INSIDER: Jon Scheyer REVEALS Winning Recruiting SECRETS as Duke Basketball Pursues Top Targets

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is The Locked On Podcast Network, celebrating 10 years of your team every day.

**JJ Jackson** (0:11)
Duke head coach Jon Scheyer and his staff are putting in the work early. This class of 2027 recruiting class could be another good one.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:24)
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** (0:34)
Hello everybody. Welcome into another episode of The Locked On Blue Devils podcast. My name is JJ Jackson. So great to have you here with us today on Friday, July 31st, 2026, last day of July.
In this episode of Locked On Blue Devils, we're talking recruiting with our guy Brandon Jenkins, the national recruiting insider for 247Sports. What is Duke's recruiting strategy going into the class of 2027 as the summer live periods have been going on? Brandon's been on top of it all. Cannot wait to get into that here on today's show. So let's bring him on into the program. My guy, it's great to see you once again. Hope your summer's been doing well. And here we are. It's almost August, man. I mean, August is this weekend. Crazy, the calendar flies by.

**Brandon Jenkins** (1:20)
Yeah, it seems like July brought all the on the court basketball madness. Now August is more suited for the recruiting madness, as you would say. It's a bunch of list cuts, a bunch of commitments, official visits being scheduled, kids trying to finalize things. So yeah, it's just madness in different forms and fashion.

**JJ Jackson** (1:38)
All right, tell me about it. This July coming to a close here and all the live periods that took place with Peach Jam and Adidas Puma, you were at all these big time events. What was this like for college coaches and Jon Scheyer and Duke staff specifically to make sure they allotted time and were able to see everybody?

**Brandon Jenkins** (1:57)
Yeah, I mean, from a coach's perspective, it was interesting because of the five for five rule.
You just see it's just not as much of a sense of urgency when it comes to high school kids. Obviously, offers were thrown around more in the month of July than it has ever been throughout the year. But at the same time, these coaches know in the back of their head that since kids are staying for an extra year, they can just recruit the portal a little bit harder to get somebody older. So it's just interesting right now. We're just in a period where people are trying to, coaches are trying to figure things out. I guess everybody in the college basketball community is trying to figure things out. And then from a Duke perspective, I think we got a chance to see them prioritize some kids by throwing out some offers their way. And you're just really letting the world know who they're looking to get after in the class in 2027

**JJ Jackson** (2:47)
Yeah, it's really cool to see the players be able to announce, hey, I've got the Duke offer. And of course, they're at the absolute top of the class. And the five for five rule just adds such another unique dynamic. I think from a college basketball coach's perspective, Brandon, they're just like, can we get anything consistent at this point? Can we just live in a world where the rules aren't changing? What feels like every 12 to 24 months? Because at first, it's COVID and that extra year of eligibility. Then the transfer portal, as it is, has really upped with players jumping in all the time to be able to add experience to your roster. And now you've got a fifth year of eligibility that you're working with. If I was a college basketball coach, I would just be begging for there to be no changes for a certain number of years. So you could start to figure out a good formula for success.

**Brandon Jenkins** (3:39)
Either that or if I was a college basketball coach, I quit.
I just don't think that this gives them the best quality of life. Now, if you're a Duke basketball coach, you're kind of operating on a different light. I think it's a little bit less stressful. I mean, because that's what the brand brings. I mean, they kind of operate like an NBA player. I mean, an NBA program. I mean, they have NBA players year in and year out. So I mean, when you're moving at that rate, I think it makes the job less stressful. But if I was a college coach, even at a high major program, I mean, we've seen dudes like Jay Wright and even Coach K, he's retired. I mean, yeah, it's just so many dudes that have retired because they're just tired of it. You know what I mean? So it's just one of those things where I don't know if the space right now is at its best, just with all the year to year changes. But hopefully, we can get back to some normalcy in a few years. But for right now, it just seems like it's money-driven and just the five-for-five rule is just kicking in. So I don't know how to experiment.