so now by NIL. But based on its history, Georgia Tech could make an occasional CFP appearance. It would have gone in 1990, 1998 and 2009, and would have been the first team out in 2014.

North Carolina: 0

This unquestioned basketball school has been long considered a sleeping giant in football but has yet to wake up. If it finally does, it will more likely be due to an inspired head-coaching hire than the various changes to the sport.

Pittsburgh: -2

Pitt is nearly 50 years removed from its national heyday, but it did win the ACC in 2021, which would have garnered a 12-team berth. But star receiver Jordan Addison’s jump to USC the following spring was a window into new NIL reality.

Syracuse: -2

It’s early, but new coach Fran Brown has discovered there’s money in the banana stand. Landing Ohio State QB Kyle McCord raised eyebrows. More broadly, though, it’s hard to argue the new landscape does much to benefit the Orange.

Virginia: -2

Arguably the one thing UVA had going for it was the mediocrity of the ACC Coastal Division, which it won in 2019 while going 9-3. Now, the Cavaliers — who last finished in the Top 25 back two decades ago — risk falling into deep irrelevance moving forward.

Wake Forest: -2

The tiniest school in Power 4 has more donor support than one might assume, and it’s not a championship-or-bust fan base. But reaching a 12-team CFP could be largely unattainable. Will programs like this be able to sustain interest?

Boston College: -3

BC is the type of school that suffers in a world of roster-poaching and NIL deals. Success will also be increasingly defined by Playoff appearances, and the Eagles have finished in the top 12 only twice since World War II.

Duke: -3

Duke just lived through the downside of its new reality. It lost coach Mike Elko to an SEC school after just two seasons and quarterback Riley Leonard went to Notre Dame, likely for a seven-figure NIL deal.

Stanford: -4

The Cardinal will always attract recruits that covet that degree. But the school’s admissions process limits it to taking only a few transfers a year, which creates a big disadvantage in the new landscape. And like Cal, the ACC is not ideal.

Cal: -5

Serious question: Would Cal have been better off getting Washington State/Oregon State’d? An already lagging program must now compete in a far-away Power 4 conference while receiving 30 percent of its money (and without SMU’s boosters).

GO DEEPER

Feldman’s CFP 12-team projection: Why I like Miami, PSU and Texas

Big Ten

Ohio State: +4

Only once in the past 19 seasons have the Buckeyes lost more than two regular-season games. That means they would have made a 12-team Playoff all but once in the past 19 seasons. And probably pulled off an extra national title or two.

Michigan: +3

For the most part, Michigan will still be Michigan. The Big House will still pack in 110,000. The season will still be defined by whether it beats Ohio State. But a 12-team Playoff field certainly doesn’t hurt.

Penn State: +3

Had the 12-team Playoff been in place all along, James Franklin would have made five appearances in his first 10 seasons. The format is ideal for programs like PSU: not quite “elite,” but has the resources to compete nationally.

Michigan State: +2

While the Spartans only made the four-team CFP once, they could have made a 12-team field as many as five times from 2011-21. They also get Ohio State off the books in 2025 and 2026 after having played the Buckeyes in 14 consecutive seasons.

Oregon: +2

The Ducks are the best-positioned of the four West Coast schools joining the Big Ten. They recruit nationally and have Phil Knight’s war chest. While national titles have remained elusive, regular CFP appearances are realistic.

Maryland: +1

The Terps are free! They are no longer stuck in the Big Ten East, where their ceiling would forever be 7-5 and fourth place out of seven. But the upside may be limited until the school’s donors make a bigger splash in the NIL world.

Rutgers: +1

Like “rival” Maryland, Rutgers is finally out from under the Big Ten East. It’s also doing surprisingly well in NIL. The program’s ceiling may still be limited to 8-4 or so, but that would still be much better than its first decade in the conference.

Nebraska: 0

It may be tougher for the Cornhuskers to contend for Big Ten championships in a bigger league. But right now, that’s not even the target, given they haven’t even reached a bowl game in eight years. How much worse can it get?

Wisconsin: -1

The program has long churned out double-digit wins by “holding serve” against most of the conference while occasionally punching up against Ohio State or Michigan. That could become harder with the arrival of USC, Oregon and Washington.

Illinois: -2

This program has struggled to find its footing for more than two decades, and nothing about this new world helps it. If anything, it will be tougher. Right out of the gate, the Illini face Penn State, Michigan and Oregon this season.

Indiana: -2

The good news: no more getting clobbered by Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State in the Big Ten East. The bad news: Indiana, long known for apathy in football, is not likely to be as flush in NIL money as most of its competitors.

USC: -2

While it didn’t play like one for most of the past 15 years, USC was the most prestigious program in its former conference. In the Big Ten, it will be, at best, the third banana to Ohio State and Michigan, and possibly fifth behind Penn State and Oregon.

Washington: -2

The Huskies were the class of the Pac-12 the last two seasons, but it helped not to have an Ohio State or Michigan in their league. Now they have both, plus USC, Oregon and Penn State. Will the brief Kalen DeBoer era go down as an outlier?

Minnesota: -3

It’s unfortunate for the Golden Gophers that they have yet to reach the Big Ten Championship Game, because now it may never happen. A Playoff berth is not impossible, but Minnesota has had one top-10 season in the past 60 years.

Northwestern: -3

The new world may not be kind to overachiever programs like Northwestern. While it regularly makes bowl games and posts occasional Top 25 seasons, it has not finished high enough to make a 12-team CFP since 1996.

Purdue: -3

Not likely to contend for Playoff berths whether the field is four or 12. Purdue’s goal is to get to bowl games, and reaching six wins becomes harder without the benefit of a Big Ten West schedule.

Iowa: -4

The Hawkeyes have made a living out of grinding out mediocre Big Ten West foes while losing 42-3 to Michigan or 54-10 to Ohio State. In an 18-team league with no more unbalanced divisions and three incoming Top-25 recruiting schools, Iowa could be in for a reckoning.

UCLA: -4

Almost nothing about the new world does the Bruins any favors. UCLA is a basketball school whose donors have done little to support football’s NIL efforts. It is joining a conference full of big brands and football-first fan bases. Not a recipe for success.

GO DEEPER

Maryland in the Big Ten: From ‘what are we doing?’ to ‘amazing decision’

Big 12

BYU: +5

The Cougars have finally climbed the mountaintop after spending their entire history either in a non-power conference or as an independent. They now have direct access to the CFP, and won’t finish ranked 16th with just one loss, as happened in 2020.

Cincinnati: +4

The Bearcats’ dream season in 2021 does not have to be an aberration going forward, as they won’t have to go undefeated to make the Playoff. And power-conference status should help them land more recruits in their fertile city and state.

Houston: +4

After nearly 30 years in the post-Southwest Conference wilderness, the Cougars are back in a major conference alongside old rivals Baylor, Texas Tech and TCU. But achieving consistent success in the Big 12 is hardly a given after up-and-downs in the AAC.

UCF: +4

Like BYU, Cincinnati and Houston, UCF got its Power 4 life raft, and it’s not like the Knights were struggling beforehand. They’ve reached three BCS/CFP bowl games since 2013. The only question is how they’ll fare as a geographic outlier in the new Big 12.

Baylor: +2

Since 2013, the Bears have won three Big 12 titles and reached four BCS bowls but have fallen short of reaching the CFP. In a 12-team field, all of those teams would make it. And that was with Texas and Oklahoma in the conference.

Kansas State: +2

K-State could thrive in the new world. It would have made the 12-team CFP four times since 2011. It has sneaky-good NIL support. The biggest challenge will be revenue-sharing. Only three public Power 5 schools made less in 2022.

Oklahoma State: +2

Mike Gundy has fielded eight double-digit win teams, all of which would have been 12-team CFP contenders. Most of those teams lost to Oklahoma, against which Gundy is 4-15. The Cowboys no longer have to deal with the Sooners.

TCU: +2

The Frogs would have made a 12-team field three times since 2014, and, thanks to the Metroplex, they have the highest recruiting ceiling among the holdovers.

Colorado: +1

Anything would be better than the Buffs’ abysmal 13-year tenure in the Pac-12. The Buffs get back into the Texas footprint, which they benefitted from in the old Big 12. But the school still faces an uphill climb in the NIL world, with or without Deion Sanders.

Texas Tech: +1

The Red Raiders have largely flailed since the late Mike Leach’s 2009 ouster, but it’s not for lack of resources and fan support. Getting out from under Texas could help, and while CFP berths might be infrequent, they’re attainable.

Iowa State: 0

The Cyclones, who have not won a conference championship since 1912, will still have all the same evergreen challenges. They could benefit from a more level version of the Big 12, but they’ll still have to perpetually overachieve.

Kansas: 0

The same Iowa State blurb can be applied to Kansas, which has finished ranked roughly once per decade. An expanded Playoff gives the Jayhawks slightly more hope for glory, but 2007 seasons may remain incredibly rare.

Utah: -1

Utah enters its new league as strong as any of its programs, but man, did the Utes have a good thing going in the Pac-12. Not only did they reach four league title games in five years, but they could lord their Power 5 membership over rival BYU. No more.

West Virginia: -1

The Mountaineers have lost a great deal of their identity since leaving the old Big East for the Big 12 in 2012, and the further dilution of the conference won’t help. But they did at least gain their first geographic partner when Cincinnati joined.

Arizona: -2

Joining the Big 12 was great for Arizona basketball. Probably not so much for football, where it has little in common with schools in football-crazed Texas. History suggests the Wildcats will rarely contend for a spot in the Playoff.

Arizona State: -3

ASU president Michael Crow had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Big 12. The pro-market school has little in common with the likes of Texas Tech and Oklahoma State, which, unlike the Sun Devils, have rabid fan bases.

GO DEEPER

Welcome to the new Big 12: Featuring Deion, parity, shifts in playing styles

SEC

Alabama: +4

I don’t expect post-Nick Saban Alabama to make a 12-team CFP nearly every single year, like I do Ohio State, simply because of the depth of the SEC. But it’s still one of a small handful of programs built to succeed in any era.

Georgia: +4

Now, even Georgia’s “down” seasons might still end in CFP berths. Kirby Smart would currently have seven straight, up from three in eight seasons. Between Smart and Mark Richt, the Bulldogs would have 13 since 2001.

LSU: +3

The Tigers have won three national championships this century, but they might have played for even more were there a 12-team field. They would have made nine by now. Of course, they may also fire coaches more frequently for missing the Playoff.

Texas: +3

Unlike rival Oklahoma, Texas has won just three conference titles this century, so that shouldn’t be the measuring stick. But Mack Brown showed what the ceiling can be. He would have reached eight 12-team CFPs in a decade.

Florida: +2

Florida must play Georgia every year while mixing in Texas and Oklahoma. But a 12-team Playoff could prove a godsend; the Gators would have made the postseason three consecutive times under Dan Mullen and 10 times since 2000.

Ole Miss: +2

Ole Miss has not won the SEC since 1963. Oklahoma and Texas won’t make it any easier. But the program can make the 12-team CFP, and its NIL collective has become one of the models in the sport.

Tennessee: 0

The Vols are still playing rivals Alabama, Florida and Georgia for the next two seasons while adding Oklahoma. That’s rough. But Tennessee’s collective is strong, and it has the resources and recruiting cachet to reach occasional CFPs.

Auburn: -1

A drawing of the history of Auburn football arcs like a roller coaster, with brief spurs of national supremacy mixed in between long stretches of middle-of-the-pack. And the league just added two more above-the-middle historical programs.

Missouri: -1

Missouri would have reached 12-team fields in 2007, 2013 and 2023. That development is good. But the Tigers have benefitted at times from being in the SEC’s easier division, which is now gone, and they are .250 all-time against Oklahoma and Texas.

Arkansas: -2

On the bright side, Arkansas gets old rival Texas back. On the downside, the Razorbacks have yet to win the SEC in its 32 years of membership, and it’s not getting easier. They would have reached a 12-team CFP three times in those 32 years.

Texas A&M: -2

The best thing the Aggies had going for them in the SEC was that Texas wasn’t in it. Alas. The return of annual matchups with the Longhorns should be fantastic for entertainment purposes but could make for a tougher schedule.

Kentucky: -3

Mark Stoops is on track to have a statue sculpted for taking the Wildcats to eight straight bowl games, but those Gator and Music City bowls might not feel as significant in the new world. They also may become harder to reach with no SEC East.

Mississippi State: -3

The Bulldogs have finished above .500 in SEC play this century just once, in 2014 with Dak Prescott. The SEC getting bigger, and possibly moving to nine conference games, is likely to be unkind for State.

Oklahoma: -3

From 1938-2021, the Sooners claimed a Big 8/Big 12 championship in 47 of those 83 seasons. No major program in the country has more league titles. Realistically, OU will not come close to enjoying that level of dominance in the SEC.

South Carolina: -3

Save for that one three-year peak under Steve Spurrier from 2011-13, the Gamecocks have rarely lived in the top half of the SEC. Now they’re losing the SEC East. It will become even more difficult to maintain relevance.

Vanderbilt: -4

Vanderbilt was already stuck playing the worst cards in the SEC deck. Now there’s a whole new set of challenges stacked against their deck: the bigger SEC, the importance of NIL and roster poaching from the portal.

The rest

Notre Dame: +2

Some might fixate on the fact that the independent Fighting Irish can never get a first-round bye in the new system, but that misses the larger point: They could reach many more CFPs. They would have made five in Brian Kelly’s 12 seasons.

Oregon State and Washington State: -5

There’s no sugarcoating it: Two historic Power 5 programs have been relegated to de facto Group of 5 status, playing de facto Mountain West schedules. And unlike actual G5 schools, they have no guaranteed access to the Playoff.

All Group of 5 programs: -3

For the first time in history, one of these schools is guaranteed to compete for a national championship every year. But that does not offset the further irrelevance — nor the pain of Power 4 schools poaching all of their best players.

