How Cooper Flagg epitomizes the gap between Duke and UNC — and not just on the court
In brief moments Saturday night, Cooper Flagg tried to take it all in. He locked away scenes and memories. This was his first time playing in a Duke-North Carolina game — and very likely the only one he’ll ever play inside Cameron Indoor Stadium — and when he could slow down long enough, he tried to remember to savor it.
During timeouts or quick stoppages he caught himself filing away the kinds of things he’d heard about, and knew about, but could never fully appreciate until he experienced them himself. The noise, for one. The feeling of a building coming to life. Flagg visited Duke a year ago for its game, and its defeat, against UNC — but this was different; now he was part of it and at the center of it.
“Just feeling the energy in the gym,” he said afterward, trying to put words to some of those sensory experiences that will stay with him. “It’s just so — so explosive, and so electric in there.”
Long before Flagg arrived at Duke as the nation’s best high school basketball prospect, regardless of age or class, and long before he became the consensus projected No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, Flagg was a young basketball fan growing up in Newport, Maine. And like “most college basketball fans — basketball fans, in general,” he said, Duke-Carolina was appointment viewing.
“I definitely saw it growing up every single year,” he said, and in time he found himself longing to be a part of it.
Flagg’s turn to star in the rivalry will very likely be brief — and limited to this lone season — but already he has left an enduring mark. In his Duke-Carolina debut, he turned in a brilliant performance in what was likely his most complete college game yet.
During the first six minutes Saturday night, Flagg either scored or assisted on all 17 of Duke’s points. It was a stretch that included two 3-pointers that sent Cameron Indoor into delirium; two steals that led to assists on fast-break layups; another assist on the game’s first play; and a three-point play that gave Duke a double-digit lead, for good, with 14:36 left in the first half.
The Tar Heels, undermanned and overmatched everywhere, attempted early to double-team Flagg. The strategy didn’t prove to be even a minor inconvenience. He finished with 21 points, eight rebounds, seven assists, three steals and two blocks in a relentless 38 minutes of playing time, and afterward it was the things he didn’t do that seemed to stay with him most.
“They kind of went on a little run,” he said after Duke’s 87-70 victory, the margin hardly indicative of the dominance, “and it was pretty much all my fault. I made a bunch of errors down the stretch.”
The self-criticism notwithstanding, Flagg finished with one of the best performances among freshmen in the long history between Duke and UNC. He managed, as he has done throughout his first (and sure to be only) season of college basketball, to exceed expectations on another national stage, this one unlike any other throughout the sport’s regular season.
UNC ‘never recruited’ Flagg
Flagg’s arrival to this particular theater, which Duke and UNC have long shared, might have officially come Saturday night. In reality, though, it was a journey years in the making. Duke was among the first major schools — along with Michigan and UCLA — to offer him a scholarship after his freshman season at Nokomis Regional High in his hometown of Newport.
Soon enough, a lot of other schools wanted him, too. Flagg spent his final two years of high school at Montverde Academy in Florida, at one of the nation’s most prolific prep basketball academies. His game and his star blossomed. He became something of a national name long before he made his college debut and, in time, his college choice seemed like a foregone conclusion.
During those years, Duke-UNC games remained must-see TV for him. Only one of those schools, though, was ever an option for Flagg. Two days before one of the more humbling performances of his four seasons as UNC’s head coach, Hubert Davis considered the question of whether he’d ever tried to recruit Flagg — even in the early years, before his college choice became clear.
It was a question Davis wanted no part of answering. Perhaps part of it was a resistance to acknowledge that UNC likely never had a shot. Or maybe he wanted to avoid highlighting Duke’s considerable recruiting prowess. Whatever the reason, Davis declined to answer whether he’d made any overtures to Flagg, however long ago or however far-fetched they might’ve been.
“That would be a question that you would have to ask him,” Davis said.
Days earlier, after a sluggish victory against N.C. State, Flagg actually had answered the question. The hype then for his first game against the Tar Heels was starting to build. It was the arrival of something he’d long yearned to be a part of. Given his longtime allegiance to Duke, the question went, had ever even considered the other side? Was there ever any interest in UNC?
“I mean, no,” Flagg said. “I was never recruited by North Carolina or anything like that.”
From Harrison Barnes to Flagg
In November 2009, Harrison Barnes, then arguably the top senior high school basketball player in the country, committed to UNC in an especially memorable way. It was also cutting edge, for the time: In a televised announcement, Barnes used Skype to inform then-UNC coach Roy Williams that he had chosen the Tar Heels.
UNC had won the national championship five months earlier. Now the most coveted prospect in the country was coming to Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels were at the pinnacle of college basketball. What made Barnes’ commitment especially sweet, for Williams and his staff, was that Duke was among Barnes’ finalists. UNC had beaten its primary rival for arguably the nation’s best prospect.
