‘The right decision’: How Duke basketball used the transfer portal to rebuild its roster

In a brutally somber Duke locker room in Dallas last March 31, just after N.C. State ended the Blue Devils’ season a win short of the Final Four, Tyrese Proctor displayed palpable anguish.

Slumped against his locker, sobbing, with a white towel covering his head and face, the 6-5 point guard wallowed in despair.

The older Wolfpack pushed their way to a 76-64 NCAA Tournament win over Duke, just as Tennessee bullied the Blue Devils to beat them 65-52 in the 2023 NCAA Tournament.

As bad as Proctor felt after those losses that ended his freshman and sophomore years, Jon Scheyer felt just as bad.

Those results capped Scheyer’s first two seasons as Duke’s coach, a job that requires him to make Final Fours and win championships like his predecessor, Mike Krzyzewski, famously did for 42 years.

What Proctor didn’t know in that locker room at Dallas’ American Airline Arena was that Scheyer was cooking up a plan aimed at preventing a recurrence this season.

It was a bold undertaking rarely seen at Duke that required a series of tough conversations between coaches and players. It led to seven Blue Devils entering the transfer portal before scattering across the country from Stanford to Clemson, Baylor to Virginia and Ohio State, Missouri and Virginia Tech.

Duke needed fresh voices, better internal leadership and Scheyer turned over the roster to get it.

“Every part of me just knew it was the right decision based on the results,” Scheyer said Wednesday. “Meaning success and losses as well. But then understanding who we had coming in and potentially who could come back. To me, it just became very clear what we needed. And I thought that was the thing that prevented us from getting over the hump fully.”

Scheyer then pivoted, saying he didn’t intend to point the finger at any player from his first two teams in particular.

“It’s just we just needed to take another step with that,” Scheyer said.

Duke’s loses some ...

For Proctor and sophomore guard Caleb Foster, it meant saying goodbye to teammates that still consider close friends.

Jeremy Roach, who had started in the 2022 NCAA Tournament when Duke made the Final Four in Krzyzewski’s final season and in 2023 when Duke won the ACC in Scheyer’s rookie season, used the portal to move to Baylor. The other holdover from Krzyzewski’s tenure, reserve guard Jaylen Blakes, left for Stanford.

Three of Proctor’s former classmates, Jaden Schutt (Virginia Tech), Christian Reeves (Clemson) and Mark Mitchell (Missouri) also left. Two guys who joined Foster in last season’s freshmen class, Sean Stewart (Ohio State) and TJ Power (Virginia), also found new college homes.

That’s in addition to Jared McCain and Kyle Filipowski leaving for the NBA.

Duke is accustomed to seeing massive roster change, but it’s usually via the way McCain and Filipowski left. Scheyer’s first team had only two players back from Krzyzewski’s final one (Roach and Blakes) but that was because five players were picked in the 2022 NBA Draft.

This was different. But, with practice underway and the new season set to start on Nov. 4, the Blue Devils are more confident than ever it was needed for Duke to change its perception.

“I mean, we hear that every year,” Proctor said. “It’s the same thing. Every Duke team is young. They’re soft, like, I’ve heard everything since being here. So I think the group of guys that we have this year, we have a different toughness about us and and I think the transfers that we have, as well as some of the freshmen, like, it’s sort of a different vibe this year. Our practices have been the most competitive practices I’ve been a part of since being at Duke. So I’ve loved every moment of it.”

... and Blue Devils add some

Scheyer molded this roster around Cooper Flagg’s generational talent. The 6-9 freshman forward can hit 3-pointers, block shots and run a fast break.

Part of the nation’s top-ranked incoming recruiting class, Flagg is joined by 7-2 center Khaman Maluach, 6-11 center Patrick Ngongba, 6-7 forward Kon Knueppel and 6-6 forwards Darren Harris and Isaiah Evans.

That’s a load of young talent to restock the roster.

But Scheyer and his staff also added 6-6 graduate transfer Mason Gillis, the Big Ten sixth man of the year award winner last season while helping Purdue reach the NCAA final.

They added 6-8 forward Maliq Brown, who led the ACC in steals as a sophomore at Syracuse. They brought in Sion James, who played in 113 games the past four seasons at Tulane.

Gillis brings a Duke-like resume, having been part of Purdue’s dominant teams in recent seasons with Zach Edey.

“Purdue, over the last three, four years, they’ve been ranked No. 1 more than we have,” Duke associate coach Chris Carrawell said. “So him playing in the national championship game, being in a tournament, going on the road where they’re everybody’s big game, he’s been in the biggest game. He’s just a tough blue guy that could play any role.”

Veteran leaders

Gillis has, the coaches think, exactly what Duke needs.

“He brings veteran leadership, which, you know, last year I thought we lacked,” Carrawell said. “So with him, Sion, those guys coming into our program, they played a lot of basketball, a lot of college basketball.”The last two NCAA tournaments showed Scheyer he needs his team to be able to handle older players in pressure-packed games.

Duke didn’t wilt in all of them, of course. The team is 54-18 under Scheyer, with some memorable wins along the way.

In 2023, on consecutive nights at Greensboro Coliseum, the Blue Devils beat an eventual Final Four team, Miami, 85-78, before topping Virginia, 59-49, to win the ACC Tournament championship.

Last March, they beat Houston, the South Region’s No. 1 seed, 54-51 in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 at Dallas.

But two nights later, the Blue Devils allowed N.C. State to pull away and earn the Final Four berth Duke thought it was good enough to win.

Instead, the Blue Devils were left lacking, needing an extra bit of mental toughness to find a higher level of success.

Scheyer believes his roster remake brought it to Duke.

“I think Mason and Sion, in particular, have provided just that,” Scheyer said. “You know, they’re everyday guys. They just have a way about them where they just compete at the highest level. They have habits. They want to win badly. And then you have Tyrese and Caleb returning, who have been through a lot and know what it takes, and they’re developing. That to me has been a huge difference to this year’s team.”