Bigger takeaways
1. As usual, the biggest changes to the sport almost always mostly benefit the “big boys” the most. Outside of the former G5 programs moving up, the biggest beneficiaries are the Alabamas, Georgias and Ohio States of the sport. There are, however, a few exceptions: Oklahoma and USC fall into the “be careful what you wish for” category.
2. And while the Big 12 is currently scrounging for any additional penny it can raise, no conference had a higher percentage of on-field gainers. That’s because Playoff berths are now attainable for the likes of Oklahoma State, Kansas State and TCU.
3. Only two of the former Pac-12 schools (Oregon and Colorado) got a positive score, as most are entering their new conferences begrudgingly. It will never not be stupefying to think about how Pac-12 leadership screwed it up so badly.
(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photos: Sam Wasson, Kevin C. Cox, Scott Taetsch, Brett Deering / Getty)
The New York Times

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July 3, 2024
Men’s college basketball Top 25: Alabama, Gonzaga, Houston lead updated rankings

After the NBA Draft withdrawal deadline passed on Wednesday night, we finally have a clearer picture of what rosters will look like when the season starts in November.

This transfer portal season has been as crazy as ever, and a lot has changed since we last did this exercise on championship night. It’s possible that a few of these teams will make some late portal additions or sign an overseas prospect or two, but today marks the first day when putting out a super-early Top 25 actually makes sense. So here it is, starting with a No. 1 team that is very much there because of the last-second withdrawal decision by a star player.

Previous rank: 6

Projected starters: Mark Sears, Chris Youngblood (transfer), Latrell Wrightsell Jr., Grant Nelson, Clifford Omoruyi (transfer)

Top reserves: Aden Holloway (transfer), Derrion Reid (freshman), Jarin Stevenson, Houston Mallette (transfer), Aiden Sherrill (freshman), Mouhamed Dioubate, Naas Cunningham (freshman), Labaron Philon (freshman)

Nate Oats has assembled the best 3-point shooting team in the country. In addition to Sears and Wrightsell, he signed three transfer guards who all made 50-plus 3s last season, and two of the three (Youngblood and Mallette) shot 40-plus percent from 3. Oats also improved his defense with former Rutgers center Omoruyi, who anchored the fifth-ranked defense in college hoops, and he signed four top-40 freshmen. This is a ridiculously deep roster with arguably the best offensive weapon in the country (Sears) and enviable athleticism and positional size. Alabama’s defense has teeter-tottered between elite and mediocre the last four years with adjusted defensive ranks of third, 92nd, third and 111th. So the Crimson Tide are due to be good on that end again. That’s the only real question mark here, because we know this team will have no problem scoring.

2. Gonzaga

Previous: 2

Projected starters: Ryan Nembhard, Nolan Hickman, Steele Venters, Ben Gregg, Graham Ike

Top reserves: Braden Huff, Michael Ajayi (transfer), Khalif Battle (transfer), Dusty Stromer

Gonzaga returns four of five starters and gets back Venters, the 2022-23 Big Sky Player of the Year who missed last season with a torn ACL. Last year, the Zags took off when Mark Few moved Gregg into the starting lineup at the three. Few has the lineup versatility to go big again if that’s what’s best. Huff would start for most high-major programs. Gonzaga’s bench might just be good enough to form a top-25 team by itself. Battle averaged 26.7 points over his last nine games at Arkansas; Stromer shot 36.6 percent from 3 as a freshman and started 14 games; Ajayi averaged 17.2 points and shot 47 percent from 3 at Pepperdine; and Braeden Smith, who is redshirting, was the Patriot League player of the year at Colgate. Like Alabama, the Zags need to improve on defense, but this is another team that should score easily. Few has smartly surrounded Ike with floor spacers to give him room to feast in the post.

Previous: 3

Projected starters: Milos Uzan (transfer), LJ Cryer, Emanuel Sharp, J’Wan Roberts, Ja’Vier Francis

Top reserves: Joseph Tugler, Terrance Arceneaux, Ramon Walker, Mercy Miller (freshman), Chase McCarty (freshman)

When Tugler suffered a season-ending foot injury on Feb. 27, Houston was the best team in college hoops, according to metrics, and clearly the best defensive team. Houston’s adjusted defensive efficiency was 84.6; the next best was Iowa State at 89.9. The Cougars lost their most important player in Jamal Shead, but the rest of the rotation is back. Uzan has already proven to be a quality Big 12 guard at Oklahoma, and Houston’s only real issue late in the year was depth. Tugler and Arceneaux give a huge boost there. They’re the best two pro prospects on the team. Kelvin Sampson would probably tell you he has seven starters. Also worth noting: Houston has won 30-plus games three straight seasons, and that followed a Final Four run. Always bet on Sampson.

Previous: 7

Projected starters: Dajuan Harris Jr., Rylan Griffen (transfer), AJ Storr (transfer), KJ Adams, Hunter Dickinson

Top reserves: Zeke Mayo (transfer), Elmarko Jackson, Flory Bidunga (freshman), Zach Clemence, Rakease Passmore (freshman), Jamari McDowell

The Jayhawks looked like a team from another era last season. When they were playing well, their ball movement was exquisite, and they ran beautiful offense. But it was hard to sustain without enough shooting and a perimeter scorer who could create his own. It was only the third time in Bill Self’s tenure that KU ranked outside the top 40 in adjusted offense. That’s where the transfers come in. Self addressed the playmaking and shooting problem with Griffen, Storr and Mayo. Self also has more lineup versatility with big wings like Griffen and Storr who can man the four in smaller lineups, and then a more athletic backup five in Bidunga to take over when Dickinson is struggling guarding ball screens. This is still somewhat of a throwback startling lineup with a non-shooter like Adams at the four, but the roster construction makes more sense on paper.

Tamin Lipsey leads an Iowa State team with high expectations. (Jay Biggerstaff / Getty Images)

5. Iowa State

Previous: 4

Projected starters: Tamin Lipsey, Keshon Gilbert, Milan Momcilovic, Joshua Jefferson (transfer), Dishon Jackson (transfer)

Top reserves: Curtis Jones, Nate Heise (transfer), Demarion Watson, Brandton Chatfield, Nojus Indrusaitis (freshman), Dwayne Pierce (freshman)

The best defense in college basketball last season should be back near the top, as three starters return and T.J. Otzelberger replaces the other two with strong defenders in Jefferson and Jackson. Saint Mary’s had the No. 7 defense last season with Jefferson in the lineup, per Bart Torvik. And Otzelberger has proven he can build elite defenses, finishing top 10 in adjusted defense in his first three years in Ames. The Cyclones are going to guard. Otzelberger also has been nails at finding underrated transfers who thrive in his system. Last year it was Gilbert and Jones. We can probably expect that Jackson, Heise and Chatfield will surpass expectations. This will be the first time Otzelberger’s Cyclones will have to deal with lofty preseason expectations, but it seems like he has the type of culture that will not let that poison their egos.

6. Duke

Previous: 1

Projected starters: Caleb Foster, Tyrese Proctor, Mason Gillis (transfer), Cooper Flagg (freshman), Khaman Maluach (freshman)

Top reserves: Maliq Brown (transfer), Kon Knueppel (freshman), Isaiah Evans (freshman), Darren Harris (freshman), Patrick Ngongba II (freshman), Sion James (transfer)

Jon Scheyer seemed to be trying to bring in complementary players out of the portal, building around the talents of Flagg with low-usage, high-efficiency guys like Gillis, Brown and James. It wouldn’t be shocking if this is the best team in college basketball based on the talent level. With so much youth, I want to see it first. But Scheyer will likely bring two five-stars off the bench in Evans and Knueppel while starting two projected lottery picks in the frontcourt. This team could be elite defensively, as Proctor found his calling on that end last year and both Flagg and Maluach project as high-level shot blockers. Duke has great positional size, with everyone in the rotation at 6-foot-5 or taller. Flagg is the key to the offense. He needs to be able to score and allow Duke to play through him to set up others, similar to how Scheyer used Kyle Filipowski. Leaning on freshmen only works when those are top-end lottery picks. Scheyer is banking on Flagg living up to the hype.

7. Connecticut

Previous: 5

Projected starters: Hassan Diarra, Aidan Mahaney (transfer), Solomon Ball, Alex Karaban, Samson Johnson

Top reserves: Tarris Reed Jr. (transfer), Liam McNeeley (freshman), Jaylin Stewart, Jayden Ross, Ahmad Nowell (freshman), Isaiah Abraham (freshman)

We’re at the point now where you just assume Dan Hurley’s plan will work. He has nailed roster construction the last few years and built offensive and defensive schemes ideal for his talent. Adding shooting this spring with Mahaney and McNeeley was huge, and Karaban decided to return for a run at a three-peat. Hurley’s offense hums when the Huskies can hunt early 3s and they have optimal floor spacing. That’s not the specialty of sophomores Ball, Stewart and Ross. For UConn to hit its ceiling, Mahaney needs to play to his potential. Diarra is more of a complementary guard, and Mahaney basically replicated his freshman season this past year when it was expected he’d make a star’s leap. He replaces the off-the-dribble playmaking from Tristen Newton and Cam Spencer, and that’s why his success is so important. Hurley has again set it up so his centers can split time and give opponents two different looks. This roster doesn’t appear as talented as the last two, but underrating UConn early has also become a yearly tradition.

Previous: 8

Projected starters: Zakai Zeigler, Jahmai Mashack, Chaz Lanier (transfer), Igor Milicic Jr. (transfer), Felix Okpara (transfer)

Top reserves: Jordan Gainey, Darlinstone Dubar (transfer), JP Estrella, Cameron Carr, Cade Phillips, Bishop Boswell (freshman)

Tennessee has been a top-five seed for six straight NCAA Tournaments and plugged any potential holes in the portal. We know this team is going to be elite defensively, because Rick Barnes constructs rosters with defense in mind. The question mark is on the offensive end and replacing Dalton Knecht. That’s likely by committee, but the hope is that North Florida transfer Lanier can step into the go-to guy role. Lanier is coming off a season in which he averaged 19.7 points and shot 44 percent from 3. Zeigler was one of the best two-way point guards in the country the second half of the season and is one of the best setup men in the country, so the ball will likely be in his hands a lot. And this roster has even more shooting than it did a year ago with guys like Lanier, Darlingstone and Gainey all considered knockdown shooters. The wildcard on this roster is Carr. His body wasn’t quite ready as a freshman, but he’s got the tools to be a star. The Vols are so deep on the perimeter that he doesn’t need to be that yet, but a breakout sophomore season could be in the works.

Previous: 11

Projected starters: Jaden Bradley, Caleb Love, KJ Lewis, Trey Townsend (transfer), Motiejus Krivas

Top reserves: Tobe Awaka (transfer), Anthony Dell’Orso (transfer), Carter Bryant (freshman), Emmanuel Stephen (freshman)

Arizona had the 10th-best defense in college basketball last season and could be even better this year. The Wildcats upgrade on the defensive end with Krivas and Bradley in for the departed Oumar Ballo and Kylan Boswell. Arizona was 20 points per 100 possessions better with Bradley on the floor without Boswell compared to when Boswell played without Bradley, per CBB Analytics. The return of Love is the big story here. He was much more efficient in an Arizona uniform than he was at UNC, and Tommy Lloyd has enough around him that he doesn’t have to go into hero mode. The addition of Trey Townsend gives Arizona more offensive punch from the four spot. Lloyd loves to play fast, and this roster is built to do so.

Previous: 10

Projected starters: JP Pegues (transfer), Miles Kelly (transfer), Denver Jones, Johni Broome, Dylan Cardwell

Top reserves: Chad Baker-Mazara, Tahaad Pettiford (freshman), Jahki Howard (freshman), Chaney Johnson, Chris Moore, Ja’Heim Hudson (transfer)

Auburn returns three of its top four leading scorers from a team that finished fourth at KenPom. The big returner here is Broome, who was one of the most effective big men in the country. Bruce Pearl leaned heavily on his depth last season and will likely do so again, but the one guy who may log heavy minutes is Broome, who will play at both the four and five with Jaylin Williams no longer around. Broome and Cardwell logged only 12 minutes together last season, per CBB Analytics, but they’ll likely start alongside each other this season. Kelly, Georgia Tech’s leading scorer last season, gives the Tigers another consistent scorer on the perimeter. Auburn could elevate into a top-five team if the point guard play is better and not as inconsistent as it has been in recent years. The Tigers addressed that in recruiting by landing Pegues, who averaged 18.4 points and 4.8 assists at Furman, and Pettiford, the second-ranked point guard in the 2024 class.

11. Texas A&M

Previous: 21

Projected starters: Wade Taylor IV, Zhuric Phelps (transfer), Manny Obaseki, Solomon Washington, Pharrel Payne (transfer)

Top reserves: Andersson Garcia, Jace Carter, C.J. Wilcher (transfer), Henry Coleman III, Hayden Hefner, Andre Mills (freshman)

When Buzz Williams moved Obaseki into the starting lineup with eight games to go, the Aggies became one of the best teams in the country. They won six of eight and ranked as the fifth-best team over that timespan, per Torvik, and ended up losing to top-seeded Houston in overtime. Tyrece Radford, a big part of that run, is gone, but Williams brought in another athletic attacking guard to replace him in Phelps. Payne, who will likely start at center, is an upgrade from what A&M had at that position, and he fits perfectly with this group. He was Minnesota’s best offensive rebounder — ranking 67th nationally — and with Garcia, Washington and Coleman back, the Aggies will likely once again lead the country in offensive rebounding rate. That allowed A&M to still have a good offense during a horrible shooting year, but the shooting should get better. Taylor is bound to shoot it better, and A&M added some shooting off the bench with Wilcher, who made 50 3s and shot 39.4 percent for Nebraska last season.

RJ Davis is back after earning first-team All-America honors. (Greg Fiume / Getty Images)

12. North Carolina

Previous: 9

Projected starters: Elliot Cadeau, RJ Davis, Ian Jackson (freshman), Cade Tyson (transfer), Jalen Washington

Top reserves: Seth Trimble, Ven-Allen Lubin (transfer), Drake Powell (freshman), Jae’Lyn Withers, Zayden High

North Carolina is going to be different without a low-post threat like Armando Bacot on the blocks, but the loss that stings is Harrison Ingram staying in the NBA Draft. Ingram was a Swiss Army knife for the Tar Heels and played a big role in the massive defensive leap they made last season. The offense should still be pretty good, especially if RJ Davis can duplicate or come close to repeating last season. I’m also intrigued to see Cadeau as a sophomore. He struggled shooting the ball as a freshman but he also played a facilitating role at a pretty high level considering his age. If the shot ever comes around, that’s a high-level college point guard. Tyson, a career 44.6 percent 3-point shooter at 6-7, was a smart addition. Lubin gives them some low-post scoring either off the bench or starting at the four. There’s enough talent and experience that it’s an ideal situation for two five-stars to come into. If either Jackson or Powell plays at a one-and-done level and Cadeau makes a sophomore leap, this could be a top-five team.

