This won’t come as a surprise to any Duke basketball fans familiar with the 2024 recruiting class, but ESPN thinks that head coach Jon Scheyer and the Blue Devils have more NBA talent at their disposal than any other college team.
In a Saturday ranking of the 10 teams with the most professional prospects on the roster, Duke took the top overall spot.
Any conversation about the NBA talent in Durham needs to start and finish with Cooper Flagg, whom ESPN draft analyst Jonathan Givony ranked as the best 2025 prospect with more than a 50% chance to be the first overall pick.
Fellow freshmen Kon Knueppel and Khaman Malauch finished sixth and eighth in Givony’s prospect rankings, and all three players looked the part of lottery picks during a Saturday exhibition against Lincoln. Maluach, a 7-foot-2 center from South Sudan, pulled down 11 rebounds while Knueppel made five 3-pointers in the first half en route to a 17-point game.
Flagg, the best of the bunch, scored 22 points with six assists and four blocks, including a resounding highlight in the opening minutes when he swatted a Lions’ layup off the backboard.
Junior Tyrese Proctor (19 points) and sophomore Caleb Foster (eight points) have both received first-round grades over the course of their careers, and five-star freshman Isaiah Evans scored nine points on Saturday.
The Rutgers Scarlet Knights, Arizona Wildcats, Connecticut Huskies, and North Carolina Tar Heels also finished with ESPN’s top five in the NBA talent rankings.
