INCREDIBLE: Duke Basketball’s New Era EMERGES - Depth of 2026-27 Team AMAZES

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This is The Locked On Podcast Network, celebrating 10 years of your team every day.

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JJ Jackson (0:40)

Duke basketball gave us some five on five scrimmage footage and I've got one major takeaway. The depth of this team is amazing. And that's saying something, because we've been telling you a lot about the depth of this Duke basketball team. This is Locked On Blue Devils.

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You are Locked On Blue Devils, your daily podcast on the Duke Blue Devils. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day.

JJ Jackson (1:12)

Hello everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Locked On Blue Devils Podcast. My name is JJ Jackson. Thanks so much for being here with us today on Tuesday, September 8th, 2026 Locked On Blue Devils is your one stop shop where we discuss everything going on inside the life of Duke Athletics. On today's show, we got to react to the scrimmage footage that Duke has put out there. We now have more five on five action from this team in blue-white practice settings. And boy, oh boy, the depth of this team truly is special. Kevin Connelly from Ball Durham is going to be joining us on the show today. I hope that everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend. And here we go. It's a matter of days and weeks now at this point until Duke basketball opens up the new 26th, 27th season. So Kevin joins us now on the program. Great to see you as always, my friend. Hope you had a nice Labor Day weekend. And I tell you what, watching this scrimmage footage from Duke, man, this team is going to be deep.

Kevin Connelly (2:06)

Yeah, JJ, thanks for having me. You can view it one of two ways. You think it's great that they're going to have all this depth and this ability on the roster, but you go to the other other side of the coin and it feels like somebody's feelings are going to get hurt. Somebody's going to be sitting on the bench where they don't think they should be sitting on the bench. That's kind of the catch 22 if you want to use that phrase with how deep this team is. Typically, you have your core 7, 8, 9 guys that you're going to feel comfortable playing, but there's legitimately 10, 11 guys that would probably think of this team, they are worthy of playing time and unfortunately, that's just not the case in a setting like college basketball in a 40-minute game where your biggest games, you're probably going to rely on a maximum, you know, eight guys, maybe nine in the first half. But certainly, it's a good problem to have if you're John Scheyer when you know you can go down your bench and you could put that eighth or ninth guy in and you're not expecting much of a drop off compared to the second or third guy that's on the court.

JJ Jackson (3:04)

And again, looking at this, Duke is obviously hyping up the team as they should. I mean, that's what your creative team is supposed to do. But you can just watch this as an objective basketball viewer and realize, man, this team, it's got dudes and a lot of them that are out there able to contribute. We talked about it a little bit on yesterday's show, but not many missed shots whatsoever in the footage. If there were, it resulted in an offensive rebound and a put back for Duke, right? There were turnovers, but the turnover was a nice defensive play by the other team that resulted in a breakaway steal and dunk or whatever it may be, right? So they're obviously getting to select the clips that are out there, but it doesn't matter to me. I mean, I've seen enough once again to really buy stock in this team. Definitely one of the best teams in all of college basketball going into a new season, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if they're going to be led by another star freshman, because goodness, this Boumtje Boumtje hype is only going to continue to increase.