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00:00Let me ask you this, Mike, Cooper Flagg last night, what a start for him.
00:08You know, some people would say that's pedestrian, but really when you break it down 18, 7, 5,
00:15you had three steals, something like that.
00:17That's pretty heady stuff for a freshman at Cameron Indoor.
00:20I don't care who they're playing.
00:22Yeah, well, I wrote about him on Monday and, and talked to a lot of people who are scouts
00:29experts in the evaluation business.
00:31And they said, look, don't expect them to be going for 40 and 50 every night.
00:35It's not who he is.
00:36It's not say he can't or won't on occasion if he starts ripping threes and he can get
00:41going.
00:42On those occasions, he might get up some big points numbers, but it's not who he is.
00:46It's about the versatility and this Duke team needs that versatility because the one position
00:53where they're not really covered, where you really aren't sure their national championship
00:57good is point guard.
00:59So last night he comes out and he has five assists.
01:03Their nominal point guard has zero assists.
01:06So that tells you he does what is necessary to do to win.
01:10And that's what everybody I talked to, I spoke with Sharman White, who's the coach at Pace
01:15Academy in Georgia, but he also works with USA basketball with the under 17 national
01:20team.
01:21And he had Cooper when Cooper was 15 years old, Cooper came out at 15 and was the best
01:26player on the team in 2022 that won the gold medal at the under 17 World Cup.
01:33He is a phenomenal player.
01:34He's the best prospect in American basketball since Anthony Davis rolled through.
01:39And honestly, Scott, we need that.
01:41We haven't had the great guys come out of school in the early part of the 2000s.
01:47What we have, we had LeBron James in 03.
01:49We had Chris Paul.
01:51We had we had Kevin Durant come out.
01:54We had Greg Oden, although he got hurt and it didn't work out, but at least we had these
01:57great talents coming out.
02:00It's been a while since we had Anthony Davis.
02:03We had Zion come out in 2019, but he can't stay healthy.
02:07And that's pretty much it.
02:08So we need a guy like Cooper Flagg to come in, plant the flag and go out and have a great
02:14career.
02:15So, you know, I think he's an incredible player and I've seen him at every level.
02:21And I just think that, you know, you guys ranked him third in the Sporting News Top
02:2725.
02:28And like last year, I think you nailed two of those four in the final four.
02:33And I think this guy's that good that he's going to, I think he's going to carry him
02:38to the final four.
02:39I think they're going to play for a national championship.
02:41I think there's a great chance of that, Scott.
02:44People have become of the belief that you have to be old in order to win.
02:48No, you have to be good.
02:51And there's a lot of old teams that aren't good.
02:53And there aren't very many young teams in any case.
02:55And so I think that in Duke's case, with the freshmen that they have, that they can make
03:01the final four.
03:03That's where I stop and wonder, though.
03:06Like I said, there are certain ingredients that every championship team, going back as
03:11long as I've been covering this game, as you can see, it's a while.
03:15And you have to have certain ingredients.
03:19And one of them is a point guard who's really, it doesn't necessarily have to be a pro, but
03:25he's got to be significant.
03:26I mean, you had a DeJuan Harris in 2022.
03:29He's still at Kansas.
03:30That kind of player can win a national championship.
03:33Or you can have a legit pro guy, a first round NBA pick, which we've had.
03:40Let's go back to 2005, for an example, with Raymond Felton.
03:42You can have that guy, or you can have the DeJuan Harris.
03:45But can you have a guy where you're wondering?
03:47And that's what I wonder about with Duke.
03:49I think they can paper over that for a while with guys like Flagg, who can really pass
03:55the ball and are really unselfish, and so many weapons around them.
03:59But when you get to those final couple games, Scott, you got to have it all.
04:03And UConn had it all last year, and they were able to win it.
04:06They had enough the year before they were able to win it.
04:10But that's where I stop short with Duke, on whether they can win it because of that concern.