### BREAKING: Vernon Carey Jr. is Coming Home — Former Five-Star and National Champion Returns to Duke as Graduate Transfer
**By Brendan Marks, The Athletic | November 26, 2025 – 9:11 p.m. ET**
DURHAM — The ghosts of Cameron Indoor Stadium just got a lot louder.
Vernon Carey Jr., the 6-foot-10, 270-pound McDonald’s All-American who led Duke to the 2019 ACC title as a freshman and was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, has committed to Jon Scheyer’s Blue Devils as a graduate transfer for the 2026–27 season, multiple sources confirmed to The Athletic moments ago.
Carey, who has spent the last five seasons bouncing between the Charlotte Hornets, Washington Wizards, Utah Jazz and most recently the G League’s G-League affiliate in Salt Lake City, will finish his finance degree at Duke this spring and enroll in a one-year master’s program beginning June 2026. He will have one season of college eligibility remaining.
The news, first reported by ESPN’s Shams Charania with the simple line “Former Duke All-American Vernon Carey Jr. has committed to Duke, sources say,” detonated Cameron Twitter like a Zion Williamson windmill.
Carey posted a throwback photo on Instagram at 9:17 p.m.: him cutting down the nets after the 2019 ACC Tournament next to a current photo of him in a Duke warm-up shirt that simply read “unfinished business.” Caption: “One more ride. 🔵😈 #Brotherhood”
For a Duke program that just lost Khaman Maluach and Isaiah Evans to the 2026 NBA Draft and watched its 2025–26 frontcourt depth get exposed in last week’s 81–73 loss to Kansas, Carey’s return is nothing short of a miracle.
Sources tell The Athletic the conversation began innocently enough last summer. Carey, struggling to stick on an NBA roster despite averaging 19.8 points and 11.4 rebounds in the G-League last season, called his old position coach, Chris Carrawell, just to catch up. Carrawell half-jokingly asked, “You ever think about coming back and getting that degree?” Carey laughed. Then he didn’t laugh.
By September, Carey was enrolled in online classes through Duke’s continuing studies program. By October, Scheyer, Carrawell and assistant Jai Lucas were flying to Salt Lake City to watch him drop 31 and 18 on the Santa Cruz Warriors. By November, Carey was on campus for the Countdown to Craziness midnight madness event — sitting quietly in section 17 with a hoodie pulled low so students wouldn’t notice.
The decision crystallized last weekend. After Duke’s frontcourt was manhandled by Bill Self’s Jayhawks — Maluach in foul trouble, backup center Sean Stewart overwhelmed — Scheyer called Carey at 2 a.m. Sunday morning.
“He said, ‘Vern, I need you. Not as a favor. Because you’re still a f—— monster,’” Carey recounted to The Athletic on Wednesday night. “I told him I’m 25, not 35. I can still play at this level for one year and then go chase the NBA dream again with a Duke degree in my other hand. It felt right.”
The numbers back it up. Carey is still an elite physical specimen: 270 pounds with under 10% body fat, a 7-foot-3 wingspan, and a vertical that still touches 38 inches. In 42 G-League games last season he shot 59.2% from the floor, 39.1% on low-volume threes (he never shot threes at Duke), and blocked 2.1 shots per game. Multiple NBA scouts who watched him told The Athletic he would have been a first-round pick again in 2025 if he had returned last year.
At Duke he immediately becomes the most physically dominant big man to wear the uniform since Zion Williamson. Picture prime Zion’s frame with Marvin Bagley III’s touch around the rim and a veteran IQ honed by five years of professional coaching. He will start at the five, push Maluach’s replacement (currently projected top-10 pick Patrick Ngongba II) to the four, and give Duke the first true back-to-the-basket scoring threat it has lacked since Carey himself left in 2020.
Scheyer, in a statement released by the program, could barely contain himself:
“Vernon Carey Jr. is Duke basketball. Full stop. To have a national champion, a former All-American, and one of the best to ever do it in this building choose to come back and finish what he started — there’s no greater endorsement of what we’re building.”
The ripple effects are immediate:
– Duke’s 2026–27 roster — already featuring Cooper Flagg (if he returns for sophomore year), Kon Knueppel, Mikey Lewis, and Ngongba — jumps from consensus top-3 to “death lineup” status.
– Cameron Indoor Stadium season-ticket renewals, which were pacing at 94% last month, are expected to hit 100% by sunrise.
– One ACC coach, anonymously: “We’re all f—. That’s a grown man who’s been getting paid to bully people for five years walking into college again. Good luck.”
Carey will wear No. 1 — the same number he wore during his freshman season when he averaged 17.8 points, 8.8 rebounds and 1.6 blocks and was named ACC Freshman of the Year, ACC Tournament MVP, and a consensus second-team All-American.
He told The Athletic his goals are simple: “Graduate in May. Win a national championship in April. Hear Cameron chant my name one more time like it’s 2019.”
As the clock struck 10 p.m., the Duke Basketball X account posted a 15-second hype video: slow-motion clips of teenage Vernon dunking on Virginia, cutting nets in Greensboro, and hugging Coach K — intercut with new footage of 25-year-old Vernon throwing down windmills in an empty Cameron last week. The caption: “He never really left.”
Welcome home, Big Vern.
The Brotherhood just got a lot bigger.
*Word count: 1,008*
*Sources: Carey family, Duke coaching staff, NBA scouts, G-League personnel*
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