“Some food, a gun and Kon Knueppel.”
Before last week’s Sweet 16 game against Arizona, Duke grad transfer Neal Begovich toured the locker room, microphone in hand, and conducted mock interviews as a means of content creation for the team’s in-house media enterprise. He playfully harassed freshman phenom Cooper Flagg, ending with a fun throwaway question: What three things are you bringing with you in an apocalypse?
That’s when Flagg jokingly (but not really?) said the seven words atop of this story.
For all the tonnage of attention Duke’s superstar freshman has provided over the past five months, Flagg hasn’t exactly been quotable. Thus, his one-liner on Knueppel sheds a light. Sure, it was a response made in jest, but it also discloses something about the nature of their friendship. Flagg and Knueppel are great buds and, as a byproduct of their on-court dynamic, have grown into college basketball’s most productive duo. Flagg has somehow exceeded the hype after entering the season with as much anticipation as any prospect in a decade, if not more. As Duke’s centerpiece, the National Player of the Year is the biggest reason why the Blue Devils are two wins away from winning a sixth national title.
But this probably isn’t possible without the guy who carries a clean jumper, an acerbic wit and a helping hand for Flagg as he has ascended over the past five months. In the process, Knueppel’s been crucial to building one of the best Duke teams of all time.
“I trust him on the court more than anyone else I’ve ever played with,” Flagg told CBS Sports of his college roommate. “He’s such a versatile player. He does everything so polished, is such a good teammate and so competitive that it makes it easy to play with him.”
From the start of the season, Knueppel has been the steady force churning a relentless Duke machine — on both ends.
“A bad motherf——, man,” Duke assistant Chris Carrawell told CBS Sports of Knueppel. “Whatever they said, he’s better than advertised. This dude, he can ball.”
Knueppel’s game doesn’t have flash; he’s just damn good, and it feels like his value and dependability has been taken for granted a bit. When Duke needs the right play, there he is: over and over and over, again and again and again.
“I just felt like we’ve been raised similarly in how to play the game and coached similarly,” Knueppel told CBS Sports of his dynamic with Flagg. “And that kind of clicked right from the jump.”
The 6-7 wing by way of Wisconsin is reliably dangerous from 3 (40.1%), ultra-tough and adaptable on defense, a quick-minded passer and always ready to bomb himself onto the floor to salvage a possession. In a few months, he’ll be a lottery pick.
“He’s really driven in everything he does. Kon’s very focused, very present. He’s not a guy who’s on his phone a lot. Very mature, and he’s got a lot of shit to him,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer told CBS Sports with a laugh. “The thing I’ve loved about him, being around him this year, he has a great sense of humor. He even did an imitation of me [recently] — I’m shocked he did it. His personality has really come out. But yeah, in terms of how he is, he’s got ‘shit’ to him, I don’t know how else to describe it.”
A five-star prospect, Knueppel would be the No. 1 option on most teams; he just happens to be No. 2 on the best team.
Flagg and Knueppel combine to average 33.3 points, 11.4 rebounds, 7.0 assists and are shooting 39% from 3-point range. The last time any high-major duo did this with at least 1.0 3-pointers attempted per game by both players was Alabama’s Kira Lewis and John Petty five seasons ago. The last time a freshman tandem hit those numbers was 2006-07: Texas’ Kevin Durant and D.J. Augustin.
There’s acquired control in knowing your role and not desperately seeking more than what’s asked of you. Talk to down-the-bench guys who’ve made it into the NBA, and they’ll testify to how understanding your place can become your superpower, that it helps make you a better player in doing so. Knueppel exemplifies this as well as anyone in college basketball.
“Knueppel is such an awesome Robin,” one opposing coach familiar with Duke told CBS Sports. “There’s a real Cam Spencer vibe to him in that he’s such a good catch-and-shoot shooter that you have to get all the way to him on a touch. And he’s got such a great shot-fake and such great footwork that, when it’s an even advantage on a drive, he footworks his way to his advantage.”
