By AARON BEARD AP Basketball Writer
Jon Scheyer inherited a seemingly impossible task at Duke in following retired Hall of Fame coaching great Mike Krzyzewski. Yet the sixth-ranked Blue Devils have kept on winning.
They’re starting this year as Atlantic Coast Conference favorite again.
The Blue Devils are coming off a 35-win season that included reaching the Final Four, while the 38-year-old Scheyer became the first coach to twice win the ACC Tournament in his first three seasons. The Blue Devils lost all five starters from that team — including Associated Press national player of the year and No. 1 overall NBA draft pick Cooper Flagg — but added the No. 1-ranked recruiting class and stand as the preseason pick to win a league race featuring No. 11 Louisville and 25th-ranked rival North Carolina.
This is the 10th time in 13 years that Duke is the ACC favorite. Winning the ACC will depend on integrating a recruiting class headlined by power forward Cameron Boozer — 247Sports’ No. 3-ranked recruit — alongside returnees like Isaiah Evans and Maliq Brown.
“I think if you keep putting yourself in that position of being in that moment, being right there, it’s only a matter of time before you break through,” Scheyer said of the program’s status as frequent national-title contender. “And I feel that’s where our program is.”
The Cardinals lost to the Blue Devils in last year’s ACC final and reached March Madness in Pat Kelsey’s first season. It was quick rise from a two-year wilderness under Kenny Payne: 12 wins, 52 losses, a 5-35 record in ACC regular-season play.
Louisville is Duke’s top challenger, with Kelsey having retooled his roster through the transfer portal.
“We don’t talk about the past. We don’t talk about the future,” Kelsey said. “Our sole focus is excellence in the now.”
Top players
Darrion Williams helped Texas Tech reach the NCAA Elite Eight last year before declaring for the NBA draft. But the 6-foot-6 guard returned to college basketball for his senior season and transferred to N.C. State, where he is preseason ACC player of the year under new coach Will Wade.
The league returns two top-tier scorers in Notre Dame point guard Markus Burton (league-best 21.3 points) and Syracuse guard J.J. Starling (seventh at 17.8).
Top transfers
Beyond the Wolfpack’s Williams, the Cardinals added three of 247Sports’ top 20 transfers in Ryan Conwell, Isaac McKneely and Adrian Wooley — all 6-4 guards who shot better than 40% on 3-pointers last year.
Conwell averaged 16.5 points at Xavier and will play for his fourth school in as many seasons. McKneely averaged 14.4 points at Virginia, while Wooley (18.8) was Conference USA freshman of the year at Kennesaw State.
North Carolina added 7-footer Henri Veesaar, who left Arizona to join a Tar Heels team that desperately needs reliable frontcourt play.
Top freshmen
Boozer is one of six McDonald’s All-American freshmen, including Duke teammates in his brother Cayden (a point guard) and forward Nikolas Khamenia.
UNC will lean on forward Caleb Wilson, a two-way talent with athleticism and length. Wilson joins Boozer and Louisville point guard Mikel Brown Jr. as high-end NBA talents considered to be possible one-and-done prospects.
Notre Dame also landed a McDonald’s all-American in guard Jalen Haralson, the Fighting Irish’s highest-ranked prospect in the modern era.
New coaches
The league has four new coaches: Wade, Florida State’s Luke Loucks, Miami’s Jai Lucas and Virginia’s Ryan Odom.
The 42-year-old Wade is back in the power-conference ranks after his ouster from LSU amid NCAA trouble. He won big in two seasons at McNeese and replaces the fired Kevin Keatts.
Loucks, 35, arrives from years in the NBA to take over at his alma mater for longtime coach Leonard Hamilton.
Lucas, 36, left the Duke staff to take over the Hurricanes, who saw coach Jim Larrañaga step aside last December and finished out under interim coach Bill Courtney.
Odom, 51, takes over a Virginia program that lost longtime coach Tony Bennett to retirement shortly before last season. The former VCU coach grew up in Charlottesville around the program while his father, Dave, was an assistant in the 1980s.
Shorter schedule
The ACC will have an 18-game league slate, down from 20 games, as the league tries to reverse a downward trend of NCAA bids (four last year). The move is designed to give ACC teams two more spots to schedule quality nonconference matchups that could bolster postseason résumés. The ACC had moved to 20 games in 2019-20 with the arrival of the ESPN-partnered ACC Network.
Preseason picks
Champion: Duke; 2) Louisville; 3) UNC; 4) N.C. State; 5) Virginia; 6) SMU; 7) Clemson; 8) Miami; 9) Syracuse; 10) Notre Dame; 11) Wake Forest; 12) Virginia Tech; 13) Georgia Tech; 14) Pittsburgh; 15) FSU; 16) California; 17) Stanford; 18) Boston College.