2025-26

Season Overview

The 2025-26 Duke Blue Devils may be the most complete team Jon Scheyer has assembled — and possibly the most complete team to wear Duke blue since the 2001 championship squad. They entered the NCAA Tournament at 32-2 as the #1 overall seed, the nation's top-ranked team in the AP poll, and the top-rated team in KenPom's efficiency metric — the third-highest rating in KenPom history, behind only the 1998-99 Duke Blue Devils and Scheyer's own 2024-25 squad.

The roster was built around a historic recruiting class — the nation's consensus #1, headlined by Cameron Boozer and his twin brother Cayden from Columbus High School in Miami, along with Italian forward Dame Sarr out of FC Barcelona's academy, Southern California five-star Nikolas Khamenia, and Brewster Academy's Sebastian Wilkins. They joined a returning core led by sophomore wing Isaiah Evans, who had turned down the NBA Draft to come back and start; sophomore center Patrick Ngongba II; junior point guard Caleb Foster, finally stepping into a starting role after two years behind Tyrese Proctor; and junior guard Darren Harris. The final piece was Maliq Brown, the Syracuse transfer and ACC Defensive Player of the Year, who gave Duke a switchable, physical presence it had lacked.

The departures from the 2024-25 Final Four team were staggering. Cooper Flagg, the National Player of the Year, was gone — taken #1 overall in the 2025 NBA Draft. Kon Knueppel went fourth. Tyrese Proctor left after his junior year for the NBA, landing in Cleveland. Sion James was drafted by Charlotte. Khaman Maluach, the 7-2 rim protector, went to Phoenix. Only Evans and Ngongba returned from the core rotation. The cupboard was supposed to be bare. It wasn't.

The non-conference schedule was a gauntlet by design. Scheyer opened with Kansas in the Champions Classic at Madison Square Garden, and the Blue Devils won behind 18 points and 10 rebounds from Cameron Boozer, who announced himself to the college basketball world in his second game. A road trip to Michigan State in early December produced another win, 66-60, in one of the toughest environments in college basketball. The only non-conference blemish came at MSG against Texas Tech, an 82-81 heartbreaker in which the Red Raiders hit a contested jumper at the buzzer.

ACC play was a coronation. Duke went 17-1, clinching the outright regular-season championship with a win at NC State on March 2. The Blue Devils posted 11 victories over ranked opponents during the regular season — the most in ACC history and tied for the most in AP poll history in a single season. They beat #15 Florida at Cameron in a one-point thriller where Isaiah Evans swatted five shots. They swept #20 Louisville. They went to Capital One Arena and beat Virginia by double digits. The defense — anchored by Brown, Ngongba, and Evans — was ranked #1 in the nation by KenPom in adjusted efficiency, holding opponents to 45.5% effective field goal shooting and 29.9% from three.

The signature regular-season moment came on February 21 at Capital One Arena, when Duke faced #1 Michigan in a neutral-court showdown. The Wolverines had won 11 straight and were the new #1 in the AP poll. Cameron Boozer hit a three-pointer with 1:55 remaining to push the lead to six — his father Carlos, the former Duke and NBA star, was in attendance — and Duke held on for a 68-63 victory that vaulted them to #1 in the nation. A ranking they would not relinquish.

The sole conference loss — a 71-68 defeat at Chapel Hill on February 7 — became the kind of game that defines rivalry seasons. Duke led 41-29 at halftime and appeared to be pulling away. But UNC scored the final nine points of the game, capped by Seth Trimble's corner three-pointer with 0.4 seconds remaining off an assist from freshman Derek Dixon. The shot instantly entered the pantheon of rivalry buzzer-beaters alongside Jeff Capel's half-court heave and Austin Rivers's 2012 dagger.

The revenge came exactly one month later. On Senior Night at Cameron, with Maliq Brown being honored, #1 Duke dismantled #17 North Carolina 76-61. Cameron Boozer delivered one of the defining performances of his freshman season: 26 points, 15 rebounds, and five assists — the first Duke player to post that stat line against UNC since Luol Deng in 2004. A 24-2 second-half run buried the Tar Heels, who committed 14 turnovers and gave up 24 points off those miscues. UNC was without star forward Caleb Wilson, who had broken his thumb in practice days earlier. Duke was without starting center Ngongba. It didn't matter. Brown scored 15 points — his highest total in a Duke jersey — and Evans added 11 with three triples.

