NCAA Basketball: Top-25 impact incoming recruiting classes entering 2024-25 season

2. Duke Blue Devils

After falling one game short of a Final Four last season, third-year head coach Jon Scheyer has assembled an army of elite freshmen in a revamped roster hoping to catapult off of last year’s deep postseason run.

Headlining the Blue Devils’ elite recruiting class is a consensus No. 1 pick in next year’s NBA Draft and the top-rated recruit in the 2024 recruiting class: the electrifying, two-way sensation Cooper Flagg. 

Flagg may be a generational talent, but let’s not forget the other talented recruits on their way to Durham. Scheyer will welcome three more five-star prospects in Khaman Maluach, Isaiah Evans and Kon Knueppel -- all potential first-round picks in the 2025 NBA Draft -- as well as two four-star prospects Patrick Ngongba III and Darren Harris.

Because the Blue Devils also made some sneaky-good additions from the transfer portal to get some much-needed veterans on the roster, it remains TBD regarding how Scheyer will utilize this heavy gauntlet of freshmen. Flagg will unquestionably start. Maluach also (likely) starts. How the rest of the freshman pieces from their recruiting class fall into place may be a question mark given how different Duke will look this year, but their impact will not be one.