13. Purdue

Previous: 12

Projected starters: Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer, Camden Heide, Trey Kaufman-Renn, Caleb Furst

Top reserves: Myles Colvin, Daniel Jacobsen (freshman), Will Berg, Kanon Catchings (freshman), Gicarri Harris (freshman), Raleigh Burgess (freshman), Brian Waddell

Purdue’s KenPom finishes in the five years that proceeded the Zach Edey era: 9, 19, 5, 9, 24. It’s going to be difficult to replace Edey, but Matt Painter won a lot of basketball games before Edey showed up and he’ll continue to do so. Painter has a really good core returning, led by Smith, who became a killer in pick-and-roll last season as both a scorer and distributor. If you asked college coaches to rank the best point guards in the country, he’d be near the top. Purdue got a head start on what life without Edey would be like last summer when it went on a foreign tour without him and Kaufman-Renn led the team in scoring. Painter also has three centers on the bench who could be next in line as dominant low-post scorers. The 7-foot-2 Berg has been learning behind Edey the last two years, and then Painter signed two centers in Jacobsen and Burgess. Jacobsen was a standout last weekend at the tryouts for the U.S. U-18 team. When I asked two coaches there who stood out, both mentioned Jacobsen, with one saying he’ll eventually be a star. He’s 7-3, skilled and playing at Purdue, so odds are in his favor.

14. Marquette

Previous: 14

Projected starters: Kam Jones, Stevie Mitchell, Chase Ross, David Joplin, Ben Gold

Top reserves: Sean Jones, Tre Norman, Zaide Lowery, Al Amadou, Caedin Hamilton (redshirt freshman), Damarius Owens (freshman), Royce Parham (freshman)

In the six games that Tyler Kolek missed late in the season, Jones averaged 20.8 points and 4.5 assists. So we’ve seen Marquette operate when it’s the Kam Jones Show, and he cooked. I’m not a big sports betting guy, but if there are futures for the 2024-25 All-America team and you can get good odds on Jones, I’d make that gamble. It’s going to be a different look without Kolek and Oso Ighodaro, but Shaka Smart keeps betting on development and it’s made him look really, well, smart. Gold started to show more as a passer his sophomore season in the Ighodaro role, and he adds shooting to the mix. Joplin should be highly motivated after a somewhat disappointing junior season that included a bad finish when he went 2-of-10 against NC State in the Sweet 16. Ross has had flashes that suggest he can be a really good college guard. The Golden Eagles will need him to take on more of an offensive role. These next two years should really show if Smart’s philosophy of staying out of the portal can work long-term, but he’s earned the benefit of the doubt so far.

Previous: 15

Projected starters: Jeremy Roach, Jayden Nunn, Langston Love, VJ Edgecombe (freshman), Norchad Omier (transfer)

Top reserves: Josh Ojianwuna, Jalen Celestine (transfer), Rob Wright (freshman), Jason Asemota (freshman)

That projected starting lineup is tiny — basically four guards and the 6-7 Omier — but it should be able to score pretty easily. Baylor has leaned heavily on the pick-and-roll game in recent years, and Roach and Omier should be a strong combination. Edgecombe is the swing guy on this team. If he’s a high-level producer right away, then the Bears have a chance to be elite offensively. The worry is whether they’ll be able to stop anyone. Omier is skilled enough to play the four, and Baylor does have a lot of size on the bench. Scott Drew could also start the 6-foot-10 Ojianwuna next to Omier and slide the 6-foot-5 Edgecombe to the three, but he’d lose some scoring. It could take some time to figure out the combinations that work, but it helps that Drew has size on the wing off the bench in Celestine (6-6) and Asemota (6-8).

Walter Clayton Jr. pulled out of the NBA Draft and is returning to Florida. (Alan Youngblood / AP)

16. Florida

Previous: 19

Projected starters: Walter Clayton Jr., Alijah Martin (transfer), Will Richard, Sam Alexis (transfer), Alex Condon

Top reserves: Rueben Chinyelu (transfer), Thomas Haugh, Denzel Aberdeen, Isaiah Brown (freshman)

Florida has one of the best guard trios in the country in Clayton, Martin and Richard. All three made at least 70 3s last season and are good enough to carry an offense when they’re hot. The Gators’ issue last season was on the defensive end, and Todd Golden strengthened that by landing two shot blockers out of the portal in Alexis and Chinyelu. One of those two will likely start alongside Condon, the Aussie big man who is poised for a breakout sophomore season. Golden had his best season at San Francisco in his third year. This will be Year 3 at Florida, and I’d bet on it being his best year yet.

Previous: Not ranked

Projected starters: Tre Donaldson (transfer), Rubin Jones (transfer), Roddy Gayle Jr. (transfer), Danny Wolf (transfer), Vladislav Goldin (transfer)

Top reserves: Nimari Burnett, Sam Walters (transfer), Will Tschetter, Justin Pippen (freshman), Durral Brooks (freshman)

It’s hard to completely turn over a roster and have a cohesive group in Year 1, but this is a bet on Dusty May pulling it off. May is really good at role definition and getting his guys to buy in. The Wolverines are going to be huge, starting the 7-foot twin towers and then bringing shooters off the bench in the 6-foot-10 Walters and 6-foot-8 Tschetter. Walters can play the three, Gayle (6-4) could play the two and Jones (6-5) can play the point, so May could conceivably play one of the biggest lineups in college basketball. And you could make an argument that has the potential to be Michigan’s best lineup. May just coached the team that ranked No. 1 in minutes continuity and 276th in average height, so this will be a different challenge. But out of the total portal rebuilds, this is the one I’m betting on that the pieces fit best.

Previous: NR

Projected starters: Elijah Hawkins (transfer), Chance McMillian, Darrion Williams, JT Toppin (transfer), Fede Federiko (transfer)

Top reserves: Kevin Overton (transfer), Kerwin Walton, Devan Cambridge, Eemeli Yalaho, Christian Anderson (freshman)

Grant McCasland has landed the Mountain West Freshman on the Year in back-to-back portal classes, with Toppin following Williams. Both are future NBA players, and Texas Tech has one of the best 2-3-4 combinations in the country. Williams was fantastic the last two months of the season. He had a 10-game stretch when he averaged 17.2 points, 9.2 rebounds, 2.2 assists and shot 64.2 percent from 3. Toppin gives the Red Raiders another interior scorer and should help the defense. And you could argue McMillian is an upgrade from Pop Isaacs. Isaacs could carry the Red Raiders for stretches, but his efficiency didn’t justify his usage. McMillian is a low-usage, high-efficiency player who is more athletic, a better shooter and a better defender. Hawkins slides into the Joe Toussaint role and Federiko for Warren Washington. Cambridge got a medical redshirt and provides energy off the bench, while both Overton and Walton provide shooting and scoring off the bench.

Previous: NR

Projected starters: Myles Rice (transfer), Trey Galloway, Mackenzie Mgbako, Malik Reneau, Oumar Ballo (transfer)

Top reserves: Kanaan Carlyle (transfer), Luke Goode (transfer), Bryson Tucker (freshman), Gabe Cupps, Anthony Leal, Langdon Hatton (transfer), Rob Dockery (redshirt freshman), George Turkson (freshman)

If going by portal rankings and name recognition, no one had a better offseason than Indiana. Mike Woodson has shown a preference for playing through the post, and he has two of the best low-post scorers in the Big Ten now in Reneau and Ballo. Indiana had spacing issues last year, but Rice, Carlyle and Goode should help. Rice (27.5 percent) and Carlyle (32 percent) did not shoot the ball well from 3 as freshmen, but both are good foul shooters and it’s within reason to expect progression from deep based on their mechanics and skill. Both should also help in the shot creation department, which was an issue for the Hoosiers last year. Overall, Indiana is just way more talented and deep. Cupps, who started last year, might be sixth in line on IU’s depth chart at guard. All that guard depth also will allow IU some lineup versatility. When one of the bigs goes to the bench, Mgbako can slide to the four and get more shooting and skill on the floor. It’s a huge year for Woodson. Based on this class, Indiana’s donors are coming through financially, but that could quickly change if results don’t follow.

20. Illinois

Previous: NR

Projected starters: Kylan Boswell (transfer), Kasparas Jakucionis (freshman), Ty Rodgers, Carey Booth (transfer), Tomislav Ivisic (freshman)

Top reserves: Tre White (transfer), Ben Humrichous (transfer), Dra Gibbs-Lawhorn, Jake Davis (transfer), Morez Johnson (freshman)

This could look like a reach to put Illinois this high, but Brad Underwood has earned the trust. Underwood has prioritized size and skill, and this roster is oozing with upside. Underwood got busy in the portal early and then topped off his class with two international signings whom I’m projecting will both start. Jakucionis, a 6-5 guard, is one of the best young prospects overseas. An NBA scouting contact mentioned Kirk Hinrich as a comp. If Jakucionis were an American, he’d likely be one of the five-stars in this class. Ivisic, a 7-footer, is the twin brother of current Arkansas and ex-Kentucky big man Zvonimir Ivisic. Illinois also added four transfers who play the three or four and stand between 6-6 and 6-10, all of whom can shoot. And the other two freshmen, Johnson and Jason Jakstys, are 6-9 and 6-10 power forwards. Jakucionis, Boswell and Rodgers will be the keys to making it work, as Underwood has gone to a strategy of spreading the floor and leaning on his guards to create advantages. Look for all three to get a shot at continuing the booty ball offense that the Illini adopted for Marcus Domask.

Previous: NR

Projected starters: Isaiah Swope (transfer), Josiah Dotzler (transfer), Gibson Jimerson, Kalu Anya (transfer), Robbie Avila (transfer)

Top reserves: Kobe Johnson (transfer), Larry Hughes II, A.J. Casey (transfer), Kellen Thames

Indiana State led the nation in effective field-goal percentage last season and ranked fourth the year before; Josh Schertz was in Terre Haute for just three seasons. The man knows how to build an elite offense quickly, and he’s got a head start here with both Avila and Swope following him. Avila is, as Schertz calls him, the hub of his offense. He’s one of the most skilled, unique bigs in college basketball, and if you put just a little bit of shooting and speed around him, it’s probably going to work. Swope was Indiana State’s best scorer before knee problems slowed him midseason, and the offseason will allow him to finally get healthy. Schertz was able to convince Jimerson to take his name out of the portal, keeping one of the best shooters in the country at SLU. He’s a perfect fit for Schertz’s system. Dotzler is a player Schertz loved in high school and gets him on the rebound after struggling to crack the rotation at Creighton. Johnson gives SLU a defensive stopper on the perimeter and was a starter last season for West Virginia. He’ll likely battle Dotzler for that final starting spot on the perimeter. It’s a really good roster in the Atlantic 10, and based on Schertz and Avila’s history together, the offense should sing. The Billikens should be the preseason favorite to win the league.

Previous: NR

Projected starters: Jizzle James, Dan Skillings Jr., Simas Lukosius, Dillon Mitchell (transfer), Aziz Bandaogo

Top reserves: Day Day Thomas, Connor Hickman (transfer), CJ Fredrick, Tyler Betsey (freshman), Tyler McKinley (freshman), Arrinten Page (transfer), Josh Reed

Wes Miller had the 19th-best defense last season and quietly landed one of the most athletic fours in the country in Mitchell, who should make Cincy’s defense even better. It’s not going to be easy scoring in the paint against the length of Mitchell and Bandaogo, who are both pogo sticks. Mitchell was once thought to be a one-and-done, lottery-pick talent. He still has the measurables and athleticism to eventually turn into a pro, and maybe a new system and coach will help him reach his potential. The Bearcats were also in need of shooting, as Lukosius was the only real threat from deep last season once Fredrick was injured. They will benefit from Fredrick receiving a sixth year of eligibility and from Hickman, who averaged 14.5 points and shot 40.2 percent from 3 on a good Bradley team. James and Skillings both played their best ball late in the year; if they both make a leap, don’t be shocked if the Bearcats sneak into the top tier of a very deep Big 12.

Zach Freemantle, shown here way back in 2020, should be healthy again for Xavier. (Joe Robbins / Getty Images)

23. Xavier

Previous: NR

Projected starters: Dayvion McKnight, Dante Maddox Jr. (transfer), Ryan Conwell (transfer), Zach Freemantle, John Hugley IV (transfer)

Top reserves: Trey Green, Dailyn Swain, Jerome Hunter, Marcus Foster (transfer), Lassina Traore (transfer), Cam’Ron Fletcher (transfer)

Remember Freemantle? He averaged 15.2 points and 8.1 rebounds per game on a team that was 17-5 and 9-2 in the Big East before he injured his foot two years ago. After two surgeries, Freemantle is healthy, and Sean Miller has surrounded him with one of the best portal classes in the country. Conwell, who averaged 16.6 points and shot 40.7 percent from 3 for Indiana State, is the up-transfer guard I have the most faith in translating to the high-major level. He has the athleticism and playmaking chops to make an impact. Miller has a good mix of playmakers and shooters on the perimeter and depth at every position.

Previous: 25

Projected starters: Lamont Butler (transfer), Kerr Kriisa (transfer), Koby Brea (transfer), Andrew Carr (transfer), Amari Willams (transfer)

Top reserves: Otega Oweh (transfer), Collin Chandler (freshman), Brandon Garrison (transfer), Ansley Almonor (transfer), Travis Perry (freshman)

It feels like Kentucky is a team full of really good complementary players without a star. But you could have said the same about BYU a year ago, and that team spent most of the year in the Top 25 and had one of the best offenses in college basketball. Mark Pope made it clear he loves shooting and landed two of the best shooters in the portal in Kriisa and Brea. Butler and Oweh give him some athleticism and defensive chops on the perimeter, and Williams and Garrison should do the same on the interior. The one guy who could end up turning into a star is Chandler, a four-star prospect in the 2022 class who spent the last two years on a mission trip. He could change the calculus. But Pope has proven himself as a strong X’s-and-O’s coach, and this is the deepest and most talented roster he’s ever had. Star or no star, this team is probably going to score the ball efficiently and win a lot of games.

