Had Michigan star Yaxel Lendeborg just seen a ghost?

His Wolverines — then the No. 1 team in the country — were used to overwhelming opponents on the glass and in the paint. Instead, they had just been outrebounded and outscored by Cameron Boozer and the No. 3 Duke Blue Devils, and Lendeborg couldn’t find the words to describe the superstar freshman.

“Um … man … um,” Lendeborg hedged when asked about Boozer’s play after the Feb. 21 game, shaking his head and trailing off.

Boozer has had that mystifying effect on every opponent he has faced when the stakes are high.

Clutch performances throughout the 2025-26 campaign have made him the clear favorite for national player of the year honors in a season that features arguably the most talented freshman class of the one-and-done era, not to mention multiple returning All-Americans. The gap between the 18-year-old and the country’s other elite players was widened in the win over Michigan, thanks to his game-altering 3-pointer and the draw of a key goaltending call in the final minutes.

Lendeborg was not the first star Boozer humbled this season. He had 24 points and 23 rebounds against Tennessee’s Nate Ament in a preseason win. Projected NBA draft lottery picks Darius Acuff Jr. and Thomas Haugh could only watch in awe as Boozer scored 64 points combined in wins over Arkansas and Florida, respectively. Boozer also bulldozed Jeremy Fears Jr. and Michigan State to the tune of 18 points and 15 rebounds. Meanwhile, the ACC is still trying to catch its breath from Boozer’s spectacular efforts throughout conference play, with rival North Carolina up next in Saturday’s regular-season finale (6:30 p.m. on ESPN) — a game that could seal Duke’s bid for the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament.

“We’ve been in a lot of big-time games, a lot of close games, against a lot of highly ranked teams or talked-about teams,” Boozer said about himself and his brother Cayden, also a five-star freshman for the Blue Devils. “So I feel like just being in a lot of those moments prepares you for this.”

Those who have watched the rise of Boozer — son of Carlos Boozer, a former NBA All-Star who won a title with Duke in 2001 — would agree. There is a common thread that ties his basketball career together, from middle school to present day: He’s a defensive dilemma not only because of his size, relentless motor, intellect and a skill set that has made a him a projected top-three pick in the 2026 NBA draft, but also because of the way the game seems to slow down for him in the highest-pressure moments.

Boozer won four state titles with Columbus High School at Florida’s highest level of prep basketball. He led the Explorers to a national title in 2025. His AAU team, the Nightrydas, won three consecutive Nike EYBL crowns. He was co-MVP of last year’s McDonald’s All American game. He won Gatorade Player of the Year twice, plus two gold medals with USA Basketball. That level of dominance means the same question opponents have always asked about Boozer will take center stage in March: How do you stop him?

Kansas’ Darryn Peterson might have the highest NBA ceiling in this freshman class. And BYU’s AJ Dybantsa is its most entertaining and explosive talent. But Boozer is, well, the winningest.

Every time championships have been on the line in his career, Boozer has won. And in the clutch moments of crucial games, he has delivered.

“It’s his greatest tool. It’s his greatest asset,” Miami head coach Jai Lucas, a former Duke assistant who recruited Boozer, said. “It’s like he’s been there before, and he’s been that way since he was in seventh, eighth grade. He’s always played with an older vibe, a veteran vibe about him.

“No moment, no situation is too big for him.”

Andrew Moran’s phone buzzed the night before a regional matchup in the 2022 Florida state playoffs.

As the Columbus High School coach was preparing his squad to face its next opponent, Boozer — a team captain as just a 14-year-old freshman — had watched the film and written a scouting report. He noted the hand signals the opposing coach had used for each set.

“It had descriptions of their plays and it had the time stamps in which it happened during the game. And at first I was confused,” said Moran, who is now an assistant at Miami. “I looked at it and I was like, ‘What the hell is he sending me?’ And then I realized, ‘Oh man, this guy is sending me detailed stuff.’ So for me, I was like, ‘This is another level of preparation at this age.'”

Boozer fell in love with the game early.

There is video of a seventh-grade Boozer blocking shots into the parents section of former NBA All-Star Chris Paul’s middle school combine in 2019, dribbling behind his back and throwing full-court passes. He already had a bag of skills players his age clearly couldn’t match.

“That’s a throwback. I think I had yellow hair back then,” Boozer said, referencing the gold hairstyle he sported at the time.

When the pandemic closed schools and gyms around the country, Boozer and his buddies played pickup games every day, sometimes in the rain, often on the full court at his house. That’s when his friends noticed a shift.

Dante Allen was Boozer’s AAU teammate then. He asked his father, Malik Allen, an assistant coach for the Miami Heat, to put their pickup crew through drills before playing 5-on-5. It was already evident Boozer had the tools to be a great player, but the drills showcased how his intensity was growing.

“I think that’s definitely when he started to get a lot better as a basketball player,” Dante Allen said. “I’d say every drill, he was very intentional with it. There was no point where he was going anything less than a 100% speed with it, just trying to be the best that he can. And then once we started playing pickup, it was just carrying over everything that we’d been doing, all the lessons he’d learned.”

During his freshman year at Columbus High School, Boozer’s combination of brains and brawn thrust his team into the state championship game against Dr. Phillips High School’s roster of now-Division I players Denzel Aberdeen (Kentucky), Ernest Udeh Jr. (Miami) and Riley Kugel (UCF). Boozer scored a team-high 17 points to help Columbus High capture its first state title.

