It's easy to look at Jon Scheyer as the right guy in the right place at the right time, the only in-house candidate to take over the Duke program at a time when others have left to go elsewhere and been less than successful.
There may be a little truth to that. It also sells Scheyer, whose role has grown dramatically at Duke the longer he's been back, more than a little short.
Because it has happened behind the scenes, within the hallways of the Duke program, Scheyer's emergence as Mike Krzyzewski's right-hand man hasn't been as visible as it might have been otherwise.
His basketball IQ, as a player and as an assistant coach, has always been readily apparent. But over the past nine years, Scheyer has absorbed more responsibility, developed a louder voice and been responsible for a greater share of Duke's recruiting success.
He's also, as outgoing athletic director Kevin White pointed out, "a contemporary leader" in college athletics, part of a new generation that's going to oversee a period of unprecedented change, not unlike incoming athletic director Nina King. They're leaders who are embracing that change instead of fighting against it like their predecessors.
And Scheyer is someone who, taking the podium for the first time as heir to the throne Friday, innately understands the challenge ahead following an icon at Duke, both from a basketball and cultural perspective.
"I don't expect this to be easy," Scheyer said. "I don't expect to be given anything. We do not expect to be given anything. But I'm always going to show up and do what it takes to succeed at the highest level here, and the standard that's been set at Duke."
Two-time national champion at Duke
Scheyer knows Duke as well as anyone, and he knows how to win there as well as anyone who isn't Krzyzewski: Scheyer won national titles at Duke as a player and as an assistant coach.
There's an advantage being the next guy without actually having to go somewhere else and prove it, as Jeff Capel did with some success at Oklahoma and less success at Pittsburgh, as Steve Wojciechowski tried to do at Marquette, as Chris Collins is still trying to do at Northwestern, as Johnny Dawkins and Tommy Amaker couldn't do at multiple spots, Amaker's run at Harvard notwithstanding.
Scheyer, who will likely be the youngest head coach of any major-conference team when he takes over in 2022, has the advantage, and disadvantage, of never leaving the nest.
"You think Scheyer's young? He's 33," Krzyzewski said Thursday. "I was 28. Although, more handsome at that time in my life."
Krzyzewski was younger, yes, but also had five years of head-coaching experience at Army — not an insignificant program at the time in the wild, wild east of New York-area basketball independents — and took over a program that had tradition and pedigree, but where the bar was set around .500, not winning a national title. Success and failure at Duke is binary: Either you win it all, or you don't.
'I'm not afraid of it'
It's a much more difficult job in so many ways than the one Krzyzewski assumed in 1980, in terms of the unparalleled expectations, the target on Duke's back and the lack of any safety net. There's so much more to lose. What Duke basketball is now took years to build, but in a worst-case scenario it could crumble almost overnight. It almost did once.
But in other ways, it may even be easier: Scheyer is the continuity candidate for a national brand, a key cog in Duke's recruiting apparatus, someone who understands intrinsically both the personality and practice of what has made Duke basketball Duke basketball. Whatever pillars will remain, Scheyer knows how to build upon them.
"I know my history," Scheyer said. "I've been told many times in the past 48 hours you're not supposed to be the guy that follows the guy. You want to be the guy who follows the guy who follows the guy. That said, I'm not afraid of it."
Then, moments later: "I think it's built for success."