25. St. John’s

Previous: NR

Projected starters: Deivon Smith (transfer), Kadary Richmond (transfer), Aaron Scott (transfer), R.J. Luis, Vincent Iwuchukwu (transfer)

Top reserves: Lefteris Liotopoulos (freshman), Zuby Ejiofor, Jaiden Glover (freshman), Simeon Wilcher, Brady Dunlap

Rick Pitino landed two of the best point guards in the portal in Smith and Richmond. Both are ball-dominant guards, and it’s justified to question their fit together, but it’s also justified to bank on Pitino getting the absolute best out of them. Outside of Luis, who averaged 10.9 points after transferring from UMass last season, and Scott (11.0 points per game at North Texas) the roster is mostly unproven. But give Pitino an elite backcourt and a former highly-ranked center in Iwuchukwu, and I’m betting one of the best coaches in the history of the game will figure out a way to win. Those two guards would have been the best players on his team last season, and that group just barely missed the NCAA Tournament.

Next up: Arkansas, UCLA, Louisville, Rutgers, Memphis, Creighton, Maryland, Saint Mary’s, Michigan State, Ohio State, West Virginia, Mississippi State, Georgia, Princeton, Texas, Providence

(Top photos of Ryan Nembhard, Grant Nelson and Dajuan Harris Jr.: Mitchell Layton, Andy Lyons and Christian Petersen / Getty Images)

The New York Times

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May 31, 2024
Thirty years ago, Chris Farley and college basketball collided in an unforgettable way

Thirty years later, Christian Laettner isn’t sure he knew it was coming. In 1994, he was in the NBA, his second season with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Maybe someone had informed his agent but he doesn’t think so.

The former Duke star just one day remembers seeing the commercial on ESPN. Chris Farley, then at the height of his “Saturday Night Live” glory, dressed in Laettner’s No. 32 jersey, recreating his buzzer-beating shot against Kentucky, a signature moment in NCAA Tournament history.

“All I know is that all of a sudden it was out and it was hilarious and it was awesome,” Laettner told The Athletic.

Farley did three spots that aired on ESPN, all promoting college basketball, all remembered for the physical comedy and shenanigans that made Farley so beloved and famous.

In one spot, Farley was Michigan’s Rumeal Robinson, standing at the foul line, needing to sink two free throws to win the 1989 national championship. “And he makes it look … ” Farley says, before firing and missing, not once, not twice but six times, yelling out in famed Farley frustration (“GET IN THERE!”) after each brick.

In another, he’s North Carolina’s Michael Jordan in the 1982 title game, but instead of sinking the winning jumper from the wing, Farley decides to take a step-back 3 (he was ahead of his time on this), correctly pointing out in the end that college basketball did not have a 3-point line at the time.

But it’s the Laettner ad that’s so fantastic, so funny, so Farley.

“OK, I’m Christian Laettner,” the comedian begins, wearing a tight Duke uniform. “1992. Duke-Kentucky. Kentucky’s up by one, Christian’s got the ball. Two seconds left.”

Farley turns and faces five Kentucky defenders, life-sized cutouts made from plywood. He dribbles and shoots a turnaround jumper, just as Laettner did that memorable afternoon in Philadelphia in the East Regional final.

Nope.

“Off the glass!”

“Gets his own rebound!”

Miss.

“Loose ball!”

Farley dives and knocks over a Kentucky cutout. Finally, he banks in a layup and raises his arms in celebration.

“Duke wins! Game of the century,” Farley yells. “And that’s the way it happened! … Well, almost.”

Actually, this is how it happened.

In 1993, Glenn Cole worked at Wieden+Kennedy, an ambitious advertising firm based in Portland, Ore. Although it’s a global agency today, Wieden+Kennedy back then devoted a bulk of its resources to one client, Nike. It was known for “Bo Knows” and for Mars Blackmon telling Jordan, “Money, it’s gotta be the shoes.”

A copy writer, Cole, 24, was the youngest at the firm. A former sprinter at the University of Oregon, he loved the creativity and story-telling advertising provided, especially at Wieden+Kennedy. He described himself in that environment as an “idiot who was an intern half a minute ago.” But his superiors thought enough of him to assign him an ESPN campaign that came with a simple task.

Promote college basketball.

“Got the keys to this kind of cool car. Nobody’s looking at it,” said Cole, referring to all the attention the firm gave to Nike. “I have an ESPN basketball campaign. I watch a lot of ‘Saturday Night Live.’ And I was obsessed with Chris Farley.”

Cole had an idea. A common basketball moment — playing solo on a playground. Tie game. Clock winds down. 3 … 2 … 1.

Yet the shot seldom drops. The countdown resets. No game-winning heroics, only an asphalt do-over.

“And so I thought that’d be funny to kind of screw with that trope,” Cole said. “And then I was like, ‘Oh my God, Chris would be the perfect person to do that.’”

Approaching 30, Farley was a rising star. The New York Daily News had called him the breakout performer of SNL’s latest season, one who had brought the same sort of “volcanic, magnetic energy” as Eddie Murphy and John Belushi before him. His talent and comedy had started to transfer to the big screen. “Tommy Boy,” which starred Farley and David Spade, would open in 1995.

Even better in this case: Farley was a sports fan. Growing up in Madison, Wis., he had played hockey and football. At Marquette, he had played club rugby. At SNL, he played pickup hoops with cast mates at 76th Street Basketball Court at Riverside Park.

“Chris was a gifted physical comedian,” said Doug Robinson, Farley’s agent. “And a lot of people don’t know that Chris really was a tremendous athlete. He moved really well. He loved sports. So if Chris was going to do physical comedy, he was going to commit to whatever it is that he did.”

Cole flew to Los Angeles to pitch the concept to Farley. ESPN asked if he had a back-up plan in case Farley declined. “Of course,” Cole said.

Actually, he did not.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is a long shot,’” said Beth Barrett, a producer on the campaign. “It was back in the time when it wasn’t as common as it is now for celebrities and celebrity athletes and comedians and musicians to sell out to commercials. It was almost like a bad thing to be in a commercial.”

Cole met Farley in Farley’s hotel suite. Farley wore a tweed suit, disheveled by design. Cole pitched his vision, and Farley grasped it immediately. The comedian got off the couch and started acting out the Laettner spot. He knocked over a vase, which made Cole instantly realize: “Oh, I have to get something for you to knock over.”

“Yeah, this sounds like a lot of fun,” Cole remembers Farley saying. “Let’s do it.”

The spots were shot days later at a Los Angeles studio. Today, a celebrity likely would show up with an entourage of sorts. But back then, Larry Frey, the creative director on the campaign, recalls Farley’s manager arriving early and Farley pulling up later by himself. Spade dropped in around lunchtime.

“He was literally like a 10-year-old kid, and they just called recess,” Frey said. “Full of energy. Like, ‘Hey, guys! I’m probably going to screw it up today.‘ Super self-deprecating. Super enthusiastic. And just winging it.”

They shot the Michigan and North Carolina spots first, mostly because Cole knew what Farley had planned for Laettner and did not want to risk his star getting hurt.

(In addition to the ads, Farley also shot a series of promos that never aired. In the one below, Farley holds two stuffed animals and pantomimes a conversation about an upcoming rivalry game. Of course, the mascots soon attack each other, and then Farley, and the promo ends with a trademark Farley outburst.)

For the Laettner spot, Cole provided simple instructions.

“Look, I’m going to put you at the 3-point line,” he recalled telling Farley. “We’re going to start this play the way everybody remembers it in our collective memory. And then look, man, try and make the shot, but if you don’t, just hurry up and try to finish the play and surprise me.”

Farley, unleashed.

Farley at his best.

He barreled through cutouts of former Kentucky standouts Deron Feldhaus, John Pelphrey and Travis Ford, knocking them to the floor.

“A whirlwind,” Barrett said.

Good ideas don’t always translate. Cole knew instantly this one did.

“In every single one of them, right after the first take of every spot — all three — I was like, ‘Ah, f—, this is going to be incredible,’” he said.

In “The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts,” authors Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby describe this period as the highpoint of Farley’s life.

The comedian had battled drug and alcohol addiction, but after a trip to an Alabama rehab facility, he was trying to stay clean. Farley was confident and self-assured, the authors wrote, but it ultimately was a losing battle. In 1997, Farley died of an overdose at age 33.

When Cole and Barrett look back on that day in Los Angeles, the experience stands out as much as the finished product. Farley had performed as usual on camera. (After every take, he’d ask: “Was that funny?”) But he was also personable and engaging the entire eight hours he was there.

“We’d go hang out in the green room between set-ups and he asked questions and was interested in other people,” Barrett said. “And just (be) kind of a goof. It was just one of those experiences that was pretty rare in advertising where you actually really got to know somebody by the end of the day. It was pretty great.”

Farley and Cole had connected so well, riffing back and forth, exchanging ideas, Farley had asked him if he had interest in writing for him at SNL. Cole panicked, thinking, “What if I can’t jam out great stuff every week?” It was an incredible offer, but Cole loved what he was doing. He declined.

“That was my third project in advertising as I recall, but it was the first one where I felt like I was collaborating with somebody to make something better than I or he could make independently,” said Cole, who today is co-founder and chairman at 72andSunny, a global ad agency.

A year or two after the commercials aired, Laettner walked on a jetway, about to board a plane. He does not remember which airport or where he was headed, but as soon as he boarded he spotted a familiar face sitting in first class. It was Farley.

Like most celebrities, Farley was looking down, trying not to get noticed, but he made eye contact with Laettner. Farley stood, and the basketball star and comedian embraced and shared a laugh.

“Awesome commercial,” Laettner told him.

Chris Farley and Glenn Cole, backstage at the college basketball commercial shoot. (Courtesy of Glenn Cole)

(Top illustration: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletic; photos and videos courtesy of Glenn Cole)

The New York Times

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March 12, 2024
How should broadcasts handle court-storming?

Throughout a three-decade career as a prominent ESPN play-by-play broadcaster, Dave Pasch says he has been on the mic for two college basketball games that ended in a court-storming. One occurred earlier this month as unranked LSU upset Kentucky as time expired at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center in Baton Rouge, La. Pasch recalled this week a conversation he and analyst Jay Williams had with an LSU athletics department staffer prior to the game.

“We asked, if they beat Kentucky, will they storm the court?” Pasch said. “He was like, ‘Nope, we don’t storm the court here. We’ve beaten Kentucky before.’ Well, they won on this crazy, last-second shot and, of course, they stormed the floor.”

In the game’s final sequence, you can clearly hear Williams say, “Didn’t we talk today about if LSU has the right protocol in place for a court storm?” as ESPN’s cameras aired a wide shot of LSU fans spilling onto the court.

The issue of court-storming went national this week after Wake Forest fans ran onto the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum floor following a win over Duke on Saturday. Cameras picked up video of multiple fans making contact with Duke star Kyle Filipowski, who ended up limping off the court, prompting Duke coach Jon Scheyer, fuming in a postgame press conference, to ask, “When are we going to ban court-storming?” Last month, Iowa star Caitlin Clark collided with an Ohio State fan after the Buckeyes’ upset of the Hawkeyes in Columbus, Ohio.

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Should court-storming be banned — or at least made safer? ‘It’s a tough challenge’

ESPN producer Eric Mosley and director Mike Roig estimated they have worked 16 to 18 college games where fans of a team have stormed a court. A number of those court storms occurred when a team had a home upset of perennial heavyweights Duke, Kansas or Kentucky. Roig directed Arkansas’ 80-75 win over Duke on Nov. 29, and you can see the wide shot cut by Roig as fans flooded onto the Bud Walton Arena Floor.

Mosley said production planning for court-storming happens long before tip time. ESPN production crews pre-scout where they can find a safe place for their reporter and camera operators to interview a winning coach and player. Directors such as Roig hold meetings hours before games with camera operators to go over protocol and various scenarios including the storming of a court. The camera setup is such that viewers potentially get access to a lot of entry points. For a regular-season college basketball game, there are usually five non-manned hard and robotic cameras. Those are located in positions safe from the crowd. Then there are three hand-held cameras which are helmed by operators situated on the baselines and centre court. (The overhead camera for Wake Forest-Duke got the best shot of what happened to Filipowski.)

“One of the first questions we ask when we get on-site with the (sports information director) for certain games is whether there is an appetite for a court storming or if security kind of allows that,” Mosley said. “We find out where the student section is and what the security situation is there. We ask where can we get our cameras and reporter to meet a coach and star player for that postgame interview? We try and get ahead of that stuff as early as possible because we don’t want to get caught in a position where our folks like Holly Rowe, Jess Sims, Kris Budden and our camera folks are unsafe. We don’t want them trapped and trampled. For the most part, we have been pretty successful.”

The play-by-play broadcaster for the Duke-Arkansas game was Dan Shulman, who estimated he has called 20 to 25 games that have involved court-storming during his career as an ESPN broadcaster. (Shulman is also the TV voice of the Toronto Blue Jays.)

“As fun as they can look on TV, I have always been worried about what could happen,” Shulman said. “I remember a court-storming at a Louisville-Charlotte game I was doing, and Doris Burke, who was the sideline reporter on the game, was trying to get an interview with the Charlotte coach, and I was worried for her safety. It was complete chaos on the court.

“Whenever there is a court-storming, it’s hard for us at our table really to see much of what is going on. All we can really see are the people closest to our table. Sometimes the student section may be behind our broadcast location, so knowing they are heading our way to the court can obviously be a bit disconcerting as you are trying to navigate a broadcast. I think for the most part, people in television hope that when these do happen, it is all good fun, and no one gets hurt. There’s no question it’s a good visual on TV, which is enjoyed by a lot of viewers. But to me, the risk outweighs the reward.”

