Current Duke Basketball Players Comment on Cooper Flagg's Announcement
Unless Duke basketball senior guard Jeremy Roach uses his extra year of eligibility from the truncated 2020-21 season, he won't play for the Blue Devils when Cooper Flagg is in college. Even so, it looks as though Roach is doing his part to help the Blue Devils make Flagg feel like the center of their attention.
The same goes for freshman forward Sean Stewart, Flagg's teammate last season at the Blue Devil-friendly prep powerhouse Montverde Academy (Fla.).
Flagg, less than two weeks removed from his trip to Durham for the only visit in his recruitment thus far, revealed via an Instagram post on Friday that he is moving up a grade to graduate high school in the spring. The 6-foot-9, 200-pound five-star small forward, whose "dream school" is Duke, is now set to rank No. 1 in the 2024 class.
Roach commented on Cooper Flagg's announcement post with "That time..."
Around the same time, Stewart, a former five-star McDonald's All-American who will likely still be in town for what would be Flagg's rookie campaign the season after next, chimed in with a "YEAAA" and eyeballs emoji.
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And when Flagg was on campus earlier this month, Stewart posted to his Instagram Stories the following side-by-side picture of himself and the smooth multipositional phenom wearing Blue Devil gear inside the Duke basketball practice facility:
There's no guarantee Flagg will become a Duke basketball prize. After all, he's reportedly working on planning a visit to UConn. Moreover, he hasn't even named finalists and, outside of reclassifying, hasn't noted a desire to accelerate his recruitment.
Nevertheless, the assumption is that second-year Blue Devil head coach Jon Scheyer and his staff lead the race.
All five 247Sports Crystal Ball predictions, including a new one since his reclass announcement, favor the Blue Devils. Meanwhile, the Rivals FutureCast is up to six picks, all pointing to the Duke recruiters coming out on top.
Then there's the On3 Recruiting Prediction Machine, currently giving the Blue Devils a whopping 98.5 percent chance to add Flagg to their two early 2024 pledges in Paul VI Catholic (Va.) four-star small forward Darren Harris and North Meck (N.C.) five-star small forward Isaiah Evans.
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Stay tuned to Blue Devil Country on SI.com for more Duke basketball recruiting news.