They scored 1 FG in the last 10:30 minutes. Partially Houston’s defense, partially Jon Scheyer’s in game coaching, partially Duke being a young team having young team problems down the stretch.

Maluach found out right before the game that he might be deported.

Not sure if that contributed to his play, but it was probably his worst game in a Duke jersey and was the biggest reason for the loss. Just got crushed on the boards.

It’s really hard to win a title. Every team needs a little luck, nothing is guaranteed.

Kon passed to Cooper for the final shot and Cooper missed. 

Mistake. 

Single elimination tournament with 68 teams. Even historically great teams are statistically more likely to lose in the tournament than win it all.

exceeded?dude was called generational before the draft…

Cooper hasn’t exceeded expectations yet given that he was a generational prospect. You can argue that he has met expectations.

As a heels fan who gets to enjoy Kon now it brings me great pleasure.

Respect 🤝💯

We don’t see eye to eye on the other board. But this shows me you at least know a little about basketball. 

how can you be a basketball fan and think young talent beats experience/pressure?

Not the college basketball of old. 17-18 year olds playing against 23-24 year olds. As an Auburn fan, we had a ton of older guys last year. Transfer portal and all the waivers for 5th, 6th, 7th, even 8th years are killing college sports.

Injuries

I wonder if kon benefited from playing against and with a guy like coop every day at duke. Not taking anything away from kon, but playing with the best gotta make you better. 

Clutch missed free throws from their “veterans” and then Sion being incapable of inbounding the ball multiple times.

FYI, some of those guards still REALLY struggle with free throws.

They played an extremely physical, older team. Coop also got called for an insane foul getting an offensive rebound off a free throw late

College basketball was already prone to a bit of randomness, now it’s way worse

Almost every major school is fielding a completely different roster every season

He’s exceeded your expectations?

why is it so hard to believe a team of freshmen would lose to a team of seniors by one possession in a single elimination game haha

Cooper went cold at the worst possible time, IIRC. Missed a lot of open looks when they got eliminated

Quite simply one of the greatest chokes of all time in the final four

That’s the story of Duke my friend! Turning into Kentucky lol all these great prospects with no hardware to show for it. Look at all those times Kentucky had top classes and #1 rankings and yadayadayada… 1 title. Duke is turning into that.

Houston Cougars Basketball.

I remember seeing fans saying they were terrified of getting Kon. A lot of those same fans also wanted Maluach at #8 lol

Tons of draft models i saw had him as the second best player in college ball last year. I think he really gets pigeonholed because of the legacy of duke movement shooters.

Marks knows how to draft. Powell looking like a steal too

KON and MPJ on the same team would’ve killed our tank.

Jeff Peterson was Marks’ assistant before we hired him, probably a lot of overlap there in how they evaluate at the draft. 2026 draft might be the role reversal of this scenario lol.

with so many picks they tried to move up on board?

I’ve been hyping Kon up since he was a sophomore in high school and could never figure out what scouts weren’t seeing that I was until he actually blew up over the summer. I watched him play the best team in the state with 3 D1 recruits and he was the most impressive player on the floor as a sophomore. 

I told my buddy that he was going to be the best player ever to come out of Wisconsin and he could contribute to a college team next season. I’d never seen the footwork and composure of a player at that age. 

Light skinned Devin Booker

I wanna say prime Kon can look like prime Ray Allen

Seriously. I’ve found myself watching a lot of Charlotte games this year and they are a really fun team with lots of potential.

I agree with all of this and just want to add that’s he’s actually a pretty good defender too. Just plays like a fkn vet!

He might be the next Curry. Just a supernatural feel for the game.

Absolutely devastated we passed on him for Temu Harden, maybe Tony Parker if everything develops correctly

What shocked me was when Melo and Brandon Miller went out and Miles and Kon became the primary options, Kon’s production increased and he was still efficient. He’s going to obliterate the rookie 3 point shooting records.

I know it is way too early, but he is basically one tier below Curry in terms of volume + efficiency, as a rookie.

He’s one of those guys that was actually too good for college. His game somewhat relies on having other pros to get him the ball on cuts and not hog it, which is a college kid special (point guard just tries to score).

Tre Johnson and Demin are almost there too. Scary good shooters

I’ve been really impressed with Kon’s defense. I doubt he’ll ever put up Cooper’s stock numbers but he already seems to have good 1-1 defense and strong team defense understanding.

Bro is a walking bucket. He was torching us a few nights ago

Kon defends the best guard on the opposing team most nights lmao

Kon is no slouch on the defensive end, either

Kon is a really good defender as well.

He’d be 3 or 4 PPG higher if he sold even a fraction of the contact he gets. 

The Kings do as well. Y’all are like a young and packed with potential version of their roster lol. 

For some perspective: he scores more efficiently than Wemby does in Year 3, a near 50/40/80 lob-threat

Chinese Jokic

Coward and Queen are both looking great for rookies but they’re all 40 games into their careers. Yang was viewed as a project player and we got a glimpse of what he’s capable of in summer league, I wouldn’t be too upset with picking him yet.

It’s really too early to say anything. As a Sixers fan I’ll remind you that Michael “Who?” Carter-Williams won rookie of the year in the same rookie class as Giannis. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Hey we got Caleb for free tho 👀

I felt so bad for y’all after the owners made such obvious bad moves this summer in exchange for ticket/jersey sales

Yeah but look at my guy Caleb Love up there!

Such a dumb pick by our front office lol

I will always be a Caleb Love fan

Undrafted no less

Bear Down baby

I’m not at all confident Harper can emerge as the better player. You can’t really teach what Kon does. Harper’s skillset is already redundant twice-over on his own team

Tre 100% should be over Harper. Its just #2 pick bias.

Sion James and Ryan Kalkbrenner are already solid rotation players!

He always had glaring flaws that were ignored bc people love big guards that get to the rim. He’s still gonna be good but the spurs will 100% regret taking him over VJ and Kon

People comparing him to Manu really underestimate how good of a shooter he was

Multiple dynasties had come off of poverty just by getting the right guys. I have reasons to believe Kon could be one of those who will help us get over the top

The memo hasn’t quite got around yet, but we aren’t a poverty franchise anymore. Takes more than 2 years to undo 2 decades of MJ drafts/stank

Two winning seasons is more than I thought. I just remembered the one playoff year for Kemba. Probably 42 win team 

You just had to say that stupid shit at the end huh?