Wake Forest fans took over their home court after Saturday’s win. An injury to Duke’s Kyle Filipowski has reignited discussion around court-storming. (Grant Halverson / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

Bob Fishman agrees with Shulman. Fishman retired from CBS Sports last year after 50 years of employment between CBS News and CBS Sports and directed 39 NCAA men’s Final Fours, including Michael Jordan’s title-winning shot in the 1982 title game and North Carolina State’s upset of Houston the following year. Fishman said he has thought a lot recently about court-storming and would never tell a camera operator to run onto the court during one, making sure they held a position under the basket and shot what they could.

“I’m pretty firm on what I think should be done — you can’t ignore it,” Fishman said. “It’s not like a streaker running across the field at a football game, which you don’t show. I think that you have to show it because it’s part of the story and especially now since players have been injured. How I would do it is throw up a wide shot of some sort, maybe from a backboard camera or from a high beauty camera as we call it. Then I would make sure that my cameras on the court were recording everything and that stuff was being fed into a tape machine. I would never put that on the air. But I do think you have to show something, which would in my mind (be) a high shot.”

Broadcasters and production crew, especially at a 24/7 news outlet such as ESPN, have to follow the story until its conclusion, whether they are live on air or not.

“We have to keep in mind that the documentation continues even when we’re off the air,” Mosley said. “We have to treat it as a news story. For example, some of the Filipowski stuff happened after the crew had already signed off and the network transferred to another game. We’re taught and told repeatedly that we need to stay there and document as long as we can. That’s because somebody is going to be looking for that stuff.”

Mosley and Roig say they often think about how to navigate documenting a court-storming without glorifying the action.

“It’s a hard question to answer,” Roig said. “You’re both documenting and kind of glamorizing it at the same time. As a director, you’re toeing that line. We’re always taught as directors when that one person comes onto the court or the field, you don’t show them. Because more people will do it if you show them. It’s go wide and away. But this is a little different animal, right? We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of people coming onto the court. … You blur the line of documentation or glorifying it. You have to have the mindset of you are documenting it, but at the same time, you have to be careful of how you document it.”

During a segment on ESPN’s “First Take” on Monday, longtime ESPN college basketball commentator Jay Bilas was critical of sports broadcasters glamorizing court-storming.

“Years ago when fans would run out on the field or court during a game, it was network policy not to show that because we didn’t want to encourage it,” Bilas said. “So what does that say about the way we in the media use these images now? We can’t deny that we encourage it. Or at least tacitly approve of it. Everybody has to accept some responsibility for this. I don’t think it is the right thing to allow this, but I know it’s going to continue.”

Said Roig: “It’s really a touchy point because as directors, it’s a great scene, right? You want to showcase that. But I’ve never had one prior to seeing the one last week (with Wake Forest-Duke) where it got to that point where it was not fun anymore.”

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Calling Caitlin Clark: Broadcasters on the honor and challenge of announcing history

(Top photo of the scene after Saturday’s Duke-Wake Forest game: Cory Knowlton / USA Today)

The New York Times

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February 29, 2024
Mitchell’s dunk, ex-walk-on’s 3-pointer make even a Louisville blowout worth watching

Durham

Maybe he was just angry. Only a few moments earlier, Mark Mitchell had tried to throw down a furious tomahawk dunk, taking off from a great distance after breaking the press by himself, only to run into traffic and bounce it off the back of the rim.

When he got the ball again, under the basket this time, he didn’t mess around, even with his back to the bucket. He jumped, lifted the ball over his head and dunked it backward, the rare reverse overhead slam, a staple of practices and layup lines and dunk contests, but rarely spotted in the wild in its full plumage.

Mitchell shrugged it off.

“That’s not really something that’s hard for me,” Mitchell said. “I’m 6-9. I was kind of in that position and I went up with it and it worked out.”

His teammates did not.

“I was surprised. I didn’t think he was actually going to do that,” Duke guard Jared McCain said. “Mark, he’s such a kind-of-go-with-the-flow kind of guy, and when he brings some aggression, it’s like, ‘Oh, OK, Mark.’ It’s good to see him bring some aggression, some tenacity, to the team.”

Duke’s Mark Mitchell (25) slams in two during Duke’s 84-59 victory over Louisville at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C., Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com

On a night when Duke posted a workmanlike win over woeful, underachieving Louisville, the kind of game that might have made James Naismith consider a better use for those peach baskets if he knew where it was going to lead, there were a few moments of transcendent basketball beauty buried in the 84-59 muck, reminders of how beautiful the game can be even in otherwise unremarkable circumstances.

Mitchell’s dunk was, unquestionably, one — an uncommon display of athletic ability, explosiveness and imagination. For a player who does so much for Duke, rebounding and defending and all but ensuring victory if he can get to double digits (31-3), but is often overlooked on a team with Kyle Filipowski and Jeremy Roach and Tyrese Proctor and McCain, that was a moment when the spotlight was almost blinding.

“He’s a complete player,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said. “He does so much. I don’t know that he gets the credit that he probably should, nationally, or even in our league. When you talk about key guys I think anybody would love to have Mark Mitchell on their team.”

Duke’s Jeremy Roach (3) and the bench celebrate after Spencer Hubbard (55) made a three-pointer during the second half of Duke’s 84-59 victory over Louisville at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C., Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com

That moment was bookended by its basketball opposite: A late 3-pointer by 5-foot-8 former walk-on Spencer Hubbard for the third, fourth and fifth points of his career, plunging Cameron into frenzy and prompting the starters on the Duke bench to jump up and wave towels in acclimation.

“Greatest vibe in the universe, man,” McCain said.

That kind of moment is more common, almost a staple of these kinds of blowouts, but that made it no less appreciated, and certainly worth sticking around to the otherwise forgettable end.

In a long season, when not every game is a rivalry or a meeting of top-25 teams, there are games that you don’t so much play as endure. Coming off Saturday’s emotional, dramatic loss at Wake Forest and everything that went with it — Duke trapped on the floor as the Wake students rushed onto the court and Filipowski helped off injured, although he emerged unscathed and played 29 of the first 34 minutes Wednesday — this game against the ACC’s worst team didn’t come imbued with a lot of sizzle.

There are inevitably a lot of games like that, the nature of a 20-game schedule in a conference that isn’t anchored by mutual dislike the way it once was. (Maryland, we hardly knew ye.) Avoiding a letdown over the course of three months is a skill that has to be practiced and honed, just like free throws or breaking the press.

Duke’s Mark Mitchell (25) slams in two during the second half of Duke’s 84-59 victory over Louisville at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, N.C., Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com

Duke’s road to D.C. is brutal: Virginia, at N.C. State, North Carolina. This was the last game of anything less than great consequence Duke will play this season. The long and difficult march to … March is finally over.

It helps when there are moments along the way, buried like sea glass in the sand, that suddenly catch the light and dazzle. Mitchell’s dunk was that Wednesday. So was Hubbard’s first career 3-pointer. Maybe even more so. They lead you on to the next game like breadcrumbs. They lead you to the ACC tournament, and the NCAA tournament, and everything that makes the long season worthwhile.

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Luke DeCock’s Latest: Never miss a column on the Canes, ACC or other Triangle sports

This story was originally published February 28, 2024, 10:26 PM.

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Sports columnist Luke DeCock joined The News & Observer in 2000 and has covered seven Final Fours, the Summer Olympics, the Super Bowl and the Carolina Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup. He is a past president of the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, was the 2020 winner of the National Headliner Award as the country’s top sports columnist and has twice been named North Carolina Sportswriter of the Year.

Luke DeCock

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February 28, 2024
Cooper Flagg and the small New England town that raised basketball’s brightest young star

NEWPORT, Maine — In the calm moments — the few there are — snow slithers sideways across the northbound lanes of I-95. It’s almost graceful how the flurries snake right to left, passengers on every random gust of wind. Almost. But then the gusts become punches, pummeling and whipping the sides of this poor gray Nissan Altima. Windshield wipers are working overtime, and it takes every bit of front-wheel drive to stay aligned with the two thin tire tracks in the far right lane. And straight ahead, you see … nothing. The gray horizon swallows everything, even the tops of the soaring pines that frame the highway.

It’s like being inside a fiercely shaken snow globe.

Suddenly, amidst the whiteout, a standard green roadside sign appears: Exit 157. This whole trek — 100 miles north of Portland, past multiple “Moose Warning” signs — is to visit this tiny intersection. “Blink,” said longtime resident Josh Grant, “and you’ll miss it.”

Skate up the overpass to a stop sign; to the right is the local taxidermist, and not much else — so veer left, and welcome to Newport. Population: about 3,000. The main thoroughfare is called Moosehead Trail, but there’s no cutesy downtown with boutique shops or mom-and-pop restaurants.

There are two gas stations, a few fast-food joints — Burger King, McDonald’s, Subway, Dunkin’ — a pharmacy, an ice cream shop, and two marijuana dispensaries. Around the corner there’s a Walmart, and in the parking lot, a log cabin that serves as the community’s chamber of commerce.

A few roads over, on a snowy street the plows haven’t reached, 10 houses down on the left, there’s a brown two-story, with the remnants of a basketball hoop on the left side of a curving driveway.

This is where Cooper Flagg, the best high school basketball player in America, was raised. Cooper’s enrolling at Duke next season, before likely becoming the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft. At 17, the 6-foot-9 forward already has been named a McDonald’s All-American, the MVP of the annual NBA Players Association top-100 camp, and an all-star at the 2022 FIBA U17 Basketball World Cup, which he helped the United States win.

A native Mainer hasn’t been drafted in 40 years, not since the New Jersey Nets selected Jeff Turner in 1984. Yet somehow, this town — “a place for people going other places,” as resident Earl Anderson calls it — has bred one of basketball’s brightest rising stars.

Maine has only one Division I program — the University of Maine — and the Black Bears men’s team has never made the NCAA Tournament. The state rarely exports talent to other programs.

“Just because we don’t produce the big D1 athletes as much as those other states do, people don’t think basketball is as big (here),” said Ralph Flagg, Cooper’s dad. “But it really is.”

Maine has no professional sports franchises, so local TV channels stream every round of the annual state high school tournaments, and the regional and championship games are played in the state’s largest arenas, in Bangor, Augusta and Portland. People flock from as far north as Madawaska — one of America’s “Four Corners,” which sits on the Canadian border — to watch players compete to bring the coveted Gold Ball home to their community. “When it comes to tournament time, the last person leaving the town turns the lights out,” said Ralph, repeating an old Maine expression.

“High school basketball is generations deep in the fabric of all these communities,” Anderson said. “It binds them together.”

Most small Maine towns aren’t large enough to support a school themselves. (Newport, for example, is one of eight communities that feeds into Nokomis Regional High School.) It’s a few thousand people here, another couple hundred there, all coming together to support that generation of players. Anderson, who coached Cooper his freshman year, led Nokomis to its only girls state championship in 2001, a point of pride for both coach and community.

Cooper’s parents both played at Nokomis. Ralph later played for Eastern Maine Community College. And mom Kelly remains one of the top talents Nokomis ever produced; she played on the only University of Maine team to win an NCAA Tournament game, a 1999 upset over Stanford.

After college, Ralph was playing in a men’s league at the local community center — a converted 1940s armory, just a few minutes walk from the house Cooper grew up in — alongside Kelly’s dad (who also played at Nokomis). “That was kind of where we met,” Ralph said. “On a basketball court.”

They settled, like their parents before them, in Newport, raising their three boys: Hunter, the oldest, and later twins Cooper and Ace. The boys were raised with a basketball in their hands, traveling the state to watch games. Kelly — who coached the Nokomis varsity girls team — has photos of them asleep in various high school rafters. At home, the boys spent hours in the driveway (when the weather allowed it) playing pickup, with their parents or friends or just one another.

“And then even sometimes in the winter,” Cooper said, “we would shovel out a square in the snow and play with gloves on.”

By Hunter’s freshman year, Nokomis was playing in a nearby summer league, but struggled finding enough players. So Cooper and Ace joined in — as sixth-graders, against high schoolers. “(Cooper) was still the best player on either team,” Ralph said.

About the same time, Kelly got a call from a former college peer: Andy Bedard, a basketball icon in Maine. Bedard led Mountain Valley High to a state title in 1994, before playing at Boston College and Maine. Bedard was coaching his son, Kaden, and had heard about Cooper. He invited the family to attend a practice, and they were immediately impressed.

“They were surprised how I didn’t have a whole lot of time and patience for, like, kiddie gloves,” Bedard said. “The drills and the coaching and the urgency and the speed, you’d have thought you were at a high school practice, if you had your eyes closed and you didn’t see the kids out there — but meanwhile, they’re like fourth-graders.”

Eventually, Bedard and Kelly formed their own AAU program, where they could pour every dollar they raised back into their kids. They let the boys decide on a name: Maine United.

The team drew players from all over the state. Bedard was based in New Gloucester, for instance, about 20 minutes north of Portland. So Maine United didn’t have one consistent practice gym; it used a church in Portland, or a gym at Division III Bates College in Lewiston, or anywhere it could train.

Once the middle school bell rang, two or three days a week, the Flaggs trekked down I-95. They’d pack snacks, or order a pizza pickup on the way, to cut their commute. “Probably like an hour and 45 minutes,” Bedard said. “Hour and a half, maybe, if Kelly was driving 100.” They usually drove the family’s blue Chrysler minivan. They’d lay the middle row of seats down so the boys could sprawl out, then play old Boston Celtics tapes on the van’s mini DVD player.

“The ‘85-86 Celtics championship Finals disc,” Cooper said. “We watched all those so many times. Then we had Magic versus Bird. Just all those other old Celtics films.” Those tapes were Cooper’s basketball education. Larry Bird was his professor and remains his favorite player. And the way those teams played — sharing the ball, prioritizing defense — always stuck with Cooper. “Watching them every single day maybe brainwashed him into the fact that, well, that’s how you play,” Bedard said.

Maine United won quickly regionally, but soon wanted a broader barometer. They found one at a seventh-grade grassroots tournament in Washington, D.C. “I’m seeing all these big guys in the layup line, and it’s our age group,” Bedard said, “but certainly they all looked a hell of a lot older. Some of them had tattoos.” Five minutes into the game, Maine United led 24-2. “And Cooper, he’s smashing everything,” Bedard said.