More than 15 years later, history has still not repeated itself. To be sure, the Tar Heels have landed their share of McDonald’s All-Americans and other elite prospects in the meantime. And on the court, they’ve arguably been the better program — or at least Duke’s equal.
Both the Tar Heels and Blue Devils have been to three Final Fours since 2009. They’ve both won national championships — Duke in 2010 and ‘15 and Carolina two years later. They met in the 2022 Final Four, where UNC’s victory gave its fans eternal bragging rights, and that triumph came about a month after UNC beat Mike Krzyzewski in his final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Saturday, though, it felt like the programs were as far apart as they’d been in a long time. In contrast to the established cyclical nature of their rivalry, the natural give and take and decades upon decades of trading places atop the sport, it felt like Duke, which at one point led 40-13, was playing a different game. And in some ways, the Blue Devils are.
Flagg is emblematic of that, on the court and off. On the court, he’s arguably as talented and complete as any freshman in college basketball in more than 20 years. Duke has built its team around him the way Syracuse did Carmelo Anthony in 2003, when Anthony led the Orange to the national championship.
Off the court, Flagg, who turned 18 in December, is one of the faces of a new generation of athletes who have redefined stardom. He was a household name in basketball circles long before he ever arrived at Duke. He arrived in college already as “a business, man” — in the parlance of Jay-Z — and with a shoe deal with New Balance. His highlights on YouTube had been doing numbers for years.
In choosing where to spend his anticipated lone season in college, Flagg had to evaluate which programs were best for him in a basketball sense, but also in all the other ways, too: which one would offer him the brightest stage; which one would allow his star to grow, and nurture it; which one had a track record of turning high school talent into high NBA Draft lottery picks.
Which program, to put it simply, had the most to offer a player of his caliber, in basketball and beyond. Duke became an obvious choice. Since the start of the season in November, Flagg and Duke have proven to be an enviable fit. He could’ve been the best player on just about any team, and excelled anywhere, but at Duke it somehow feels ... most natural.
As if the player and program were destined for another. On Saturday night against UNC, Flagg did what he so often has this season: He exceeded expectations, and made it look easy along the way. He proved to be among the main differences between these Duke and Carolina teams — and in a way he underscored their diverging philosophies surrounding program-building, too.
How Duke basketball evolved
That Duke continues to attract a never-ending parade of highly-regarded basketball prospects is hardly new. The flow of so-called one-and-dones in and out of Durham has remained steady and constant now, for more than 10 years. From Jabari Parker to Jahlil Okafor to Jayson Tatum to Marvin Bagley III to Zion Williamson and RJ Barrett to Paolo Banchero — top-5 NBA Draft picks, all — Duke has embraced becoming a one-year stop for elite players destined for the NBA.
The results have sometimes been mixed — Duke won the national championship with a freshman-dominated team in 2015, but several others since then have fizzled in March. And only one, in 2022, even reached the Final Four. Jon Scheyer ascended to head coach after that defeat in New Orleans and, while UNC fans were still celebrating a victory for ages, Scheyer embarked on an ambitious goal: He wanted to make Duke an even more modern and adaptable version of itself.
At the time, the sport was changing. It’d been less than a year since college athletes had finally earned the right to profit off their name, image and likeness. The use of the transfer portal was becoming more ubiquitous. Roster management, and particularly managing the year-to-year turnover that was becoming so prevalent, was becoming a full-time job within a full-time job.
To that end, Scheyer in June 2022 hired Rachel Baker, who’d spent eight years with Nike and one with the NBA, as his program’s general manager. The role was entirely new. Duke had never had a general manager before, and neither had any other college basketball team. In announcing Baker’s hiring, Scheyer in a statement spoke of how the state of college basketball was “growing and changing at an exponential rate.” He spoke of a need to “navigate new frontiers.”
Scheyer, now in his third season as head coach, has embraced the sort of change that has prompted some of college basketball’s old guard coaches to retire. Duke has continued to attract more than its share of top talent, even as NIL has become more purely transactional — and even as the transfer portal has made roster construction more unpredictable and difficult.
Last week, two days before his team’s victory against UNC, he tried to explain how Duke had maintained its lofty place. It wasn’t by accident, after all, or automatic. How had his program tried to adapt, and remain attractive to elite prospects like Flagg and others?
“Not every kid looks for the same thing,” Scheyer said. “That’s definitely what I’ve found. ... There’s different priorities that different families and different kids have. I don’t think any of it’s wrong, you know, and I think it’s all up to them to make the best decision.”
For those who chose Duke, he said, “the stage is a big deal.” As is a desire to be coached hard, he said. “And ultimately, you’re not choosing to come to Duke, even if it’s for a year, if there’s not other decisions besides basketball.”
