Duke’s roster looks crowded in all the right ways, and that might be the defining feature of this team.
The Blue Devils have continuity, size and a whole lot of bodies to sort through. Senior Caleb Foster, junior Patrick Ngongba II and freshmen Cayden Boozer and Dame Sarr are all back after starting at some point last season. Sebastian Wilkins is back too after practicing with the team, though he did not appear in a game.
There was some turnover, of course. Nik Khamenia is gone to UConn and Darren Harris has headed to Indiana. Those are losses, but not the kind that look impossible to absorb.
Duke also brings back a good deal of experience. Foster is a senior, as is Wisconsin transfer John Blackwell.
Belmont transfer Drew Scharnowski is a fourth-year junior, and Ngongba is a true junior. That gives the Blue Devils four upperclassmen who should be in the rotation.
Then there’s the size. Duke is enormous. Seven players are listed at 6-8 or taller, and five are listed at 6-10 or taller.
The more striking number, though, is depth. This might be the deepest Duke team I can remember.
At center, Ngongba, Scharnowski and Canadian freshman Maxime Meyer are in the mix. Freshmen Cam Williams and Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje project as the 4s.
Sarr and Wilkins are second-year players expected to handle most of the wing-forward minutes. Foster, Blackwell, freshman Bryson Howard and possibly Loyola (Md) transfer Jacob Theodosiou fit as nominal 2s, even if they can slide to the 3 in a small lineup.
Boozer and freshman Deron Rippey, Jr. are the pure point guards.
If Meyer and Theodosiou are left out of the regular ACC-level group, that still leaves 11 players who look capable of taking real minutes.
That creates a math problem. There are only 200 player-minutes available.
Split that across 11 players and you get 18.2 minutes apiece, which is not how most teams actually work. Duke is not going to play 11 guys for 18 minutes every night.
The real question is whether there’s a version of this team where 11 players are part of the normal rotation.
That’s hard to find in the modern era, especially for a power-conference team with real national-title hopes. The closest example might be Kentucky in 2014-15.
That group had 10 players log at least 10.9 minutes per game, with an 11th at 7.1. No one topped Willie Cauley-Stein’s 25.9 minutes per game.
But Alex Poythress played only eight games because of injury, which makes the comparison a little messy.
So really, it was nine. Karl-Anthony Towns and Devin Booker, both future NBA all-stars, each played about 21 minutes per game. That Kentucky team won its first 38 games and reached the Final Four undefeated.
Even then, the rotation tightened when the stakes got highest. In the loss to Wisconsin, John Calipari used only seven players for more than eight minutes, including Booker, who played 19.
That’s the lesson here: depth can define a season, but even the deepest teams usually shrink when it matters most.
In Other News...
Dukes Bye Week Could Reshape The ACC Race Fast
Duke heads into its bye week at 4-0, sitting among a small group of unbeaten ACC teams after stacking up wins over Illinois, Tulane, Stanford and William & Mary. For a program trying to stay relevant in a conference that still feels wide open, the timing matters almost as much as the record, because the Blue Devils can watch the rest of the league shift around them without having to take a snap.
North Carolinas home game against No. 3 Notre Dame adds another layer to the league picture, while Pittsburgh and Virginia Tech both enter the week at 4-0 and are positioned to meet the same kind of pressure Duke is temporarily avoiding. When the dust settles, one of those unbeaten ACC peers will have been forced into a tougher spot in the standings, and Dukes quiet week could end up feeling a lot more important than it looks right now. [Read more 🡒]
Duke Opens With One Big Test For Both Programs
Duke swimming and diving will get its 2026-27 season underway Friday at 5 p.m. against Davidson, a meet that offers an early look at where both programs stand after a strong spring. The women finished tied for 21st at last seasons NCAA Championships, while the men ended up fourth at the CSCAA National Invitational Championships, giving head coach Brian Barnes a solid base as he enters his fourth season.
There is also plenty of turnover for Barnes to manage right away, with 16 freshmen arriving and graduate transfer Alex Seybold coming over from Cal Poly. The staff will have a fresh face, too, as Colin Gibson has joined as an assistant coach, adding another layer of change to a roster that will be under the microscope from the first weekend of the season. [Read more 🡒]
Duke Has One Rivalry Edge UNC May Not Be Ready For
The early read on the upcoming Duke-North Carolina matchup starts inside, where Duke looks built to lean on size, depth and physicality in a way that should travel well in the ACC. Patrick Ngongba and Drew Scharnowski headline a frontcourt group that also brings Cameron Williams and Joaquim Boumtje Boumtje into the mix, giving the Blue Devils a rotation with enough bodies to play big without sacrificing versatility.
North Carolinas side of the equation is far less settled, with questions swirling around its interior options and several newcomers still needing to prove they can hold up in the leagues most intense games. The Tar Heels can usually count on frontcourt play to be part of the answer in this rivalry, but right now Duke appears to have the cleaner path to winning the paint, and that could shape the matchup long before the shots start falling from the perimeter. [Read more 🡒]