If Flagg is Batman, then yes, Knueppel is Robin — but that might be selling him short. He’s the best wingman in college basketball. And that’s no insult to Knueppel. He knows the deal. He’s happy to thrive in this part.
“It’s something I’ve definitely embraced,” Knueppel told CBS Sports. “As a player, still have the confidence. I mean, I could have went somewhere else. I knew what I was coming into.”
Duke is the tallest, most talented team in college basketball. Tyrese Proctor is a 6-6 lead guard. Sion James is 23 years old and a bully of a combo guard. Freshman Khaman Maluach stands 7-2 and is a unique carnival of terror roaming the hardwood. They’ve all played pivotal roles in building out one of the most efficient offenses ever.
But it’s Knueppel who unlocks so much of what Duke is capable of, thanks to mastering being a low-maintenance, high-efficiency scoring sniper.
“He’s really secure in who he is,” Scheyer said. “There are times where he takes over games, but his feel and understanding that Cooper’s a special player, he doesn’t get in the way.”
Scheyer told me Knueppel has a flair for knowing when it’s the right moment for him to take the shot. He arrived with it after coming from Milwaukee, where he was Mr. Basketball in Wisconsin last year. Knueppel is, in many ways, the guy who unlocks Duke’s potential. His averages are healthy (14.4 points, 3.9 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 40.1% from 3-point range, 91.2% from the foul line) but his impact extends beyond those stats.
“One of the most important things in basketball is, every game, you want to be at least solid,” Knueppel told CBS Sports. “You’re not going to be amazing, not going to be Superman every night. But just being good, rather than always great, is always something I’ve kind of valued.”
Some nights, he’ll discreetly drop 20 points and sort of blend into the scenery, which is hard to do when you’re the latest Great White Shooter to play at Duke. Consider this scene from Feb. 1: Duke easily beats North Carolina 87-70. Knueppel was the best player in Cameron Indoor that night, pouring in a game-high 22 points along with five rebounds, five assists and a pair of steals. About 90 minutes after the game is over, he walks into a sports bar connected to the local Triple-A ballpark. The place is packed with people watching basketball, glued to John Calipari’s Lexington return. Knueppel is there with his family, they’ve got Duke gear on and they’re seated in the midst of the crowd.
He isn’t bothered one bit.
Two hours before, he killed Carolina.
The lack of attention doesn’t bother Knueppel or his family. They’re a lovable bunch — and are happy this has mostly been a normal college experience — as normal as it could be at Duke.
“The biggest compliment you can say: He had a quiet 20. I love that,” his father, Kon Knueppel Sr., said.
A huge family built around basketball
Knueppel, 19, is the oldest of five boys who are separated by less than six years and have a K-named theme the whole way down. There is also Kager (10th grade), Kinston (ninth), Kash (eighth) and Kidman (seventh). They have all enthusiastically taken to basketball and are growing into pretty good players themselves. Every Knueppel won a major regional basketball tournament in the past three weeks. The family has the rental car receipt, the airline miles and, most importantly, the pieces of nets in their kitchen to prove it.
Kon Sr. and wife Chari will have traveled more than 7,000 miles in a month by the end of this Final Four in order to have watched most of their sons’ basketball games.
All this success isn’t guaranteed, but it is on some level not that surprising. Knueppel Sr. and Chari Nordgaard-Knueppel were both excellent college players themselves. Chari remains the all-time leading scorer at Green Bay (1,964 points) and recently had her number retired. Dad played D-III ball at Wisconsin Lutheran and left as the school’s all-time leading scorer (more than 2,000 points) in addition to being No. 1 in rebounds and steals when he graduated in the ’90s.
“I scored 100 more, but she reminds me: It’s only D-III,” Kon Sr. joked.
Their oldest projects as a one-and-done lottery pick, yet Kon was once a kid who didn’t gravitate toward sports at all.
“I was pretty, pretty, pretty bad,” he said of being on a basketball court at 9, 10 years old. “Early on, my parents were scared, because I didn’t really like it.”
It was only after playing NBA Jam in middle school that he took a liking to hoops. Yes: the guy who is obsessed with being in the gym found his calling thanks to a video game.
