Jon Scheyer soaks up first Final Four as Duke's head coach: 'It's the best'
SAN ANTONIO (WTVD) -- ABC11 is on the road with the Duke Blue Devils in San Antonio for the 2025 Final Four.
It's the basketball program's 18th appearance in the semifinal round of the NCAA tournament.
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On Thursday, the camera sneaked up behind Jon Scheyer as he started the long walk into the Alamodome's cavernous center, a route that crossed a sea of black carpet and eventually required stairs onto college basketball's grand stage.
"It's the best," the Duke coach said as he looked back over his left shoulder, pointing with the manila folder carrying his practice plans toward the Final Four court.
Scheyer knows a thing or two about this moment. He was the senior scoring leader for a Duke title-winner that made a similar walk in 2010. An assistant who did it twice under Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski. But this week is a first: Now he's the head coach, the successor who keeps bucking a long-held axiom that you never want to be the guy who follows a legend.
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No, Duke is still thriving. Only now, it's unquestionably the 37-year-old Scheyer's blueblood program.
"It's special," Scheyer said Thursday. "You feel a great deal of responsibility to be the head coach at Duke. You want for your players to be able to experience this."
Duke's New Era
In many ways, it feels decidedly unremarkable that Duke (35-3) is back in the Final Four. It's a place the program has been 18 times to rank among the sport's all-time leaders, as well as being one of only six programs - UCLA, Kentucky, UConn, Indiana, and rival North Carolina are the others - with at least five NCAA championships.
And yet, so much has changed since Duke's run to its last national title in 2015 or its most recent Final Four three years ago. Krzyzewski is gone; retired in 2022 after winning 1,202 games to set a men's college basketball record, along with winning five titles and reaching 13 Final Fours.
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And Scheyer has won big and quickly, including becoming the first coach to win two Atlantic Coast Conference championships in his first three seasons and reaching last year's NCAA Elite Eight. Now he's got the Blue Devils back in the national semifinals, with a date against Houston looming Saturday in an all-chalk finale to March Madness with four 1-seeds.
"I'll tell you how good Jon Scheyer has been," Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. "Nobody talks about him replacing Coach K anymore. He's Jon Scheyer. He's got his team in the Final Four. I think that speaks volumes for him."
The Handoff
Scheyer was an assistant in those last two Final Four trips, for the 2015 title and the 2022 trek to New Orleans as the coach-in-waiting - a designation coming months before Krzyzewski began his farewell-tour season. That run ended with a loss to North Carolina in the semifinals, the final horn in the Superdome completing Krzyzewski's handoff to Scheyer.
And it's worked.
"He's executing the succession just absolutely perfectly," athletic director Nina King said, backed by the evidence under her feet: a confetti-covered court after Duke won the ACC Tournament last month.
Associate head coach Chris Carrawell believed in Scheyer, too, partly the product of working alongside him under Krzyzewski. But he also pointed back to the COVID-19 pandemic, when the two lived close to one another and would meet for lengthy walks.
"Some guys just have it," Carrawell said after that ACC title win.
His mentor has also credited Scheyer for his approach, namely in avoiding getting caught up in living up to his predecessor.
"He's an outstanding coach and is his own man," Krzyzewski said on this week's episode of "Basketball & Beyond With Coach K," his SiriusXM show. "He's not trying to be anybody, but he is trying to be Duke."
Direct Approach
There is at least one thing that hasn't changed under Scheyer: The Blue Devils still haul in top-level talent.
The succession plan offered clarity about the program's future for recruiting, where Scheyer was key in stacking elite classes as an assistant and continued Duke's record of churning out NBA players - particularly with one-and-done talents - during his tenure.
Going back to the 2022 class that would arrive in time for Scheyer's first season, Duke ranked No. 1, No. 2 and No. 1 nationally for recruiting by 24/7Sports during the past three seasons - the last being the one that brought Associated Press unanimous first-team All-American Cooper Flagg, Kon Knueppel and rim-running big man Khaman Maluach.
Duke has already secured the No. 1 freshman class for next year, too, headlined by twins Cameron and Cayden Boozer.
Kelly Flagg, Cooper's mother, told The Associated Press she had wanted her son to play for someone who coached him hard, pushed him, and didn't try to appease. She wasn't sure whether Scheyer had that edge early in the recruiting process. She has no doubts now.
One example stands out: a first-half timeout during a January home game against NC State, with Scheyer jumping on his players - and telling Cooper repeatedly that he was playing soft - during an animated timeout with Kelly Flagg watching from a few rows back.
"I couldn't look away because I was just enjoying it so much," she told the AP. "But that's what I wanted. I wanted him to go play for a coach who would always tell the truth, good or bad. I wanted him to play for somebody who was going to be honest with him and push him and get him to the next level.
"I think Jon has done a masterful job of that. Jon has never lied to us."
Scheyer's tough love worked, sparking her son to a huge second-half performance in that comeback win. The coach's approach has also worked with the older recruits looking for a new home through the transfer portal.
"There was just kind of a steadiness about him the whole time," fifth-year graduate transfer Sion James said, and he added: "He was never really trying to sell anything, which was nice."
Program Updates
There's still plenty that's familiar with Duke's program, notably its tradition-rich home arena, Cameron Indoor Stadium, and the rowdy "Cameron Crazies" known for their antics inside it.
Yet, Scheyer has been installing his own touches. Some of that is by necessity, namely because of a changed landscape with players able to move freely through the transfer portal and profit from name, image, and likeness deals.
Others have been by choice, such as the "Kid Captain" program he and wife Marcelle started to honor current and former patients of the Duke Children's Hospital with a gameday Cameron experience.
Scheyer leans into all of it. This is home, both Duke and its place at the Final Four.
"Walking out there today for practice, I was just soaking it in like when I was 22 years old walking out for the first time," Scheyer said. "The Final Four is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. ... It's something I'll never take for granted."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
