when you bring in (by far) the best players year after year, shouldn’t the expectation be regular championships? duke donors aren’t paying for ACC titles.. the ACC stinks
There are 21 Coach K years with publicly available KenPom rankings (20 tournaments due to COVID). Here's a summary of their final KenPom rankings:
Top 10: 16 (76%)
Top 5: 10 (48%)
Top 3: 8 (38%), last in 2018
Top 2: 5 (24%), last in 2011
#1: 3 (14%), last in 2010
Their final KenPom rankings under Jon Scheyer (four years) look similar if not better:
Top 10: 3 (75%)
Top 5: 2 (50%)
Top 3: 2 (50%)
Top 2: 1 (25%)
#1: 1 (25%)
You could argue that the last couple years under Coach K were also below standard, but that was really just his second-to-last year (affected by COVID). Ignoring that year wouldn't change the percentages much.
But Duke did win two national championships during those Coach K years. A very unreliable AI guess is that they "should" have won ~2.45 during that time based on their pre-tournament odds (or estimated odds using KenPom ratings), so right around what they did.
Another way to look at it: in those Coach K years, they won 1 championship for every 10 years, or 1 for every 5 years they finished top 5, or 1 for every 4 years they finised top 3. Under Scheyer, they haven't yet had enough total years or years in the top 5 or top 3 to say they're necessarily doing worse.
I think this also highlights how surprisingly low the championship odds are even for top tier programs, and how the path to a championship is to get many years with a top 3 final KenPom ranking.