In the afterglow of a 20-point win in the Elite Eight, before his players poured blue and white confetti over him, Jon Scheyer shared a moment on the court with his wife, Marcelle, and one of their children, outfitted with noise-canceling headphones.
In just three years, he had done it. Scheyer coached Duke back to the Final Four — the program’s first since some guy named Mike Krzyzewski still patrolled the sidelines.
The overwhelmingly pro-Duke crowd in New Jersey celebrated not only a team with three NBA lottery picks but also a coach who has successfully extended the school’s basketball legacy into the current NIL- and portal-driven era.
Rarely does a succession plan go off as seamlessly as Krzyzewski to Scheyer.
“Look, as I was going through the interview process, I did my homework,” Scheyer said Saturday night after Duke defeated Alabama 85-65. “When you look at successions, very rarely … do people succeed following — Coach K is one of one, but following a legendary or a great coach.”
I recently criticized the practice of legendary coaches hand-picking their successors, but Scheyer is the exception that proves the rule. Here’s the difference: Coach K named him head coach in waiting a full year ahead of time as he embarked on his farewell tour.
Scheyer, a Krzyzewski pupil who was the Blue Devils’ associate head coach for four years, credited that year of preparation and his boss’s “vision” for planning out the future.
“So obviously there’s a responsibility you feel and a pride,” Scheyer said. “But this hasn’t been about outside noise for me because it’s just — I don’t know if you can ever win. So my energy has gone into everybody that’s in our building, our team, what we can control.”
Is Duke’s Cooper Flagg a generational star? Without a doubt. But Flagg shot 6-for-16 on Saturday night, at one point missing eight shots out of nine. He didn’t will a mediocre team forward on his own.
There was vast improvement from returning players like Tyrese Proctor, who scored 17 points, and Caleb Foster, who had five points and three assists in key reserve minutes. Both were part of Duke’s Elite Eight loss to North Carolina State last March.
“We’ve been through so much together, and I don’t think I could put into words the emotions that we had together,” Proctor said of his coach. “Last year obviously the way it ended wasn’t how we wanted. And just having the trust in him and him putting all his trust in me, just being able to lead these guys has been huge.”
The last point is the most obvious: The Blue Devils took an Alabama team that made an NCAA Tournament-record 25 3-pointers in the previous round vs. BYU and neutralized that attack, allowing just 8 of 32. They held Alabama scoreless for 5:16 down the stretch. Such stringent defense — a strength all year long — is reflective of a well-coached team.
There’s just no weakness here. We throw that assessment around a lot in the media, but it’s rarely warranted. To get this dominant, the coaching must be elite, no matter your blue-blood status or how many NBA stars you’ve got.
Scheyer reached a Final Four as a player at Duke. He made it again while on Krzyzewski’s staff. And next week, he’ll be there as a head coach, deserving every minute of it.
