Duke’s 2026-27 roster is fascinating for a lot of reasons. First of all, the Blue Devils get Pat Ngongba, Dame Sarr, Caleb Foster and Cayden Boozer back, and Sebastian Wilkins too, after his redshirt year.
Then there are the intriguing portal additions: John Blackwell, Drew Scharnowksi, and Jacob Theodosiu.
Finally, there are the freshmen. Jon Scheyer has not really had a guard like Deron Rippey before. Bryson Howard is going to be a load. It looks like young big man Maxime Meyer may have accelerated
his development, which is going to be fun. And then there’s Cameron Williams and Joaquim Boumjte Boumtje.
What’s going to be interesting is to see how Scheyer makes all these pieces fit. First, it seems abundantly clear that the pace is going to pick up, and there should never be a break on defense.
What really intrigues us, though, is how Scheyer will use Williams and Boumjte Boumtje.
Both guys are roughly the same size, and both have come on pretty quickly. Williams really wasn’t seen as an elite recruit until fairly recently, and while aficionados knew about Boumjte Boumtje, most of us had no idea that a brilliant talent was rising in Spain.
You have to assume, obviously, that Ngongba will start, but who will join him? Caleb Foster is going to be a co-captain, at a minimum, and he’s likely to start. Either Boozer or Rippey will almost certainly take the other spot.
Dame Sarr’s defense will make it impossible to keep him out of the lineup. Watching him hound ball handlers was startling at times last season. He has a rare talent.
But who gets the last spot? It’s probably going to be either Williams or Boumjte Boumtje, and in June, you can make the argument for either guy.
In this profile, Williams’ coach, Damin Lopez, compares him to Kevin Garnett. Garnett was an amazing player, not least of all because of his temperament. Williams seems more laid back, but he’s still young. We’ll see where he goes. But Lopez raves about his potential.
As for Boumjte Boumtje, it’s hard to say just yet. First, he’s been overseas, so he’s not as visible. You can see video of course, but highlights are always cut in a favorable way. You don’t see the mistakes, the flaws, the lapses in attention, or how somebody deals with frustration. All you see is what the person who edited it wants you to see.
That said, Boumjte Boumtje is a highly promising player. Still just 16, he appears to have an advanced skill set. And at 6-11 and 230, he’s a good bit thicker than Williams.
It’s hard to imagine you’d go wrong with either guy. What impresses us about both of them is the maturity of their games. In Williams’ case, his father wouldn’t let him work on his perimeter game until he mastered the basics of an inside game.
And we’ve seen on video that Boumjte Boumtje has a solid outside game.
Our guess is that we’ll see them both on the floor together at the same time periodically. It’s also fun to imagine what happens if Scheyer decides to put Williams and Boumjte Boumtje out there with Ngongba in certain situations. For instance, we could imagine all three on the floor against, say, Michigan.
The other thing that would be fun with this team is to watch practice. Williams vs. Boumjte Boumtje…Sarr vs. Howard…Rippey vs. Boozer, Foster, or Blackwell. It’s going to be amazing.
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