Scheyer's milestones piled up like snow in a Durham winter. He became the fastest coach to 100 wins in ACC history, reaching the mark in just 122 games and breaking Vic Bubas's record of 128. He passed Brad Stevens for the most victories by any Division I coach in their first four seasons. He was voted ACC Coach of the Year for the first time. And when the Blue Devils beat Virginia 74-70 in the ACC Tournament final in Charlotte — Duke's 24th tournament crown, third under Scheyer — the university completed something unprecedented: the first school in ACC history to win the football championship, men's basketball championship, and women's basketball championship in the same academic year.

The NCAA Tournament opened in Greenville, South Carolina, with a scare. Sixteenth-seeded Siena built a first-half lead and had Duke trailing deep into the second half before a defensive switch to zone — and an 11-0 run — pulled the Blue Devils to a 71-65 escape. The next game was the TCU matchup in which Cameron Boozer, after scoring just two first-half points on a single shot attempt, erupted for 17 second-half points as Duke pulled away for an 81-58 victory.

The Sweet 16 brought St. John's, the 10-seed that had upset #2 Michigan. Duke trailed by 10 in the second half before Isaiah Evans erupted for 25 points and the defense held St. John's to just 20 points over the final 15 minutes. An 80-75 win sent Duke to the Elite Eight for the second time in three seasons under Scheyer.

And then came UConn. And then came the shot.

Duke led by 19 in the first half. Cameron Boozer had 27 points. The defense held UConn to 9.1% from three in the first half. But eight second-half turnovers — turned into 16 UConn points — erased the lead, possession by agonizing possession. With the game tied at 69, Boozer hit a pull-up jumper to make it 72-69 with 28 seconds left. It should have been enough. It wasn't. After a stolen inbound pass gave UConn the ball with 6 seconds remaining, Braylon Mullins — a junior from Meriden, Connecticut — launched a 35-footer at the buzzer that found nothing but net. UConn 73, Duke 72.

The 2025-26 Blue Devils finished 35-3. Cameron Boozer was the consensus National Player of the Year — ACC Player of the Year, ACC Rookie of the Year, unanimous AP All-American — and a projected top-three pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. Scheyer was ACC Coach of the Year. The defense was rated #1 in the nation. They won 70 games across two seasons, a program record. Their three losses came by a combined five points. Two ended on buzzer-beaters.

Jon Scheyer, fighting to hold it together in the postgame press conference, said it plainly: 'I don't have the words. I don't have the words. What I do know is literally this team, what each individual player went through just to play the game, I've never seen anything like it.' Cameron Boozer, his black eye swelling, his voice cracking: 'I wish I could have gave more for those guys — Caleb, Pat, and Maliq. Everyone's hurting, dealing with injuries, coming and playing. It took a lot of heart. It took a lot of balls to do that. I'm just proud of them, proud of our team.'

The story was written. It just didn't end the way anyone in Duke blue imagined.

The game should have been over at halftime. Duke led 41-29 in Chapel Hill, controlling the tempo with its defense and getting efficient offense from Cameron Boozer and Isaiah Evans. The Blue Devils had won ten straight. They were climbing the polls. The Smith Center was nervous.

But rivalry games don't end at halftime. North Carolina chipped. And chipped. And chipped. The Tar Heels cut the lead to single digits, then to five, then to three. With 1:40 remaining, freshman guard Derek Dixon — who had entered the game as a role player, not a closer — found Henri Veesaar for a three-pointer that tied the game. The Smith Center erupted. Duke still had time. But a contested possession ended without points, and suddenly Carolina had the ball with under five seconds.

Dixon, again. He drove right, drew the defense, and found Seth Trimble alone in the corner. Trimble, a senior, had been through enough Duke-UNC games to know what the moment demanded. He caught, set his feet, and released with 0.4 seconds on the clock. The ball traced a perfect arc through the Smith Center air. Nothing but net.

UNC 71, Duke 68. The building shook. Trimble was mobbed at halfcourt. Dixon, the freshman with assists on both the tying and winning baskets, had authored the kind of performance that gets replayed for decades. Duke had committed just seven turnovers all night. They had led for 37 of 40 minutes. And they lost.

It was Duke's only ACC loss of the season. One month later, Cameron Boozer would answer with 26 points and 15 rebounds at Cameron on Senior Night. But the Trimble shot — like Rivers's shot, like Capel's heave, like every dagger this rivalry has produced — belongs to the moment. It doesn't get returned. It just gets remembered.