“Like being a part of Duke, truly, is something that Cooper wanted to do,” Scheyer said.
He acknowledged another obvious factor, too: “I think going forward, to act like NIL isn’t a part of that equation — would be foolish, to say that.”
For better or worse, college athletics has turned into a version of professional sports. An unintended version, perhaps, but one that mirrors the pros, nonetheless. And college basketball has become perhaps the most most transactional of any college sport, what with constant roster turnover and steady churn of freshmen in a hurry to get to the NBA.
Duke has leaned into the transactionalism of it all. It has designed its program to benefit from it. Flagg and Duke are both using each other and both benefiting in their own ways. Duke’s longtime rival, meanwhile, is having as difficult a time adapting to this new age off the court as it did trying to keep up on it on Saturday night in Durham.
‘Carolina’s Carolina’
In his fourth season as head coach at UNC, Hubert Davis finds himself at something of a crossroads. The Tar Heels are in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years. The luster of that improbable run in 2022, and those two memorable wins over Duke, has faded — for now — amid the angst of a season in turmoil.
The pressure is mounting, along with the losses, and questions have emerged about the program’s approach to a new and rapidly-changing environment. Fair or not, Davis’ messaging is at the root of some of those questions. Like Scheyer at Duke, Davis played at UNC. They became head coaches about a year apart, both succeeding Hall of Famers who left substantial voids.
At least publicly, Scheyer and Davis have embraced contrasting approaches to building and organizing their programs. Scheyer has been aggressive in attempting to position Duke for future and present. Hiring Baker, for one, was a bold move and the first of its kind, nationally. He has also surrounded himself with a coaching staff full of diverse backgrounds.
Davis, meanwhile, has prioritized having a coaching staff full of nothing but former UNC players. He has not hired a general manager — which has become a more common position throughout the sport — but conceded on his radio show Monday night that it was a need, and that UNC would hire one. And he has maintained an allegiance to the historic principles that underpinned decades of UNC’s success — despite the fact that the sport has changed entirely in recent years.
“It just is what it is: Carolina’s Carolina,” Davis said before the start of the season, speaking in particular about maintaining the program’s identity. “I’ve gone through it. I believe it. It’s proven that it works. And as long as I’m head coach, that will never change.”
He spoke then of “other factors” that have complicated matters — NIl, and the portal, to name two — but also insisted that players in his program would have to “unpack your bags” and commit to it.
“Both feet have to be in for this university and this community and this program. You have to want to be a part of a team. You have to think about the team’s success, not just your success.
“And this is not a transactional program — it just is not.”
Davis’ pitch has worked, at times, in recruiting. Ian Jackson and Drake Powell are two of the best freshmen in the ACC, and Jackson in June is likely to be a first-round selection in the NBA Draft. Caleb Wilson, the No. 9 prospect in the Class of 2025, just committed to UNC and joined two other top-50 prospects in next season’s incoming freshmen class.
What would Dean Smith do?
Even so, the struggles this season have given way to the perception that the Tar Heels are in decline. If UNC misses the NCAA Tournament it’d be the third time that’s happened in six seasons. That would be a first since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985. As it is, it’s already the fifth time in six years that UNC will finish a season with double-digit losses. To put that into perspective, UNC had five seasons in which it lost 10 or more games throughout Dean Smith’s entire 36-year tenure.
Amid some of UNC’s more frustrating recent performances, a number of disgruntled fans have posed a sentimental question on social media or message boards: What would Dean do? How would Dean Smith coach these Tar Heels through these difficult times? The answer, of course, is that Smith, who also considered himself an educator above all, would likely have nothing to do with coaching in this era.
It’s the same answer Tony Bennett and Jay Wright and others — Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski, included — have provided through their retirement in recent years. Some things have remained constant, at least. March is still March, for one. And at Duke, students still camped for weeks in Krzyzewskiville for the best spots in those old, creaky bleachers inside Cameron Indoor.
ESPN, like always, came to hype it. Fans still anticipated it. The game still divided households throughout North Carolina and beyond. Duke-Carolina is still Duke-Carolina, after all, even if the rosters are more difficult to keep track of year after year. Only this time, once it began, it looked like a referendum between the two old rivals. One had found a way to thrive in this uncomfortable and changing college basketball environment, while the other was languishing.
Duke’s lead grew to 27 before halftime and to 32 after it. The decibel level grew with the margin. And at the center of it all was Flagg, who in moments tried to take it all in and in others proved dominant, as usual — a once-in-a-generation teenager who grew up watching this rivalry and who came to know that he could only ever be on one side of it.
In the Spotlight designates ongoing topics of high interest that are driven by The News & Observer’s focus on accountability reporting.
This story was originally published February 4, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