The Knueppels live on the western side of Milwaukee. They have a basketball court behind their house, with two 3-point lines that kiss at their apices. Next to the house is an alleyway with a small painted baseball diamond and pickleball court. As you might expect, competition runs fierce — but in a fun way.
“We have five kids, and they’re all different personalities,” Kon Sr. said. “It baffles me every day. Same house, same rules, and they’re all different.”
When the boys were younger, they had an indoor hoop in their living room. Plexiglass was installed to avoid any expensive disasters. Still, there would be blood. Games got so rambunctious that, on two occasions about a year apart, Kager and Kinston needed serious dental work to fix the teeth they had pointing in opposite directions. Why? Their teeth got caught in the low-hanging net. From there on out, the twine was no longer interlaced: Chari had loose strings hanging vertically in order to avoid a third oral incident.
It’s all led to this weekend in San Antonio, where Kon II, as his family calls him, has an opportunity to do something … he really didn’t even dream about as a boy. Initially, that young Green Bay Packers fanatic played quarterback from age nine through his freshman year in high school. Then there was COVID, recruiting got weird, football fell off, and soon thereafter he committed himself to basketball on a full-time basis by the time he was 14. Soon enough, Knueppel was obsessed. As his growth spurt hit, he was taking his workouts as seriously, to a level unmatched by any of his peers in Milwaukee. Before long, he blossomed into one of the best prospects in Wisconsin.
Knueppel popped the summer before his senior year of high school, but the way it happened was unusual.
“I pulled my hamstring right before our first EYBL [tournament], so I had to sit out, and then the next session was the next weekend,” Knueppel said. “I played and was really bad. I couldn’t move.”
He was also wiped out by food poisoning, which led to him missing a couple of games.
“I actually saw them (Duke’s coaches) on the sideline there at some of the games, but I think they stopped coming because I didn’t look very good,” he said in dry, self-deprecating fashion.
They came back, of course. Duke’s coaches got eyes on him at NBA Top 100 camp in the spring of 2023. It wasn’t an ideal setting for him (Knueppel is better when he’s in a game environment on a team with players he knows), but he did more than enough to convince Scheyer. On July 4, 2023, the family was on a pontoon boat on Minnesota’s Otter Tail Lake, visiting the grandparents like every Fourth of July. Knueppel was hoping to get away from being bugged by coaches that weekend.
Then Scheyer called unexpectedly.
“I was elated,” Chari said. “Kon and I almost jumped off the pontoon.”
Knueppel would also consider Alabama, Wisconsin, Marquette and Virginia, but they were all second to Duke from that day on. When he visited, he was so excited to talk to someone about it afterward, he basically spilled the beans to a random stranger on the flight home that he’d be going to Duke. He told that guy before he even told his parents.
It’s been a perfect fit from the start. It all comes back to his drive and adaptability. You can’t overstate how rare it is for a freshman to be able to meet the expectations of being a starter at a blue blood program and not falter all that much behind the scenes. Knueppel has some physical limitations as a player but it’s never impeded his progress or reputation since he committed to the Blue Devils.
“He’s a kid that, practice starts at 6, and he’ll be walking out the door at 5, the gym is like six blocks away and we’re like, ‘Dude, where are you going?'” Kon Sr. said. “‘I gotta go. I gotta get ready. I gotta get locked in.'”
Knueppel never cheats on a drill; he’s wired to push through ever one, and thus this discipline translated to college immediately. In the preseason, NBA scouts came back from Duke raving about his acuity on defense.
“You tell him to do it, he does it,” Carrawell said. “You need to be in the right gap, he’s gonna be in the right gap. I’m not saying he doesn’t make any mistakes, but they’re minimal for a freshman.”
Kon and Cooper: roommates with killer instincts
At 35-3, Duke somehow still feels a tad undervalued — yes, I’m writing this about Duke — even with its absurdly dominant run over the past five months. The obvious reason for this is the juxtaposition of its conference. The ACC is coming off perhaps its worst season ever, sending just four of its 18 teams to the NCAA Tournament, with none of those other than the Blue Devils advancing to the second round.
