I think some people greatly underestimate the purchasing power of each program; dollars are not equivalent. Pete Nakos has reported that Duke spent about 10 million dollars on this year’s roster, while we’ve spent around 14 million. A big reason for the discrepancy in purchasing power is that HD/staff is perceived as being unable to develop talent, while Duke can point to several stars in the NBA that have gone through their program. They can, correctly, promise that you will have as much exposure there than anywhere else, most likely more than anywhere else. You will be in contention for titles. And many more perks. HD can say all of those things, but that wouldn’t be true, and players and (more importantly?) agents know that. All of these things result in us having to pay more for equivalent talent than they do, which means that you end up with us spending more for a less-talented roster. (Don’t get me wrong though, we have a lot of talent on this roster.)
We can talk about the advantages that Scheyer was given and the advantages that HD was given, who had more, and so on, but it’s you can’t argue that Scheyer hasn’t improved his program from where it was when he started, and you can’t argue that HD has improved his program from where it was when he started - Scheyer has been a much better leader of his program than HD has. There’s a big gap between Duke and UNC currently and it looks to continue.
Duke is 60 - 6 in the past two seasons, UNC is 43 - 20. Since Scheyer took over, Duke is 114 - 22, while UNC is 92 - 41.
Here’s a staggering stat, Scheyer has 7 less wins in total than HD (114 to 121), and 13 more quad 1 wins (32 to 19), in a year less of games.
Both schools are investing heavily into their programs, but one is drastically outperforming the other.