Duke basketball: Answer to program’s looming question is already there

The Perfect Moment

Yes, Jon Scheyer has never been a head coach at any level of basketball. Yes, Duke basketball is the pinnacle of jobs a head coach could possibly attain with a level of pressure almost unrivaled in college hoops. Yes, the footsteps he would follow in are almost too big to ever fill.

But would Scheyer be an exciting, home run hire for a Duke basketball program that would be wise to swing for the fences instead of playing it safe? Hell yes, and Duke basketball and Mike Krzyzewski have the ability to pull it off.

While not exactly a clean parallel with when Coach K took over the Duke basketball program in March of 1980 after five seasons at Army, Scheyer would assume control with some similarities.

Coach K took over at 33, and though he was a head coach for five years, the rigors of Army basketball in the mid-1970s was a far cry from the Duke basketball program he was taking over. The Blue Devils had already made four Final Four appearances and played in two NCAA Championship Games, and as recently as two years before he was hired. In 1974, the program became only the eighth to win 1,000 games.

Coach K obviously took Duke basketball to incredible heights and unmatched success, but he wasn’t taking over an also-ran. He too was considered an inexperienced, young nobody to have to compete with Dean Smith and Lefty Driesell with some dominant ACC teams who were in contention for national titles year after year. He also had a lot of detractors those first few seasons when success wasn’t immediately forthcoming.

Jon Scheyer is only 32, from the Chicago area if geographical superstitions are your thing, and has already been on the Duke staff as a special assistant since 2013 while being promoted to full assistant coach a year later. He now sits as the associate head coach, and titles are important and meaningful to a former West Point grad.

Plus, Jon Scheyer has learned from one of the best basketball coaches ever, as a player and on staff, much like Coach K had from Bobby Knight.

Coach K has already stated that he wants someone who understands the culture that is Duke basketball, and it seems an impossibility that he won’t have a major say in naming his successor, if not handpicking them outright. That practically eliminates every non-Duke basketball person despite the hopes of some that Brad Stevens could be lured from the Boston Celtics back to college hoops.

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Coach K and Duke basketball have reached that level where they can afford to be bold and take a chance. Experience does have its benefits, but many of the former players/assistants who have gone on to become head coaches were hired for their commitment and loyalty to the vision they have to make their own programs great. I’m sure all would say they still have work that needs to be done, even though all have been successful in turning their respective programs around and headed toward better things.

Coach K’s support and confidence in his successor could be invaluable if things took a few years to get going, although the expectation is that they would not of course. Even if things did not go as planned and the job proved to be too big, too soon, the moment would be even better for an experienced former assistant to come in and “rescue” Duke basketball, to foreshadow the doom that would come.

It would also give them a few more years to distinguish themselves and the programs they are trying to build while letting Duke contemplate the decision with more time and less emotion from Mike Krzyzewski’s retirement…