Duke’s +39.63 efficiency margin is comfortably No. 1 in the sport this season and rates No. 2 in KenPom history dating back to the 1996-97 season. What’s more, Duke’s 130.1 points per 100 possessions (adjusted for competition) heading into Saturday’s national semifinals is tops in the KenPom era, narrowly ahead of 2014-15 Wisconsin (129.0). We’ll see if the Blue Devils can stay level after facing Houston and its No. 1-ranked defense.
Tyrese Proctor may not become a lottery pick, but he’s bloomed perfectly for Duke in March Madness
Chip Patterson
It’s not that Duke is unbeatable (we’ve seen it happen three times this season). It’s that Duke doesn’t rattle. This from a team filled with players who weren’t wearing the same uniform a year ago. That is freakishly uncommon. Knueppel’s disposition seems to be the starting point for that the team’s steady collective hand.
“What makes him so great is both the threat of being able to shoot, and he is an incredible shot-fake guy,” one coach who faced him multiple times this season told CBS Sports. “He can get to the rim and he’s got physicality to him that he can shot-fake on the catch, get you off your feet, drive you, shot-fake again and draw fouls.”
Duke runs what’s known as “delay actions” off the ball, and in those sets, Knueppel is an ever-looming threat to be flared or have a down-screen. He is ever-dangerous because he’s a great shooter, driver and finisher, even though he’s not a big leaper. His next two or three points are always hovering over every possession he’s on the floor. His IQ is high enough where he often makes the right move. Teams have to decide how to try and handle Batman (Flagg), particularly in pick-and-rolls, which creates a lot for space for Robin to fly around.
“In preparing for them, you’re having to pick the lesser of two really, really bad situations,” one coach said.
And because of this, Duke often gets slips for close-range shots — even when Knueppel sometimes isn’t directly involved in those plays. The greatest compliment you can say about Knueppel’s impact: His scoring capabilities are so respected, he can give Duke an extra 10-12 points every night without even touching the ball.
“He’s so smart and can lay in the weeds,” another coach said, adding, “as a freshman, his knowledge of how to play, how to read screens, is elite.”
Knueppel gets his power from his confidence. There’s an innate knowledge that some players have about where to be, where to go, to anticipate and understand the rhythm of a possession as it develops. Flagg has this in spades, but it’s Knueppel’s instincts that click in rhythm with Flagg and give Duke a half-second advantage against most opponents.
“I feel like I know where I need to be all the time,” Knueppel said. “I feel where and when to go with the ball, offensively, where it needs to be passed, something needs to cut, that feel, and then just like a certain knowing of, like, where I need to be, whether it’s defensively or whether it’s rebounding. If I mess up, I can feel it.”
The Blue Devils don’t play with a true lead point guard — it can go from Flagg to Proctor to James to Knueppel on four consecutive possessions — so they can spin their dial to feature whomever they need to feature based on the matchup.
Because of this, Flagg is almost always getting the best defender. That makes Knueppel even more dangerous.
“Why I trust Kon so much: He’s a really good guy, very dependable, he’s always there for me and everybody on our team,” Flagg said. “He’s a very versatile human being.”
“He’s able to constantly attack teams’ second and third-best defender,” one opposing coach told CBS Sports. “He’s best-player good and never draws the other team’s best defender. He’s always in an advantageous situation. They go five-out sets, trust any of the four players other than Maluach to be a decision-maker, and the ball’s going to find the right person. Their selflessness as a team is their point guard. They’re as good a passing team as anyone in America.”
Because Duke loves to matchup-hunt, Scheyer’s team forces you to commit to something and, based on that matchup, thrive on playing against closeouts. Knueppel’s ability to know how to respond with rapid reaction time — anticipating the defense — on closeouts is 99.9 percentile stuff. He’ll induce a sprint close-out, which can lead to a shot-fake, which he then digs into the defense and has the delicate footwork to get off a good look inside eight feet.
