Duke heads toward the 2026-27 college basketball season with the same familiar label attached: favorite in the ACC.
That’s not a small thing, even for a program that has made living at the top look routine. The Blue Devils are coming off a 2026 NCAA Tournament run that ended in painful fashion, with UConn erasing a lead that had reached 19 points in the Elite Eight and sending Duke home short of the Final Four. Now Jon Scheyer’s team is trying to get back there for the second time under his watch.
The roster looks different, but not stripped down. Duke lost Cameron Boozer, Maliq Brown and Isaiah Evans to the draft, and Nik Khamenia left through the transfer portal for UConn.
Even so, the Blue Devils did what they so often do: they reloaded. They brought in the nation’s top recruiting class, added a strong transfer portal group and kept a healthy chunk of experience, including three starters.
That combination is why the buzz around Duke hasn’t cooled. The Field of 68 recently put the Blue Devils in the spotlight while discussing their run of success over the last two seasons, describing them as “arguably the best team in college basketball” over that stretch.
The question, then, is whether they can stay on that level. The panel thinks they can.
“I think so,” Terrence Oglesby said. “I think the Boumtje-Boumtje addition towards the end of the portal season kind of put them back in the conversation.
"Before that, there was a lot of talent. It looked like a second weekend team.
Now that he's in the picture … I think that puts them back in that conversation."
Jeff Goodman was among those who agreed.
Boumtje-Boumtje wasn’t the only move that changed the outlook. The analysts also pointed to the addition of John Blackwell through the portal, along with the return of Patrick Ngongba II and Caleb Foster, as major reasons Duke still looks built to win big again.
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