Cooper’s performance that weekend put him on the national radar. “I remember my grandson texted me, ‘Do you know Cooper Flagg?’” Anderson said. “Because he had read somewhere that he was, like, the seventh-ranked seventh-grader, eighth-grader in the country.” By their eighth-grade year, prep schools from around the country started calling, asking them to transfer.

But Cooper and Ace refused. They’d grown up with the same group of friends, always cheering on Nokomis, waiting for their opportunity to play for the Warriors. “We always talked about when (Hunter and his friends) were seniors, when we were freshmen, what the team was going to look like and how we were going to win a Gold Ball together,” Cooper said. “Once we got there, we were like, let’s make it happen.”

Cooper averaged 20.5 points, 10 rebounds, 6.2 assists, 3.7 steals, and 3.7 blocks per game that season — becoming the first freshman in state history to be named Maine Gatorade Player of the Year — and Nokomis won its first state title. A photo of Hunter, Cooper, and Ace holding the Gold Ball remains the screensaver on Ralph’s phone. On the ride home to Newport, Ralph and Kelly and other parents of kids who grew up together packed into the Flagg’s Chevy Suburban, singing “We Are the Champions” as loud as they could.

As the bus carrying the team pulled off exit 157, fans lined the sides of Moosehead Trail in a miles-long parade that stretched to Nokomis. All eight townships that feed into the school sent their fire trucks and police cars to escort the team bus, and locals near Nokomis set off fireworks.

“As time has gone on, I’ve grown to appreciate it more and more,” Cooper said. “Because as the times get more hectic, and everything’s getting more crazy, I get to appreciate the simplicity of that year. I was able to still kind of just be a kid, and have fun with my friends.”

Tickets to watch Cooper Flagg’s team play in Portland, Maine, sold out within 24 hours. (John Jones / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Midway through Cooper and Ace’s freshman season, the Flaggs accepted the inevitable: The twins would have to leave home to reach their full basketball potential.

“It’s a decision you have to make at some point,” Cooper said, “if you really want to take yourself to the next level.”

Ralph and Kelly vetted schools nationwide but struggled to find the right fit. Montverde (Fla.) Academy had recruited the twins as eighth-graders, but the family was reluctant to let them move so far. Then Montverde invited the Flaggs to watch them in-person at a nearby tournament. The school’s reputation — it has produced seven first-round NBA picks since 2020 — preceded it, but the twins finally saw Montverde’s style, which prioritized the same team-first principles of the old Celtics teams they grew up studying. Leaving the gym, Cooper and Ace agreed: “This is where we want to go.”

It wasn’t an easy transition. At 15 years old, the boys were away from their support system for the first time. They couldn’t go fishing on Sebasticook Lake, or camping and bird hunting on old paper company land in northern Maine. They did their laundry for the first time. It helped some that Bedard moved to Florida — his son also transferred to Montverde — and the twins spent most weekends at his house. Ralph and Kelly flew to all the twins’ home games, and others on the East Coast, but not being around them daily took its toll. “It’s hard to have conversations with them over the phone and really get a true feel of how they’re feeling,” Ralph said.

So Ralph and Kelly did what they had to: They sold their house in Newport and moved to Florida full-time. They closed on their Newport home in November.

“It was a hard decision because we’re so close to the rest of our community, but at the same time, this is where we needed to be: with our kids,” Ralph said. “Moving down here was probably the best decision we’ve made. Just to be here with them, and not lose those last couple of years that we do have with them.”

The twins haven’t been back to Newport since last summer. When Cooper visited a Nokomis basketball camp, the kids reacted “like it was LeBron James,” said Grant, the school’s current coach. Cooper still streams Nokomis’ games and texts his old teammates after big wins. Newport will always be home, even if he no longer has a home there.

Which is what makes the first Friday night in January so special. Portland’s Cross Insurance Arena is packed.

Or, it will be.

Temperatures are almost down to single digits — there’s a “storm” coming this weekend, Mainer speak for a blizzard — but you’d never know it from the line of folks stretching down Free Street, waiting to get inside. To get a glimpse — possibly, probably, their last one — of Cooper Flagg in his home state. Most are wearing gear from one of three teams: Nokomis, Montverde or Duke.

When it was announced that Cooper and Ace’s Montverde team would be playing here — as part of “The Maine Event,” a speciality showcase put on by the same MADE Hoops group that first hosted Maine United in the seventh grade — tickets sold out within 24 hours. Ralph and Kelly joke they’re “like the governors” this weekend. The family’s entire 42-seat midcourt section is full, and there’s at least that many people hovering around it at all times. To say hello, to reminisce. To be a part of this moment, one the state has never had before.

“We’ve never had a true, native Mainer have this type of attention and this potential,” Bedard said. “And it’s not even like he’s a good player; we’ve got a chance to have one of the best ones ever.”

Cooper doesn’t emerge until midway through the first game, featuring his old Nokomis buddies. He’s barely visible in a tunnel under the stands, but he can’t stay hidden long. One lucky kid sees him first and asks for an autograph. That turns into 10, 20, almost 50, within minutes.

He gets to watch the game for maybe three minutes before security shuffles him back to the locker room.

“At one point, you were those kids,” Cooper said. “So where (the attention) can be annoying and where it can be overwhelming, I think about the fact that I used to dream to be that person, and I worked towards being that person. So I can’t be, like, annoyed with what comes with it.”

When he committed to Duke in October, through a commemorative SLAM Magazine cover, T-shirts were made of the cover — and proceeds from those sales went to the Lewiston-Auburn Area Response fund, which supports that community following October’s mass shooting, when 18 people were killed and another 13 were injured. Those In Flagg We Trust shirts dotting the crowd? A portion of those proceeds go to the Ronald McDonald House of Portland, which took care of Kelly and Ralph when all three boys were born prematurely. After wearing No. 32 his entire life, Cooper wants to wear No. 2 at Duke in honor of his former Maine United teammate, Donovan Kurt, who died of brain cancer in November 2022.

“It’s just important, wherever you are, to always stay grounded and be able to just give back to what helped you get to where you are,” Cooper said. “To show support back to all the people that are supporting me from the start.”

(Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Brendan Marks / The Athletic; John Jones, Juan Ocampo, Lance King / Getty Images)

The New York Times

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February 2, 2024

The Athletic 133: Conference championship games to settle 2023’s final debates

The 2023 season comes down to conference championship weekend. We could have the simplest and most impressive College Football Playoff field in the 10-year history of the event, we could have complete chaos or we could have something in between, with a little bit of last-minute drama.

Michigan’s win against Ohio State moves the Wolverines up to No. 2 in this week’s rankings and leaves four undefeated Power 5 teams entering the weekend. If Georgia, Michigan, Washington and Florida State win, it’s an easy selection. But the SEC, Pac-12 and ACC games could be very competitive and see undefeated teams lose, giving the committee its hardest decisions since 2014.

Oregon still likely has the strongest case among one-loss teams. The Ducks were the top-ranked one-loss team by the committee last week, and if they beat Washington, they’ll avenge their only loss of the season. Oregon entered the week as a 9.5-point favorite on BetMGM. An Alabama win against Georgia would create the most chaos, but can you put the Crimson Tide ahead of a Texas team that won in Tuscaloosa?

It’s impossible to predict what the results will be and what the committee will do. Let’s just appreciate the most consequential conference championship weekend we’ve had in a long time.

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Behind the AP Top 25 ballot: Oregon-Washington making Pac-12 history and more takeaways

The regular season has come to a close, meaning teams with losing seasons have essentially locked in their final positions in these rankings, pending some small moves due to bowl games. But there can still be a lot of change in the upper half. Here is this week’s Athletic 133.

1-10

The only question in the top nine was where to place Ohio State, even though it may be ultimately irrelevant to the Playoff picture with the other one-loss teams playing in championship games. Here, the Buckeyes fall a few spots but remain as the top one-loss team because they have two good wins (Penn State, Notre Dame) plus a one-score loss to the No. 2 team. Oregon has dominated opponents in victory but has no wins over current top-20 teams and a one-score loss to No. 3 Washington. Texas beat Alabama and has a one-score loss to Oklahoma but doesn’t have a second top-25 win. Alabama, of course, lost to Texas and still has an ugly performance against USF on the resume to go with some good wins (Ole Miss, LSU).

All of those teams could jump Ohio State (and get into the CFP) if they win their conference championship games, and they’ll still likely finish in New Year’s Six games if they lose. Do I think Ohio State would beat those teams right now? Perhaps not. But we try to emphasize resume and head-to-head in these rankings.

The No. 9 and 10 spots are important for NY6 purposes. Ole Miss actually jumps Missouri here because of its wins against LSU and Tulane (though the Green Wave were playing with their backup QB). While Missouri played Georgia close, its best win was either Tennessee, Kansas State or Memphis, none of which are in my top 25, and the Tigers also lost to LSU, whom Ole Miss beat.

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Emerson: Georgia’s three-peat hopes depend on beating familiar nemesis

11-25

Rank	Record	Prev
11	10-2	14
12	10-2	12
13	9-3	13
14	9-3	15
15	10-2	9
16	9-3	17
17	11-1	20
18	12-0	22
19	11-1	21
20	9-3	18
21	8-4	16
22	9-3	23
23	10-2	24
24	11-1	25
25	10-2	26

Oklahoma slides up to No. 11 after beating TCU. Although No. 12 Penn State has better losses (Ohio State, Michigan), the Sooners have better wins (Texas, SMU, greater margin of victory against West Virginia), and it’s possible Oklahoma could get up to No. 10 if Texas wins the Big 12 and SMU wins the AAC. Louisville slides down to No. 15 after losing to Kentucky, one spot ahead of Notre Dame due to their head-to-head result.

Tulane beat UTSA and remains the top Group of 5 team at No. 17, ahead of a clash with No. 25 SMU. Liberty is 12-0, and the early-season win against now-10-win New Mexico State is a quality win. James Madison is 11-1 and going bowling, but it’s not eligible for the New Year’s Six. The big question is whether the CFP committee would put a two-loss AAC champion SMU over a potentially 13-0 Liberty.

GO DEEPER

Sampson: Notre Dame’s largely successful season can’t represent a peak

26-50

Not much change in this group. Kansas State drops out of the top 25 after a loss to Iowa State. New Mexico State is up to No. 31 after beating Jacksonville State to move to 10-3. Kentucky’s win against Louisville moves the Wildcats up to No. 43, while No. 48 Northwestern and No. 49 Maryland move into the top 25 after wins against Illinois and Rutgers, respectively. Northwestern has the head-to-head over the Terps. No. 45 Iowa State beat Kansas State but stays behind 9-3 Ohio due to their head-to-head result. Appalachian State whipped Georgia Southern 55-27 to move up to No. 50 with five consecutive wins to close the regular season.

51-75

Georgia Tech slides up to No. 51 after battling Georgia to an eight-point loss. Cal jumps up to No. 55 after beating UCLA but remains behind Auburn due to the head-to-head. Fresno State drops to No. 61 after ending its regular season with losses to New Mexico and San Diego State, but the Bulldogs stay ahead of Boise State thanks to their head-to-head win. San Jose State moves up to No. 70 after beating UNLV and closing its regular season with six consecutive wins.

76-100

Colorado ended its season losing eight of its last nine games after a 3-0 start, and Deion Sanders’ group sits at No. 79. Bowling Green rises to No. 83 after beating Western Michigan and winning five of its last six games, with the lone loss against Toledo. No. 87 USF got to 6-6 after beating Charlotte 48-14, and Alex Golesh put together one of the most impressive seasons for a first-year coach this season. Old Dominion beat Georgia State at the buzzer to finish 6-6 and move up to No. 88. The Monarchs played 10 one-score games this season. Utah State beat New Mexico in double-overtime and Louisiana beat ULM, as both got to bowl eligibility.

GO DEEPER

Feldman’s candidates to replace Dana Holgorsen at Houston

101-133

No. 103 Northern Illinois and No. 106 Eastern Michigan both won to get to bowl eligibility, but EMU remains behind Western Michigan and Central Michigan due to losses against both. Vanderbilt finishes as the lowest-ranked Power 5 team at No. 114; Baylor is the next closest at No. 109. Sam Houston closed its season with a walk-off field goal against Middle Tennessee, winning three of its last four games after an 0-8 start. UConn won its final two games against Sacred Heart and UMass to move up to No. 120. Tulsa’s win against East Carolina sees the Golden Hurricane finish at No. 125 and the Pirates finish at No. 128. Kent State finishes as No. 133, having gone 0-11 against FBS competition.

The Athletic 133 Rankings series is part of a partnership with AllState.

The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.

(Photo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)

The New York Times

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November 28, 2023

‘Let everybody know who you are’: Jai Lucas builds on his family’s hoops legacy

DURHAM, N.C. — Jai Lucas needed to make one final call.

It was April 2022, and the Kentucky assistant coach was debating whether to leave one blue-blood basketball program for another. He’d been offered a job at Duke, under first-time head coach Jon Scheyer.

As he called his inner circle — including head coaches such as Marquette’s Shaka Smart, Texas’ Rodney Terry and SMU’s Rob Lanier — he gradually realized the stakes. Duke rarely hires an assistant coach who didn’t play there; that hadn’t happened in over two decades. Plus, in the wake of Mike Krzyzewski’s retirement, Lucas knew he’d be getting in at the onset of a new era and the kind of career springboard that could be. But was he really going to leave Hall of Famer John Calipari to work for a rookie head coach?

Torn, he called the person he knew would set him straight.

To the rest of the world, John Lucas II is known for being the No. 1 pick in the 1976 NBA Draft and later the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs, Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers. A veritable hoops icon. “In basketball circles,” Terry says, “you’re gonna know Big John.”

But to Jai, that basketball legend had always been just Dad. So he called, spelling out his rationale in meticulous detail. It wasn’t until Jai went silent that his father finally spoke: “I don’t even know why you called me. It sounds like your mind’s already made up.”

Jai chuckles now, retelling the story from his fifth-floor Duke office. “That was the whole conversation,” he remembers. It was also all the confirmation he needed.

Jai took over Duke’s defense in Year 1 A.K. — After Krzyzewski — and orchestrated a top-20 unit nationally, per Ken Pomeroy’s ratings. Then in June, just 14 months after Jai arrived, Scheyer promoted the 34-year-old to associate head coach, making him second-in-command for the nation’s second-ranked team. “He always tells me the truth,” Scheyer said this summer, “and that’s what you need when you’re a head coach.”

