Kon Knueppel, Cooper Flaggs Duke teammate, could be NBA draft option for Nets

While the Nets tipped off Saturday night in Houston, the basketball world was looking elsewhere — at Tobacco Road, for Duke vs.North Carolina.They were watching the sport’s juiciest rivalry, a game that could produce five first-round picks — and the player most often mocked for the possibility that he will end up in Brooklyn.Though Duke superfrosh Cooper Flagg is the top projected pick — the prospect for which a third of the NBA is tanking — his classmate Kon Knueppel spent much of the past month being linked to the Nets by Tankathon.And if Brooklyn ends up outside the top 6, it’s easy to see why.

Knueppel is a crafty wing who came into Saturday’s game averaging 13.1 points and shooting 37.3 percent from deep.He scored a game-high 22 points and had five rebounds and five assists in Duke’s 87-70 blowout win over rival North Carolina.His teammate Flagg chipped in with 21 in the win.“Yeah, for me, it’s his poise,” Nets wing and ex-Duke star Dariq Whitehead told The Post.

“It’s the way he’s been playing that pick-and-roll.He’s been mixing it up with a lot of guys, just showing how poised he is.“[His] shot wasn’t going early for him.

He continued to stick with it.Started to make better reads offensively and defensively as well.

He fought through the slump.It’s a freshman slump.

Everybody has it.He fought through it, and that was my biggest kudos to him, just being able to fight through that freshman slump and get on the right page.”In that aforementioned malaise — bottoming out with a six-point outing vs.

George Mason, 0-for-4 from deep — Knueppel shot just 40.4 percent and 23.3 from deep.But since then, he’d averaged 14.4 points on 48.1 percent and 44.4 from 3.“It was definitely the worst slump of my life.

It was a rough couple of games,” Knueppel said.“[I started] trying to be more intentional with holding my follow-through.

… It’s more about the mind than anything else.”Knueppel actually leads Duke in on-...