LAWRENCE — The success Duke has the capability to enjoy this season won’t rest upon the shoulders of one individual.
It’s not just on head coach Jon Scheyer, or his coaching staff. It’s not just on one member of the Blue Devils’ roster, whether that player has put on a Duke uniform before or not. It will be a collective effort for the Blue Devils.
But ahead of Kansas basketball’s game Tuesday in Las Vegas, there will understandably be one player on Duke’s roster that garners much of the attention. That would be freshman guard/forward Cooper Flagg, a 247Sports Composite five-star prospect from the 2024 recruiting class who could very well be the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft in 2025. And as the Jayhawks (5-0) attempt to remain undefeated this season, it’s no surprise to head coach Bill Self that this Blue Devils (4-1) squad has someone he will have to account for.
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“He’d present problems to anybody that plays him, I mean he’s terrific,” Self said Friday about Flagg. “We did recruit him, I guess made it to the final three, but he’s — talent, athleticism, skill. But there’s another element to him that’s what makes him different, is that he is so competitive and tough. I mean, and that’s been every — obviously evident with what he’s done to this point, especially in the summer playing with the Olympic team. So, yeah, he’s good, and he’s probably as talented a youngster that we’ll have an opportunity to play against this year.”
Flagg, who’s started each of Duke’s five games so far this season, leads the team in points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks to date. Overall, he’s averaging 17.8 points, 8.8 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 1.8 steals and 1.8 blocks per game. In the Blue Devils’ most recent game, a win Friday on the road at Arizona, he had 24 points, six rebounds, three assists, two blocks and a steal in a 69-55 win.
What Flagg showed against Arizona, was an example of what Self described him as prior to that game ever being played. Self said coming into the season that Flagg has as much a chance as anyone he’s recruited or coached to have a significant presence in college basketball in a short period of time. Self, who was responding to a question that noted Flagg will soon be playing professional basketball, described Flagg as being in a class of a trio of former college stars in Texas’ Kevin Durant, Oklahoma’s Blake Griffin and Kansas State’s Michael Beasley.
When Kansas and Duke tip off Tuesday in Las Vegas, it’ll be a matchup of two national championship contenders. No one would be surprised if both end up winning the Big 12 Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference regular season titles, respectively, in the months ahead. But for now they’ll face off as a part of the Vegas Showdown, and when the game begins Jayhawks junior guard Rylan Griffen will be well aware of one of the opposing players his side has to stop.
“He’s a great player, tall, can do pretty much everything on the court and he defends — he plays both ends of the court,” Griffen said about Flagg. “He competes, that’s really one of the main reasons why he’s as good as he is. He just competes every possession on the floor, and he’s going to be a big challenge for us and he’s going to be a guy that I know we’re going to have to slow down. Because he’s, if not the main guy, he’s one of the main guys on the team. So — and they’re a really talented team, and he’s probably the most talented player.”
Jordan Guskey covers the University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas basketball readies to face Duke’s star freshman, Cooper Flagg
