COPYRIGHT 2025 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

As Team USA prepared for the Olympics last summer, they gathered in Las Vegas for practices and training. While future Hall of Famers LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and others received plenty of attention as usual, it was 17-year-old Cooper Flagg who had a breakthrough performance. During a scrimmage, Flagg held his own against the world’s best players, showing the skills and smarts that made him the presumptive No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA draft.

Since then, Flagg has only helped his draft stock with a dominant freshman season at Duke. The Blue Devils (19-2) are No. 2 in the Associated Press poll and 11-0 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. They have won 15 consecutive games, the longest streak in Division 1, and are coming off an 87-70 victory on the road over rival North Carolina.

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With Freshman Phenom Cooper Flagg, Duke Is An NCAA Tournament Favorite

ByTim Casey, Senior Contributor.

Tim Casey is a reporter who covers basketball and sports business.

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Feb 04, 2025, 06:00am EST

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Duke’s Cooper Flagg (2) high-fives head coach Jon [+]

COPYRIGHT 2025 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

As Team USA prepared for the Olympics last summer, they gathered in Las Vegas for practices and training. While future Hall of Famers LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and others received plenty of attention as usual, it was 17-year-old Cooper Flagg who had a breakthrough performance. During a scrimmage, Flagg held his own against the world’s best players, showing the skills and smarts that made him the presumptive No. 1 pick in the 2025 NBA draft.

Since then, Flagg has only helped his draft stock with a dominant freshman season at Duke. The Blue Devils (19-2) are No. 2 in the Associated Press poll and 11-0 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. They have won 15 consecutive games, the longest streak in Division 1, and are coming off an 87-70 victory on the road over rival North Carolina.

Flagg, a 6-foot-9 forward who turned 18 in December, is having one of the best seasons in recent years regardless of age. He is first in analyst Ken Pomeroy’s Player of the Year standings. His 2.737 rating is the second-highest since KenPom began publishing the data in the 2010-11 season, only trailing Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky, who had a 2.794 rating in the 2014-15 season.

Flagg leads Duke with 20 points, 8 rebounds, 4.2 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.2 blocks per game. As CBS Sports noted last month, former LSU star Ben Simmons is the only freshman to lead a team in all five of those categories since the NCAA began tracking those statistics in the 1985-86 season.

The 2025 college football season is still months away, but J.D. PicKell has already seen enough to make a bold call—Clemson is headed back to the College Football Playoff. The On3 analyst ranked the Tigers as his No. 3 seed, predicting back-to-back ACC titles and another playoff berth under Dabo Swinney.

That trust lit a fire in Klubnik, who committed to proving his coach right. He blocked out outside noise, doubled down on his work ethic, and delivered a breakout junior year.

The 21-year-old Texas native’s improvement was undeniable, throwing for 3,639 yards and 36 touchdowns in 2024. This led to a tough dilemma—declare for the NFL Draft or run it back. Klubnik chose Clemson, saying:

With a father in the U.S. Navy, Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty moved frequently during his childhood, spending time in Florida, Virginia and abroad in Europe before settling in Frisco, Texas for high school. Jeanty starred for Lone Star High School, wearing a helmet that looked like an inverted version of the Dallas Cowboys’ famous star-emblazoned lids.

The lightly-recruited Jeanty became a national superstar with the Broncos, posting a remarkable 2,601-yard, 29-touchdown season in 2024. Jeanty has been frequently attached to the Cowboys as a potential NFL draft landing spot. While the draft is still nearly three months away, Jeanty would have no problem with a homecoming for his pro career.

The Boise State star appeared on radio row ahead of Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, and embaced the possibility of playing alongside quarterback Dak Prescott and wide receiver CeeDee Lamb.

“It would be special,” Jeanty said, via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Obviously, growing up in Frisco and spending a lot of time out there. I think it’d be cool having a star on my helmet again. Playing for Lone Star (High School), I had a star on my helmet as well. It would be a dope moment to have that happen.”

Drafting Jeanty would make for a real splash, although Dallas has plenty of needs beyond running back after a disappointing 7-10 season. One of the greatest Cowboys of all time, former running back Emmitt Smith, believes it would be a serious mistake.

“If he comes to the Cowboys right now, he’s going to get beat up,” Smith said Thursday. “I don’t think we’re ready. We don’t have the right mindset. We don’t have the right commitments.”

Indiana basketball received the best news of the offseason thus far with the announcement of Malik Reneau returning to Bloomington for his junior season. Peegs.com and Hoosiers Hysterics Podcast were the first to report the news.

He joins Trey Galloway and Anthony Leal as the confirmed players to be returning to Indiana basketball next season. Reneau was named a All-Big Ten honorable mention selection as a sophomore.

Having rescued a point in a dramatic 2-2 draw against Bayer Leverkusen at the weekend, Leipzig were in Austria hoping to close out their Champions League campaign with three points and another morale-boosting display. The match started tentatively, with play frequently breaking down in the midfield. Christoph Baumgartner and Antonio Nusa were the standouts in a much-changed Leipzig XI in the first half. Nicolas Seiwald bombarded Graz with a flurry of corners and set-pieces, but none of them tested Kjell Scherpen in the Graz goal. The hosts grew into the game, seizing their biggest chance as Malić crept in at the back post to get on the end of a corner, breaking the deadlock from close range. Baumgartner and Lutsharel Geertruida combined minutes later as Leipzig looked to respond, but Scherpen saved Geertruida’s initial attempt, and his teammate sent the rebound over the bar.

The second half began much the same as the first ended; with Leipzig dominating possession but failing to make anything of it. Much of their play lacked its usual precision and sharpness, with the visitors opting to go long to Yussuf Poulsen all too frequently, to no avail. Things soon appeared to go from bad to worse for Leipzig, as William Bøving thought he had doubled the host’s advantage just after the hour mark. The attempt was disallowed by the VAR for a foul in the build-up, however. Rose made a flurry of changes inside five minutes to try and find a way back into the game, bringing on regular starters in David Raum, Xavi and Benjamin Šeško. Yet it was the Austrian side who played with bravery and attacking intent, creating chances at every opportunity. In the final ten minutes, Graz stood off their visitors, enduring prolonged spells of pressure, but their defence held. Beaten but unbowed, Die Roten Bullen will look to pick up in the Bundesliga when they face Union Berlin this weekend.

class: National Signing Day.

Prospects across the country will sign with the schools of their choice, with many set to enroll early for the spring semester. But there’s still plenty of excitement to come with commitments, flips and more unexpected news in the next few days.

On3 is providing wall-to-wall coverage with live updates, news, notes and the latest intel from our team of national and school-specific recruiting experts. Track the movement on the class rankings throughout the day on the On3 In7dustry Team 

ESPN’s Jeremy Woo spoke with a horde of NBA scouts and executives to get their thoughts  on Flagg’s game. While he drew comps to NBA greats ranging from Grant Hill to Jayson Tatum, executives cautioned that Flagg’s scoring is not yet where it could be.

“It looks like [Duke head coach Jon] Scheyer has been intentionally putting him in situations where it’s, ‘OK, go, get a basket,’” one Western Conference executive said. “It doesn’t look like the primary creation is there for him quite yet. There’s a hope that he can be a go-to guy on offense. It seems like he’s got the vision and passing, but the individual scoring stuff has to get better.”

Fans saw this first-hand during the annual Champions Classic. With Duke and Kentucky locked in a tie game with 12 seconds left, Flagg committed two turnovers over seven seconds of game time as the Wildcats escaped with a