If the Blue Devils play to their potential this season, that may be where Jai finds himself soon. But taking the Duke job wasn’t merely about professional considerations.

It was about family. Getting back to his roots. “The opportunity,” Jai says, “to kind of keep the name legacy alive here.”

Almost 30 years later, Debbie Lucas’ one-liner still endures.

This was Philadelphia, March 1995, and John Lucas II’s wife had just returned home from picking up their daughter, Tarvia, after high school basketball practice. John — in his first season coaching the 76ers — was watching TV with his sons, John III and Jai. That’s when Debbie turned to her husband and said:

“I think I’ve seen a better high school basketball player than you.”

Impossible. John had been Mr. North Carolina, breaking “Pistol” Pete Maravich’s state high school scoring record while at Hillside High School in Durham. John earned more than 300 college scholarship offers before becoming an All-American in basketball and tennis at Maryland, and then the first point guard ever drafted first overall in the NBA. So the idea that someone was better than that? “Excuse me,” John remembers thinking, “but you’re out of your f—— mind.”

He had to see. John loaded his sons into his wife’s white Land Cruiser and drove to Lower Merion High School, just minutes before that night’s game. Walking in, John spotted Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, one of his former NBA peers who was coaching at nearby La Salle. He inquired why he was there that night.

“To see my son play,” Jellybean responded. “His name’s Kobe Bean.”

As in, Kobe Bean Bryant.

John and his sons took their seats, right as Kobe — then a high school junior — walked to midcourt for tip-off. “He won the jump ball, he outran the big, they threw the ball ahead to him, and he did a windmill dunk,” John III, Jai’s older brother, remembers. “The first play of the game.”

That one game was all any of the Lucases needed to see. John, recognizing the guard’s supreme talent, invited Bryant to practice with his 76ers. And as for the boys? “I say my love for basketball started then,” Jai says, “because we lived five houses from Kobe.”

Bryant became close friends with Tarvia, the Lower Merion team manager, and like an older brother, of sorts, to John III and Jai, coming over for family dinner, swinging by in the morning before 76ers practice to pick up John, or even sneaking the boys onto the Lower Merion bus for away games, hiding them under baggy letterman jackets. “We’d been around, like, star players,” John III says, “but watching him as kids, we’re like, oh, sh–.” Even for kids who learned the finger roll from George Gervin, who had had dinner with Michael Jordan and played in the driveway with Larry Bird, growing up in Bryant’s atmosphere was transformative.

This, as much as anything, was Jai’s introduction to basketball. Even at 6 years old, Jai watched everything Bryant did, soaking it in. It was one of the defining relationships of his life.

The others? Well, those were back in Durham — the place the Lucases made their name.

When John Harding Lucas returned from the Asiatic-Pacific Theater at the end of World War II, it wasn’t long before Hillside came calling, hiring him as principal in 1962.

Before desegregation and two years before the Civil Rights Act, Hillside was one of the oldest Black high schools in the South. It was John Sr.’s job to integrate it. John still remembers picketers demonstrating outside his childhood home on Fayetteville Street, across from well-known HBCU North Carolina Central University.

Before long, John Sr. became a major player in desegregating not just Hillside, but all the state’s schools. It was his idea to form a new, integrated education organization, rather than merging the two racially segregated ones that existed at the time. The North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) was founded in 1970 — desegregating Hillside while John II was attending. “The first year of integration was almost integration in reverse,” he says. “Hillside was 90 percent Black, 10 percent White.” Already a budding basketball star by then, John’s Hillside team played Durham High (a predominantly White school) at Cameron Indoor Stadium in one of the first integrated games in state history.

After John left for Maryland, his father continued his mission; he was named the fourth president of the NCAE, and later interim president of Shaw University in Raleigh. John Sr. was also heavily involved in the contentious merger of Durham’s city and county school systems, which operated with separate — and racially aligned — funding until 1992. For his efforts, John Sr. earned several lifetime achievement awards — including the prestigious N.C. Award for Public Service in 2013 — but one honor stands above the rest:

Having a school, Lucas Middle, named after him in 2012.

“When you get older, that’s when you really start to realize it,” Jai says of his grandfather, now 102, who still lives less than two miles from Duke’s campus. “He started to get all these awards and he started to get all this recognition, and then you started to understand his impact on the community.”

Every summer, John brought his children back to Durham.

“It’s where our family’s at. It’s our roots,” John III says. “It’s who my parents are, it’s where they come from. I think Durham raised my dad and my mom — and you never forget where you come from.”

Durham, in a way, became a reprieve from basketball. Because everywhere else? Be it in Philadelphia, Cleveland — where John earned his third head-coaching job, five years after leaving the 76ers — or the family’s de facto home base of Houston, hoops was the priority.

Though Jai was too young in Philadelphia to seriously train with Bryant, in the years after the family left, he committed himself to basketball as relentlessly as his idol had. Some of that came back in Houston, where John let Jai join the NBA workouts he ran, as part of his player development and substance abuse clinic, John Lucas Enterprises. More came in Cleveland, when Jai joined the Akron Shooting Stars AAU program, coached by LeBron James’ former high school coach.

But it wasn’t until 2003, when John was fired by the Cavaliers and the family moved back to Houston, that Jai got the full experience of being coached by his father.

At that point, Jai was entering high school. John wanted to be there for his son — and so he took a break from the NBA (although pros continued to flock to Houston for his infamous conditioning and skills training). “I told him I wanted to play,” Jai says, “and then he really invested in me and my basketball.” John treated Jai just like any of his pros. Suddenly, teenage Jai was playing against the likes of T.J. Ford and Damon Stoudamire, two smaller yet highly successful guards. John had done the same thing with Jai’s older brother, John III — pitting him against pros, clipping at the edges of his comfort zone — but he immediately noticed the difference in his two sons’ approach. “John had a Kobe mindset: Bravo-y, in your face,” their father says. “John’s gonna talk to you and tell you what’s going to go on with him; Jai’s just gonna do the work.”

It didn’t take long for John to realize that was just his sons’ opposite personalities manifesting on the court.

“I always used to get on Jai,” John III says, “like c’mon, you gotta let everybody know who you are — because that’s how I played. I was the smallest, so I felt like I always had to be the loudest. But Jai’s quiet; his personality, how he is now — in the real world — that’s how he played.”

John attributes some of the personality difference between his sons to one specific part of their upbringing: his drug use and subsequent recovery. John’s career was marred by alcohol and drugs, a matter he’s been open about since getting sober in the late 1980s.

“My discipline through my recovery is what Jai knew, and my attention to detail. Always aware of my surroundings, always trying to be accepting of others, believing in something greater than myself, and learning how to care about others unconditionally,” John says. “John saw a different dad, one that had to pick himself back up. Jai just saw the other side — the results of picking yourself back up.”

The similarity, then, was in how John prepared them both. How they’d go to the gym with their dad every morning, and not leave until they’d made 500 shots. Jai’s father treated him like he would his NBA pupils. “He always told me, whenever we’re in the gym, I’m not Dad; I’m Coach,” Jai remembers. “When we leave, I’ll be your dad again.” It was intentional tough love, from a man who knew how difficult it was to achieve basketball greatness.

“Jai and them hadn’t ever seen a tough day in their lives. I told them, if you’re going to play basketball, you’ve got to get an edge and a hunger. … These (other) kids are fighting,” John says. “So the competitive level you’ve got to get to, has to match them. And because of your last name, every time you get out there, their dad is telling them, ‘You measure yourself by that Lucas boy; you kick his a–.”

So John always told his sons one thing, the same thing he’d learned from his father back in Durham:

“Protect the last name.”

Jai Lucas, 34, was promoted to associate head coach before his second season with Duke. (Lance King / Getty Images)

It was an offhand comment, facetious even, but one Jai took to heart. He was at Rob Lanier’s house during his freshman year at Florida, when Lanier — then an assistant on Billy Donovan’s staff — let it slip:

“I’m gonna hire you one day … when you’re done playing in Switzerland,” Jai remembers Lanier saying. “I’ll never forget the statement, because I’m still thinking I’m going to the NBA.”

It wasn’t a far-fetched idea. Jai had turned himself into a top-25 national recruit; per ESPN’s rankings, he was one spot behind Blake Griffin, and two ahead of James Harden, in the Class of 2007. He arrived at Florida on the heels of consecutive national titles by the Gators, and almost immediately became a starter. Yet Lanier already had an idea of the long-term path Jai was on.

“I thought he would have a better coaching career than a playing career, quite honestly,” Lanier says, “but that has more to do with how good of a coach I thought he could be.”

All the things that made Jai an attractive recruit and player — despite his 5-foot-9 frame — carried over to the coaching world. “If you didn’t like Jai,” says Smart, who briefly coached Jai at Florida, “then there was something wrong with you, not him.” Emotionally, he was mature beyond his years. “He watches, he analyzes, he processes — and then he figures out a solution,” John III adds. “It’s very strategic.”

He also knew the game. In his father’s gym in high school, Jai was sometimes responsible for teaching drills to younger players, tweaking their missteps and offering advice. John wasn’t sure his youngest son was taking to coaching — until Jai’s freshman year of high school, when he wore a suit to his first fall league game, same as his dad had in the NBA. “Because,” John says, “he respects the game.” Jai was named to the SEC’s all-freshman team that year, despite the Gators missing the NCAA Tournament.

Then, after his freshman season, Jai transferred closer to home, to Texas; Terry — then an assistant on Rick Barnes’ Texas staff — was his lead recruiter. He saw in Jai what Lanier had. “Jai was always cerebral, you know?” Terry says. “He wasn’t the most athletic guy, things of that nature, but (his game) really wasn’t about that.”

Jai barely played his final two seasons at Texas — one start in 58 appearances, and less than 12 minutes per game — but still pursued a professional career. His first stop was overseas, in Latvia. John knew Jai’s uphill climb to the NBA would be steep.

He gave the tough advice only a dad can: Maybe it’s time to start a new dream.

And then a call came. It was Lanier, now at Texas. He was keeping his promise.

Jai re-joined the Longhorns as a special assistant in 2013 and quickly endeared himself to Barnes’ staff. When Lanier asked him for anything, even something as small as a video cut-up of a player, Jai did it exactly as instructed — despite never taking notes. “It always got done the way I asked it,” Lanier says. “Always.” In 2015, Barnes left Texas for Tennessee, and Jai opted to stay, becoming the director of basketball operations on Smart’s new staff in Austin. Before long, Jai’s connections started paying dividends on the recruiting trail; Smart promoted him to assistant in 2016, and Jai soon helped UT land lottery talents like Jarrett Allen, Mo Bamba and Jaxson Hayes. In 2020, Kentucky offered Lucas its recruiting coordinator position.

Not even two years later, it was a battle of the blue bloods for Jai’s services.

“Being able to be selective in this business is a real luxury, and he has that,” Lanier adds. “So he can really be true to who he is.”

Jai doesn’t take that for granted: that his cousins compete for Duke tickets, that they’re 10-deep behind the Cameron Indoor bench, that he’s liable to see a family member on any Target run. But the most special connection of them all? Jai’s 5-year-old son, Jaxin, spending time with John Sr., the family patriarch — bookends on four generations of Lucases.

Back in his office, Jai is asked if he feels like he’s earned a branch of the family tree yet. He pauses.

“Not yet,” he finally says. “I think the branches on the tree have already been established … and my part is almost like watering it. Just making sure I’m taking care of it.”

(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; photos: Courtesy of the Lucas family; Lance King / Getty Images)

The New York Times

Source link

November 28, 2023

The Athletic 133: 11-0 Washington deserves more respect

It’s time to put some respect back on Washington’s name.

The Huskies are undefeated and have the best win in the country, based on these rankings, but they have continually sat outside the top four of the College Football Playoff selection committee’s in-season rankings. That needs to change this week. After pulling out a 22-20 win against Oregon State on a rainy night in Corvallis, Washington has the most impressive resume in the country. The Huskies move up to No. 2 in this week’s Athletic 133.

Washington has wins over Oregon, Arizona, Utah, Oregon State and USC. Nobody can match that many good victories. Yes, the Huskies needed a pick six and a questionable penalty to escape Arizona State and played Stanford close, but no team blows everyone out every single week.

Quarterback Michael Penix Jr. struggled at times against the Beaver defense, completing 13 of 28 passes, but he was responsible for all three touchdowns in a difficult environment, and he came up with a clutch third-down completion to Rome Odunze to seal a game which Washington entered as a betting underdog.

Georgia continues to look like the best team in the country and is getting better every week, but everyone else looks beatable, including Washington. Perhaps Oregon will be favored if the Ducks and Huskies meet again in the Pac-12 championship game, but that’s for another time. Right now, Washington deserves to not only be in the top four but higher than fourth.

Here is this week’s Athletic 133.

1-10

Other than Washington moving up, the only change in the top 10 is Missouri moving in after beating Florida to move to 9-2.

We’ve never seen a season in the CFP era with five 11-0 Power 5 teams. In theory, the situation could work itself out easily, with Georgia, Washington, Florida State and the Michigan/Ohio State winner making the top four. But the devastating leg injury to Florida State quarterback Jordan Travis could upend that possibility and create some difficult CFP conversations about the ‘Noles. They’ll play Louisville in the ACC championship game, which could be a top-10 matchup.

11-25

Penn State’s wins over Iowa and West Virginia have looked better as the season has played out, and the Nittany Lions move up to No. 12, behind Ole Miss because of the Rebels’ wins against LSU and Tulane. Oklahoma drops to No. 14 after escaping BYU. Oregon State drops to No. 16 after its loss, falling just behind Arizona, which demolished Utah 42-18 and beat the Beavers in October. James Madison’s undefeated run is over, but the Dukes don’t fall out of the top 25 because it was an overtime loss and JMU still has a good win against Troy. JMU’s full bowl eligibility waiver was denied, so No. 20 Tulane is in the leading position for the New Year’s Six spot, but the Green Wave play UTSA this week before a potential AAC championship game where they could see No. 26 SMU, which just won at Memphis.