“It was the biggest matchup that we had at that point, and he was just really poised and got us to the win,” Cayden Boozer said.

The victories piled up from there as Cameron’s game evolved.

Coach Mark Griseck figured his Windermere High School team would have its hands full against Boozer and a Columbus team seeking its fourth consecutive state title last year. Early in the game, he said, Boozer set the tone.

“The first time my point guard got hit with a ball screen from Boozer, he goes, ‘Man, it took me about three or four trips back down the court to get my senses back,'” said Griseck, whose team lost 68-36. “Because Boozer set a screen on him and it almost knocked him out. And it wasn’t illegal. It was just a screen by a tree.”

The opposing players in that lopsided affair noticed not only Boozer’s skills and dominance, but also the way he orchestrated the action on the court.

“He was anchoring his offense and not only anchoring it but calling out the plays,” said TJ Drain, a Windermere alum who now plays at Liberty. “He was very vocal with his teammates in encouragement, and that really stood out to me. Whether it was a good pass or a great cut or he’d say, ‘I know you’re going to finish the next one.'”

Boozer’s family background gave him a head start in basketball. His determination did the rest. To those who have witnessed his development, his success at Duke isn’t surprising. They saw the seeds of what he blossomed into a long time ago.

“He’s getting wherever he wants to,” Allen said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a 7-foot, 300-pound player in front of him or if it’s a pesky guard in front of him, Cam is going to get wherever he wants, regardless. And I think the really hard part about that is that he can get wherever he wants to and then the fact that he’s going to make the right play.”

Exactly 32 hours before Notre Dame was set to tip off against Duke, Fighting Irish head coach Micah Shrewsberry was concerned about how his team would handle Boozer.

Those worries were justified. Notre Dame scored only 22 points in the first half. Boozer had 20 on his own. The Blue Devils went on to win 100-56.

“I’m pretty sure he and his brother were probably dominating when they were 8-year-olds, all the way through,” said Shrewsberry, who left the game in a walking boot after suffering an Achilles injury while he coached his team. “He plays as hard as anybody out there. There is no arrogance to him. It looks like winning’s really important to him, and he’s going to do whatever it takes to win.”

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Cameron Boozer tallies a double-double in Duke’s win

Cameron Boozer scores 24 points and grabs 13 rebounds in Duke’s rout over Notre Dame.

Howard head coach Kenny Blakeney knows what it takes to win, too. He was on the Duke team that won its second straight national title in 1992. Having played with Christian Laettner, Grant Hill and Bobby Hurley, Blakeney also knows talent. And he realized Boozer is a lot more than that when his Bison played the Blue Devils in November, saying the “ginormous” Boozer plays like a “baby Jokic” — comparing him to three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic.

“If you watch the Duke game against us, Duke was closing out the game, running ball screens for a 6-foot-9, 250-pound dude to get downhill and make decisions,” Blakeney said. “He shoots it well. He’s an incredible passer. He can do whatever he wants to do on the low block.

“It’s like the criticism from what I hear is that he’s not bouncy enough. Well, you can’t stop the stuff that he can do, so he doesn’t need to be.”

It was only this time last year that Cooper Flagg was authoring one of the greatest freshman campaigns in the one-and-done era. And Boozer is arguably outplaying him.

Boozer is averaging more points (22.6 vs. 19.2) and rebounds (10.0 vs. 7.5) than Flagg, and nearly as many assists (4.0 vs. 4.2). Boozer is also a better 3-point shooter and is playing more minutes. His current 135.3 offensive rating would set a record in the KenPom era (since 2003-04) if it holds. And he has led Duke to its best start (28-2) since 1998-99, when that squad started 29-1 (and won 32 games in a row).

Boozer has an opportunity to end his career as one of the greatest freshmen of all time — not just at Duke. According to data scientist Evan Miya, Boozer is having the best season in college basketball since at least 2009-10, surpassing Zach Edey’s second consecutive Wooden Award season in 2023-24 (25.2 PPG, 12.2 RPG, 2.0 BPG).

“I just think he’s wired for it. He lives it,” Duke head coach Jon Scheyer said. “He’s incredibly prepared going into the games of understanding the different coverages he can see. I mean, we’ve seen so many different defenses, whether it’s doubles or single coverage or heavy plugs, whatever it is. I credit his preparation. I credit the fact that he just lives it every single day.”

At the next level, Boozer will compete against players who might have traits he lacks. He’s not an above-the-rim threat or walking “SportsCenter” highlight like Dybantsa and Peterson, who are projected to go ahead of him in the NBA draft. But Boozer is a complete player with a knack for navigating adversity to win games.

“One of his biggest intangibles is a winning pedigree. Championships, MVPs, gold medals, he’s won at every stop, at a high level, and is a primary contributor on a team that is in position to win it all in April,” one NBA executive told ESPN. “He seems to be about all the right things.

“His actions indicate that he cares about winning, playing the game the right way, handling his business with maturity and professionalism.”

On Saturday, Boozer will lead Duke into its regular-season finale against North Carolina, the ACC outright title already in hand. After that, the Blue Devils will ask him to do what he has done throughout his career: lead them to a championship — their first since 2015.

Accepting that responsibility is all Boozer knows. He always has done his best work when the stakes are highest.

“There is a lot that comes with being at Duke, but you wouldn’t come to Duke if you were afraid of that or didn’t want to be a part of that,” Boozer said. “It’s the biggest brand in college basketball. There is always a spotlight, always a target on your back, so you come to Duke to play in these moments — to be in these moments.”