With the NBA draft deadline now passed, Duke coach Jon Scheyer has a clear picture of what his first roster will look like as he takes over for legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski next season.
Duke has been accustomed to losing multiple one-year players just to replace them with more potential one-and-done talents the next season. And Scheyer's first year will look no different. It was part of the reason why Krzyzewski wanted his successor named the season before he retired, so recruiting would not suffer a bump.
Scheyer made good by bringing in the nation's top-ranked recruiting class, which should again position Duke as a contender to get back to the Final Four.
Scheyer still has to make an additional hire to his coaching staff after Nolan Smith left to take an associate head coach position under Kenny Payne at Louisville. Scheyer promoted Amile Jefferson to an assistant coach after he served last season as director of player personnel. And former Elon head coach Mike Schrage was brought on as special assistant to the head coach.
The departed
Duke lost freshman forward Paolo Banchero, freshman guard A.J. Griffin, sophomore center Mark Williams and junior forward Wendell Moore Jr., to the NBA draft as expected. That foursome accounted for 65 percent of the Blue Devils' points from last season and 6454 percent of their rebounds. All four have also been projected as NBA draft first-round picks — with Banchero potentially going in the top three.
Forward A.J. Griffin came off the bench for the 14 games of the season, and it took him nearly that long to feel fully comfortable while working his way back from a high school knee injury. But once he was inserted in the starting lineup, his play took off. Griffin led the Blue Devils with 71 made 3-pointers and in 3-point shooting at 44.7 percent. Griffin was the last of their five players who averaged double figures at 10.4 points per game. He's projected as a potential lottery pick.
Freshman guard Trevor Keels, who already has an NBA-type body standing at 6-foot-5 and 221-pounds, has declared for the draft, but hasn't hired an agent and could still return to the Blue Devils roster.
Keels had an uneven season, with bookend performances that showed flashes of great potential. He opened the season with a 25-point performance on Kentucky in the Champions Classic. He closed it by scoring 19 points off the bench and nearly propelling them to the title game in their Final Four loss to North Carolina. He finished as the team's third leading scorer at 11.5 points per game.
Duke also lost a bit of its depth with reserve forwards Theo John and Bates Jones, who were both graduate transfers, exhausting the final year of their respective eligibility.
Key returnees
Rising junior guard Jeremy Roach had a strong NCAA tournament run, which helped lead the Blue Devils to the Final Four. Roach started 27 games this past season and averaged 8.6 points and 3.1 assists per game.
Senior guard/forward Joey Baker opted to take advantage of a fifth year and remain at Duke. It makes up for the ill-advised decision to end a potential redshirt year as a freshman, 26 games into the 2018-19 season. Baker only played a total of 18 minutes spread out over four games that season.
Rising sophomore guard Jaylen Blakes only appeared in 21 games last season, averaging 4.4 minutes per game, but is poised to work his way into the backcourt rotation next season.
The newcomers
The Blue Devils will have one of the nation's most talented frontcourts with the additions of Dereck Lively II, Kyle Filipowski and Dariq Whitehead in the class of '22. Lively, a 7-foot-1 center from Bellefonte, Pa., was the No. 1 overall player in the class in the 247 Sports composite rankings. Filipowski, a 6-foot-11 center from Wilbraham, Mass., was ranked No. 3 overall. And Whitehead, a 6-foot-6 small forward from Newark, N.J., was the fifth overall player.
Because that trio was so impressive, they kind of overshadowed the fact that Scheyer also signed Mark Mitchell, a 6-foot-8 native of Wichita, Kansas. Mitchell was ranked 13th overall in the class and can play either forward spots.
Rounding out the class is Jaden Schutt, a shooting guard from Yorkville, Ill., and Christian Reeves, a 7-foot-1 center who played at Oak Hill Academy last season, but is from Concord, N.C.
It's a class that bought into Scheyer's vision for the future at Duke and from what it looks like on paper, it's the same bright outlook as it's always been.
