Duke’s Flagg ‘not running’ from lofty expectations

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — While Cooper Flagg isn’t in attendance at this week’s annual ACC Tipoff, it’s clear Duke‘s star freshman is still the talk of the league.

The nation’s top incoming recruit — and the projected No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA draft — is entering college basketball with a tremendous amount of hype, and there’s a buzz around the ACC regarding his looming debut. But his teammates and coaches say the attention hasn’t impacted him since arriving on campus.

“His mentality on a daily basis — for a 17-year old – is something I haven’t really seen before,” junior guard Tyrese Proctor told ESPN. “Off the floor, he doesn’t pay attention to all the media. There’s so much stuff going on externally and I feel like – he’s a humble kid. He’s just focused on winning and doing his job for the team.”

“He’s a phenomenal kid,” sophomore guard Caleb Foster added. “He’s a great teammate, he competes everyday. He’s Duke freshman Cooper Flagg, who was the No. 1 recruit in the 2024 class; he’s very humble. He fits right in with us.”

Head coach Jon Scheyer has plenty of experience dealing with outside noise and freshmen entering college with outsize expectations. He was an assistant coach under Mike Krzyzewski when Duke signed the top three recruits – including Zion Williamson – in the 2018 class, and was also on staff in Durham when the Blue Devils produced No. 1 pick Paolo Banchero in 2022.

Scheyer said Flagg has shown no signs of selfishness or a disruptive ego during his time with the Blue Devils.

“He’s been a joy to coach, man,” he told ESPN. “He’s got an amazing balance of being confident with humility. Humility allows us to coach him really hard and for him not to get down himself or take it the wrong way. He genuinely wants to become the best version of himself. When your most talented player, your best player, takes coaching the hardest, it sets the tone for the rest of the team. That’s what we had when Paolo was here. That’s what we had with Zion. That’s what we had with some of our great players. They’re about the team. They’re not too big for anything.”

“It’s important for all of us to remember he’s 17,” Scheyer added. “This is a process. But he’s not running from it, he’s not afraid of it. And he’s been just such a good guy to coach.”

Following last season’s Elite Eight loss to NC State, Duke saw an exodus of players to the NBA draft and the transfer portal. Only two players, Proctor and Foster, remain from that team. But Scheyer rebuilt the roster with the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class and also landed a trio of experienced role players from the transfer portal that will see minutes from day one.

Freshman guard Kon Knueppel, who debuted at No. 6 in ESPN’s top 100 NBA draft rankings, has created considerable preseason buzz, while transfers Mason Gillis (Purdue), Maliq Brown (Syracuse) and Sion James (Tulane) have made an impact.

“The hype train, whatever you want to call it, is up there,” Scheyer said. “You can feel it. It’s tangible to me. But that’s what you want it to be. That means you’re in the arena. The thing that I’ve tried to explain to our team, though, is it doesn’t mean anything.”

What it has done, however, is put Flagg in adverse situations and brought out his competitive drive.

“He’s gotten knocked back,” Scheyer said. “And his team has lost. Not all the time. Not often. But it’s happened. It’s good for him.”

“There’s nothing really he can’t do. He’s really sharp at everything he does,” Proctor added. “The main thing is he competes at such a high level. He hates losing.”

While other ACC coaches are not exactly excited about having to prepare for and go against Flagg, they know how good the Maine native can be this season – and in the future.

NC State head coach Kevin Keatts, who guided the Wolfpack to the Final Four in April, watched Flagg for years on the grassroots circuit. But his appreciation for Flagg’s game was taken to a new level when he played against the men’s national team over the summer as a part of the USA Select Team.

“When a guy’s got it, he’s got it,” Keatts told ESPN. “You get a chance to see him in the summer and you see how good he is, but I think one thing that opens your eyes up was when he was playing against grown men, challenging, playing against the Olympic team. You got a chance to see a really good side of it. There’s no denying that he’s a really, really good basketball player.”

Georgia Tech head coach Damon Stoudamire played in the NBA for 13 seasons and was an assistant coach for the Boston Celtics as recently as 2023. He thinks Flagg can have a similar impact to Christian Laettner in terms of his impact on the Duke program from a national standpoint.

“Offensively, he’s good – I think he will get better offensively. When I say he’ll get better offensively, it just means it’ll slow down for him,” Stoudamire told ESPN. “He’ll know exactly where he’s getting his [shots] from. He’ll know exactly how to get to his spots on the floor. He’s pretty good defensively, man. He’s pretty good at staying between his man and the basket. He can switch ball screens, he can do a whole lot of things. He’s got great size. He’s athletic as hell.

“He has a chance to be one of the special ones.”