“There’s a real Boston-Celtic vibe to them,” one coach said. “They may not ambush you from the 3-point line like Boston, they’re not that analytically driven, but there are times where Tatum (Flagg) and Brown (Knueppel) are the initiator and you have to make a decision defensively based on three or four guys initiating the offense.”
Jon Scheyer was the perfect pick to succeed Coach K and has done the unthinkable: remake Duke in his own image
Matt Norlander
The Celtics reference made by that high-major coach is interesting in this regard: Scheyer is close with Boston GM Brad Stevens and Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla. Duke’s staff watched a lot of Celtics tape last summer, after Boston won the NBA Finals. Though the schemes are not exactly alike, from a philosophy standpoint, Duke is trying to do a lot of what Mazzulla puts out there.
This is only made possible by having guys with the skills of Flagg, Knueppel and Proctor, above all. They have a dynamic that can’t replicated. From the start, Knueppel sensed he knew where he had to be when Flagg had the ball, and vice-versa. But it’s his on-court and off-court chemistry with Flagg that has helped his game — and Flagg’s.
As fate would have it, they’re a perfect match.
“Me and Coop didn’t know each other from Adam before we got here,” Knueppel said. “The way we see the game has always been kind of similar. The first time we got on campus, I was like, yeah, this guy, obviously the connection is there on the court, but he’s just a good, normal dude. Obviously he’s got a billion followers or whatever, and everybody knows him, but he’s just a normal guy off the court, and that’s what I appreciate the most. Like, he doesn’t big-time anybody.”
The two have similar backgrounds. Oldest in an all-boy sibling situation. Ralph and Kelly Flagg have grown to be very close with Chari and Kon Sr.
“We’re all extremely competitive,” Kon Sr. said. “But we also have these values. “We want to stomp on the opponent’s neck in the most Christian way possible. You want to be a fierce competitor but you’ve gotta be a good dude, too.”
Knueppel and Flagg are regarded as the hardest-working guys on the team — or at least their effort matches the output of every other player. That’s not typical for freshmen. And beyond that, they don’t expect things from anyone else they wouldn’t ask of themselves.
“He’s grown into showing emotion when playing,” Kon Sr. said. “That rubbed off from Cooper. He wasn’t like this at all before.”
The two have been roommates since last summer. Cooper’s the messier one, and the night owl. Kon’s an early bird who makes sure Cooper’s clock isn’t 10 minutes behind the rest of the world. The two have the same sense of humor. “The Princess Bride” is a go-to Knueppel movie. Above the toilet in their bathroom is a picture of one of their favorites: Harry from “Dumb and Dumber” battling diarrhea.
“I feel like I definitely have better posters,” Knueppel said of his side of the dorm room. “And I’ve got all five Duke national championship SI covers on my wall.”
He’s also got a mock Larry Bird warmup his dad got him, in addition to 10 pictures/posters of his favorite players: Jordan, Bird, LeBron, Caitlin Clark, Jokic and more. Coop? He’s not exactly an interior decorator.
“He’s only got pictures with, like, his family and stuff,” Knueppel said of Flagg, in that signature dry-wit tone.
When teammates genuinely get along, it increases the chemistry ceiling. This is a coach’s dream, especially among freshmen.
“They’re so similar,” Scheyer said. “Similar with their killer instinct, ruthless competitors and amazing feel for the game. The fact they both take pride in every aspect of the game, not just scoring, it’s defense, it’s rebounding, it’s all of the above.”
Scheyer told me this is the most versatile team he’s ever been a part of, his playing days included, which ended with a national title in 2010. This team needs two more wins (likely the two toughest of its season) in order to finish a historically dominant run and put its season up there with some of the best in college basketball history.
If Duke is going to get there, that storybook ending will likely hinge on what Flagg and Knueppel can manifest for themselves and their teammates against mighty Houston. Watching them up close, there’s a tangible sense they know this is a fleeting, precious moment. This will be, in many ways, the most fun they’ll ever have. Things will never quite be the same after their Final Four run finishes, no matter how it ends.
There’s a superpower in that too. Now we get to find out how they’ll use it against their toughest enemy yet on the biggest stage of their lives.
Read the full article here