Toledo is 10-1 and also in that NY6 mix after a late win against Bowling Green; the Rockets also move into the top 25. Iowa landing at No. 16 in last week’s CFP rankings was surprising, especially because it was unranked in the AP Poll. They’re No. 24 here this week. The Hawkeyes don’t have a victory over a team with more than six wins and were blown out by Penn State. Their defense is elite, but Iowa has escaped several .500 Big Ten West teams in recent weeks. They’re ahead of Toledo because the Rockets lost to Illinois in Week 1 and Iowa beat the Illini.

26-50

Rank	Record	Prev
26	9-2	31
27	7-4	16
28	7-4	25
29	9-2	29
30	7-4	38
31	8-3	20
32	9-2	36
33	7-4	28
34	7-4	46
35	7-5	33
36	8-3	43
37	9-3	60
38	6-5	37
39	7-4	39
40	6-5	32
41	9-2	44
42	7-4	47
43	8-3	55
44	7-4	61
45	6-5	48
46	6-5	40
47	8-3	42
48	8-3	35
49	8-3	45
50	6-5	41

Clemson climbs to No. 30 after beating North Carolina. UNLV is up to No. 32 after coming back to beat Air Force. UCLA’s comfortable win over USC moves the Bruins up to No. 34 and USC down to No. 35. I continue to have no idea why Tennessee, No. 33 here, is ranked in the polls.

Miami’s one-score loss to Louisville sees the Hurricanes only slide to No. 38 and stay ahead of Texas A&M due to their head-to-head result. Duke continues to slide, now down to No. 40 after a loss to Virginia. Wyoming bounces back up to No. 43, aided by its early-season win against Texas Tech, which beat UCF to get to bowl eligibility.

New Mexico State’s 31-10 win at Auburn to move to 9-3 sees the Aggies jump up to No. 37. The Fightin’ Jerry Kills have won seven consecutive games, overcoming early losses to UMass and Hawaii that make them a bizarre team to place.

51-75

Kentucky and Florida fall out of the top 50 after losses to South Carolina and Missouri, respectively. Georgia Tech is up to No. 54 after beating Syracuse to become bowl-eligible. Maryland only slides two spots to No. 55 after playing Michigan close. Appalachian State’s overtime win at James Madison sees the Mountaineers move up to No. 62.

Wisconsin got back on track with an overtime win against Nebraska to move up to No. 66. Twelve teams in this group of 25 need a win this weekend to get to a bowl game.

76-100

In the Week 3 edition of these rankings, Colorado was No. 14 and Arkansas State was dead last at No. 133. Now, they’re next to each other. Colorado has lost six of seven, including a 56-14 pounding at the hands of Washington State on Friday night, to fall to No. 77. Arkansas State dropped 77 points on Texas State to get bowl-eligible and move up to No. 78.

No. 83 Virginia and No. 84 Michigan State won’t be going to a bowl game, but they picked up conference wins over the weekend. Georgia Southern’s loss to Old Dominion and Georgia State’s loss to LSU see the Sun Belt rivals drop to No. 85 and 86, respectively. It’s been an odd season for No. 89 Army, which has wins against UTSA, Air Force and Coastal Carolina but losses to UMass and Louisiana-Monroe. The Black Knights are the toughest team to rank and only have Navy left.

101-133

Navy’s bounceback season continues, now 5-5 and up to No. 107 after beating East Carolina. New Mexico beat Fresno State and moves up to No. 111. Sam Houston continues to battle, leading Western Kentucky in the fourth quarter before losing. The Bearkats move up to No. 127 as a result. Kent State lost 34-3 to Ball State and remains at No. 133 as the only one-win team in FBS.

The Athletic 133 Rankings series is part of a partnership with AllState.

The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.

(Photo: Tom Hauck / Getty Images)

The New York Times

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November 20, 2023

The Athletic 133: Five 10-0 Power 5 teams, three weeks to sort them

We’re finally in the stretch run. The biggest games have arrived, and the shakeup at the top is underway.

Michigan finally played a notable team, taking care of Penn State in Happy Valley. Georgia crushed a top-10 Ole Miss team. Washington held on against Utah and Oregon handled USC. They all have more big games to come in the next two weeks before conference championships.

After all of that, there is a change at the top here. Georgia is back to No. 1 in this week’s Athletic 133.

The two-time defending national champs have rounded into form, beating up on Kentucky, Florida, Missouri and Ole Miss in their last five games. This past week was a reminder that Georgia at its best again looks like the best team in the country. Oh, and Brock Bowers, one of the nation’s best pass-catchers, is back. With consecutive wins over top-15 teams, the Bulldogs move back in front of Ohio State.

Still, a CFP spot is not yet guaranteed. Georgia finishes with Tennessee and Georgia Tech, then has the SEC championship game against an Alabama team that has also very much figured things out.

We have five 10-0 Power 5 teams for the first time since the College Football Playoff began, and none of them have an easy path to the top four. Buckle up.

Here is this week’s edition of The Athletic 133.

1-10

As I promised all season, Michigan has slid into the top three after beating Penn State, the Wolverines’ first opponent of note. The victory was very similar to Ohio State’s win over PSU, both in how the game played out with its lack of offensive fireworks, but also in the way the Wolverines and Buckeyes spent most of the game in control. The Buckeyes stay ahead of Michigan by virtue of their win at Notre Dame, but these teams look very even right now. Their meeting in Ann Arbor in two weeks should be another classic.

Among the one-loss teams, Oregon, Texas and Alabama all have a case to be the best. Alabama has the most quality wins. Texas beat Alabama. Oregon manhandled Utah, beat USC and has the best loss, coming at Washington when the Ducks were two yards away from victory. Oregon ultimately stays atop the group for now after notching a second notable win. The Ducks have No. 10 Oregon State in two weeks. While all the attention is on the 10-0 teams, all three of these teams very much have a path to the CFP. Does Louisville? It’s hard to say. The 9-1 Cardinals had to rally to beat Virginia and lack notable wins, but a potential ACC championship game win against Florida State might make things interesting.

GO DEEPER

Behind the AP Top 25 ballot: There’s still hope for compelling rankings drama

11-25

Ole Miss continues to prove itself as a good team that is nowhere near the top teams in the country with the nature of its losses to Georgia and Alabama, and the Rebels drop to No. 11. Oklahoma is a tough team to grade. The Sooners lost consecutive games to Kansas and Oklahoma State but also have one of the best wins in the country (Texas), and their win over SMU (now 8-2) continues to look better. Penn State drops back to No. 15 after the loss to Michigan, and the Nittany Lions’ offensive struggles resulted in the firing of offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich on Sunday.

James Madison remains the top-ranked Group of 5 team, up to No. 17 after beating UConn 44-6. The Dukes have wins against Troy (8-2), Virginia, South Alabama and Marshall. Tulane is the top-ranked G5 team eligible for the New Year’s Six, but the Green Wave have had to hang on in four consecutive one-score wins against lesser opponents and stay at No. 21. Tulane is battling injuries, but it keeps the door open for Liberty, which is now 10-0 and up to No. 22 after beating Old Dominion 38-10.

Arizona moves up to No. 19 after beating Colorado on a last-second field goal, and North Carolina moves into the top 25 again after beating Duke in overtime. Oklahoma State and Kansas fall after losses to UCF and Texas Tech, respectively, but remain in the top 25 for now on the strength of their wins.

GO DEEPER

Snyder: James Franklin needs to look in mirror before making next OC hire

26-50

Rank	Record	Prev
26	7-3	32
27	8-2	33
28	7-3	23
29	8-2	34
30	9-1	45
31	8-2	35
32	6-4	31
33	7-4	27
34	6-4	30
35	8-2	24
36	8-2	48
37	6-4	37
38	6-4	38
39	6-4	39
40	6-4	41
41	6-4	47
42	8-2	43
43	7-3	51
44	8-2	50
45	8-2	28
46	6-4	36
47	6-4	40
48	5-5	53
49	5-5	42
50	7-3	64

Iowa is back near the top 25 after a 22-0 win against Rutgers to move to 8-2. Troy, Toledo and SMU continue to move up after wins, and Toledo has won nine consecutive games. Tennessee falls out of the top 25 after a 36-7 loss to Missouri, and next up is Georgia.

Fresno State tumbles down to No. 35 after a stunning 42-18 loss to San Jose State. UNLV moves up to No. 36 after beating Wyoming, which beat Fresno State, but the Bulldogs have a win over UNLV. Miami lost 27-20 to Florida State but remains at No. 37 thanks to its wins against Clemson and Texas A&M. Auburn’s 48-10 win against Arkansas moves the Tigers up to No. 41. Air Force drops down to No. 45 after a second consecutive loss, this one against Hawaii. UCLA falls to No. 46 after losing 17-7 to Arizona State. Coastal Carolina has won five consecutive games and moves up to No. 50 after beating Texas State.

51-75

Virginia Tech jumps to No. 52 after a 48-22 win against Boston College. Rutgers remains ahead at No. 51 thanks to its head-to-head win against the Hokies. Illinois’ overtime win against Indiana sees the Illini climb back up to No. 62. New Mexico State is 8-3 with six consecutive wins, clinching a spot in the CUSA championship game and moving up to No. 60.

No. 63 Colorado has lost six of seven. No. 64 TCU has lost five of six. No. 67 Washington State has lost six consecutive games, and No. 70 Wisconsin has lost four of five, including consecutive losses to Indiana and Northwestern.

GO DEEPER

Boise State head coach job profile, key factors for next hire

76-100

Georgia State has tumbled down to No. 77 after three consecutive lopsided losses to Georgia Southern, James Madison and Appalachian State. The Mountaineers have won three consecutive games to move up to No. 76. Marshall beat Georgia Southern to end a five-game losing streak and move up to No. 79.

A shorthanded Arizona State beat UCLA and moved up to No. 83. Purdue beat Minnesota 49-30 to move up to No. 89, Cincinnati moved up to No. 90 after beating Houston, and San Jose State jumped up to No. 94 after beating Fresno State. Virginia is 2-8 but continues to play close games to the end, most recently against Louisville, so the Cavaliers remain at No. 98.

101-133

Sam Houston is on a winning streak! The Bearkats got their first win as an FBS team last week and got their first FBS win against an FBS team this weekend by beating Louisiana Tech. As a result, they get out of the No. 133 spot and jump up to No. 128. Navy’s 31-6 win against UAB sees the Midshipmen move up to No. 108 and the Blazers drop behind them. Vanderbilt is the lowest-ranked Power 5 team at No. 111, losing to South Carolina 47-6.

(Photo: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)

The New York Times

Source link

November 15, 2023

Rank	Record	Prev
26	9-2	31
27	7-4	16
28	7-4	25
29	9-2	29
30	7-4	38
31	8-3	20
32	9-2	36
33	7-4	28
34	7-4	46
35	7-5	33
36	8-3	43
37	9-3	60
38	6-5	37
39	7-4	39
40	6-5	32
41	9-2	44
42	7-4	47
43	8-3	55
44	7-4	61
45	6-5	48
46	6-5	40
47	8-3	42
48	8-3	35
49	8-3	45
50	6-5	41

Rank	Record	Prev
26	7-3	32
27	8-2	33
28	7-3	23
29	8-2	34
30	9-1	45
31	8-2	35
32	6-4	31
33	7-4	27
34	6-4	30
35	8-2	24
36	8-2	48
37	6-4	37
38	6-4	38
39	6-4	39
40	6-4	41
41	6-4	47
42	8-2	43
43	7-3	51
44	8-2	50
45	8-2	28
46	6-4	36
47	6-4	40
48	5-5	53
49	5-5	42
50	7-3	64

Rank	Record	Prev
26	9-2	31
27	7-4	16
28	7-4	25
29	9-2	29
30	7-4	38
31	8-3	20
32	9-2	36
33	7-4	28
34	7-4	46
35	7-5	33
36	8-3	43
37	9-3	60
38	6-5	37
39	7-4	39
40	6-5	32
41	9-2	44
42	7-4	47
43	8-3	55
44	7-4	61
45	6-5	48
46	6-5	40
47	8-3	42
48	8-3	35
49	8-3	45
50	6-5	41

Rank	Record	Prev
26	7-3	32
27	8-2	33
28	7-3	23
29	8-2	34
30	9-1	45
31	8-2	35
32	6-4	31
33	7-4	27
34	6-4	30
35	8-2	24
36	8-2	48
37	6-4	37
38	6-4	38
39	6-4	39
40	6-4	41
41	6-4	47
42	8-2	43
43	7-3	51
44	8-2	50
45	8-2	28
46	6-4	36
47	6-4	40
48	5-5	53
49	5-5	42
50	7-3	64

Tag: Duke Blue Devils

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1-10

11-25

26-50

51-75

76-100

101-134

Required reading

Welcome back

QB battle

Defensive carryover?

He said it

The schedule

___

ACC

Big Ten

Big 12

SEC

The rest

Bigger takeaways

2. Gonzaga

5. Iowa State

6. Duke

7. Connecticut

11. Texas A&M

12. North Carolina

13. Purdue

14. Marquette

16. Florida

20. Illinois

23. Xavier

25. St. John’s

Related stories from Raleigh News & Observer

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1-10

11-25

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101-133

Rank	Record	Prev
26	9-2	31
27	7-4	16
28	7-4	25
29	9-2	29
30	7-4	38
31	8-3	20
32	9-2	36
33	7-4	28
34	7-4	46
35	7-5	33
36	8-3	43
37	9-3	60
38	6-5	37
39	7-4	39
40	6-5	32
41	9-2	44
42	7-4	47
43	8-3	55
44	7-4	61
45	6-5	48
46	6-5	40
47	8-3	42
48	8-3	35
49	8-3	45
50	6-5	41

Rank	Record	Prev
26	7-3	32
27	8-2	33
28	7-3	23
29	8-2	34
30	9-1	45
31	8-2	35
32	6-4	31
33	7-4	27
34	6-4	30
35	8-2	24
36	8-2	48
37	6-4	37
38	6-4	38
39	6-4	39
40	6-4	41
41	6-4	47
42	8-2	43
43	7-3	51
44	8-2	50
45	8-2	28
46	6-4	36
47	6-4	40
48	5-5	53
49	5-5	42
50	7-3	64