“We did it without rim protection” — Duke HC Jon Scheyer expresses faith in team’s defense for 2024-25 season

Duke Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer has been one of the busiest coaches in the offseason after his team's transfer portal exodus. Despite advancing to the Elite Eight last season, only two players, Caleb Foster and Tyrese Proctor, remained in the teams as the others sought home out of Durham.

After bringing in six freshman recruits, including the No. 1 player, Cooper Flagg, Scheyer is confident in his team's prospects for the upcoming season. He joined the "Crazies Cast" podcast on Tuesday for discussions about the new teams, and he highlighted the defense.

"I think we have several guys that can guard 1-5. Cooper is one of them. I mentioned Malik," Scheyer said. "Sion is strong enough to really guard 1-5. ... Look, our defense has been really solid the last two years.

"Even last year we had a different team, but we were consistently a top-20 defense, certain points top-five, top-10 in the country. We did it without rim protection."

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Duke's Jon Scheyer predicts his team's road to success

Jon Scheyer has been with the Blue Devils since 2014 but took over as the head coach in 2022. In his first year, he led Duke to the second round in March Madness with an Elite Eight appearance last season.

During an interview with Jon Rothstein for the "College Hoops Today" podcast, Jon Scheyer highlighted some important aspects of the new team.

"We have great positional size," Scheyer said. "We have rim protection, but I think we have high IQ players and great versatility, like I mentioned, because of our positional size. We can play a little bit differently this year."

Scheyer also mentioned one of the key elements that will help Duke reach the championship game next season:

"I think by far the biggest key is we need to get as connected and as together as possible over a 30, hopefully its 40 games you play. You need to get really connected as quickly as possible...having role definition, strengths and weaknesses of each other, just being really committed to that. So, I think that's our biggest challenge out of the gates."

And then..when it gets to tournament time, we're putting a huge priority on playing fast and pushing the ball, but you have to execute in the half-court in the tournament."

What are your predictions for the Duke Blue Devils in the upcoming season? Let us know in the comments section below.