Five months ago, with COVID-19 protocols dictating that Mike Krzyzewski quarantine in one part of his Durham home while his wife did the same in another area of the house, Jon Scheyer took a test drive as Duke’s head basketball coach.
That 83-82 win over Boston College on Jan. 6 at Cameron Indoor Stadium wasn’t always pretty but Scheyer got the Blue Devils to the finish as winners.
“I’d be lying if I said this did not mean a lot to me,” Scheyer said that night.
Now, the 33-year-old Scheyer is preparing to handle the job full time.
With Krzyzewski planning to retire after 42 seasons as Duke’s head men’s basketball coach following next season, Scheyer will be the coach-in-waiting before taking over the program as its next head coach in 2022, Duke announced on Wednesday.
“Duke University has been a central part of my life for more than a decade, and I could not ask for a better place to continue my career,” Scheyer said in a statement. “This is absolutely humbling. First, I offer extreme gratitude to the greatest coach of all time whose career is unrivaled in basketball. Coach K has built the premier program in our sport thanks to his unwavering competitive edge, a tireless attention to detail, a family-first approach and a remarkable compassion and care of his players, coaches, and staff.”
An Illinois prep basketball phenom before helping Duke win the 2010 NCAA championship as a player, Scheyer has played or worked for Krzyzewski most of the last 15 years -- nearly half his life.
He’s the pick to replace college basketball’s all-time leader in career wins, a man who since 1980 has turned Duke from a program with mild national success into one of the sport’s name brands.
“Mike Krzyzewski is simply impossible to replace,” outgoing athletic director Kevin White said in a statement. “That said, Jon Scheyer is without a doubt the absolute perfect leader to assume this ‘high wire’ challenge.”
LOTS OF FORMER BLUE DEVILS ASSISTANTS NOW HEAD COACHES
Scheyer and Krzyzewski share Chicago roots, with Krzyzewski a product of the inner city and Scheyer from suburban Northbrook, Illinois. Both left there to grow into men, start families and make their careers, with Krzyzewski playing and coaching at Army and Scheyer doing the same at Duke.
Scheyer, on Krzyzewski’s Duke staff since 2013, will become just the latest of Krzyzewski’s former assistants to become head coaches. Currently, former Duke assistants Tommy Amaker (Harvard), Chris Collins (Northwestern), Bobby Hurley (Arizona State), Johnny Dawkins (Central Florida), Jeff Capel (Pittsburgh), Mike Brey (Notre Dame) and Nate James (Austin Peay) are Division I head coaches.
As Krzyzewski aged into his 60s and 70s, names from his coaching tree were bandied about as his possible successors at Duke. Former Blue Devils assistant and player Steve Wojciechowski was also in that mix until he was fired as Marquette’s head coach last March following seven seasons.
Former Duke player and assistant coach Quin Snyder is currently in his seventh season coaching the Utah Jazz in the NBA. Speaking of the NBA, speculation was always rampant that former Butler coach Brad Stevens, who left that school in 2013 to become the Boston Celtics head coach, could be lured back to college coaching at Duke.
Even though Stevens resigned as Celtics head coach on Wednesday to become the team’s president of basketball operations, he’s not a serious candidate to replace Krzyzewski.
Scheyer, though, became the choice of Duke president Vince Price, White and Krzyzewski, allowing for this summer’s transition from the retiring White to his replacement, Nina King, to go smoothly. It also keeps Duke from having to endure what would have been one of college basketball’s most intense coaching searches.
“Jon Scheyer is, without a doubt, a rising star in the men’s basketball coaching world,” King said in a statement. “He is well prepared not only to assume his new position relative to coaching Duke Men’s Basketball on the court, but to lead this program into the future especially given the shifting landscape of college athletics.”
HE’S COACHED PLAYERS LIKE GRAYSON ALLEN, TYUS JONES, LUKE KENNARD
Scheyer’s only been a college head coach for one game, the one when Krzyzewski and his wife, Mickie, were quarantined after being exposed to COVID-19 during the holidays.
But, as an assistant, he was part of Duke’s 2015 NCAA championship team as well as the Duke teams that won ACC championships in 2017 and 2019.
Focusing mainly on Duke’s guards, he coached a host of Blue Devils who are now in the NBA, including Tyus Jones, Frank Jackson, Luke Kennard, Grayson Allen and Tre Jones.
Last August, Scheyer was selected to coach the U.S. team at the 2022 Maccabiah Games in Israel.
Now he’ll be taking on an even more important role next year -- replacing Krzyzewski on Duke’s bench full time.
