NEWARK—It’s an old coaching adage that you never want to be the guy who follows guy.
Hard as it might be to follow a merely successful coach and keep things rolling, the theory goes, it’s even more of a Sisyphean task to come in after a legend. There are a handful of coaching titans who not only set an impossibly high standard for results but also have conditioned their fan bases to think there is only one way to win and win big.
But coaches are humans, too, and there comes an inevitable point where time forces introspection far quicker than physical limitations, leading to a far more measurable reckoning in a profession that is so often an all-consuming grind. More often than not, as years become decades, it is this contemplation about the end that hastens its arrival.
Naturally that prompts change at the top, and such change can be hard. This is especially true in college athletics where the head coach is a king in a castle who controls so many aspects of the program—from the athletes who are recruited to every single minute of time that each and every staff member spends on campus.
No two schools have understood such a transition recently—and the difficult task of replacing some of the greatest coaches of all time—than the two who met in this year’s East Regional final. Three years ago, the Duke Blue Devils tearfully waved a long goodbye to Mike Krzyzewski after 42 seasons as the men’s basketball coach that included 13 Final Fours and five national titles. Across the bench, albeit in a different sport a year ago, the Alabama Crimson Tide navigated the choppy waters of replacing an institution of equal acclaim in Nick Saban—and wound up seeing the famously football-mad university make its first Final Four in school history under a suddenly veteran coach on campus in Nate Oats.
Yet, for what those successors have accomplished in delighting their fan bases with new memories of success, the prism in which everything came to be viewed was still that of the past. For all that Oats has done to turn the Tide into one of the best basketball programs around, both he and his players acknowledge they’re still chasing their first national title while the football trophy case in Tuscaloosa, Ala., remains stuffed with the handiwork of Saban that puts them in their place.
Blue Devils counterpart Jon Scheyer has been in much the same territory. Burdened with expectations and good teams, he’s fallen short in the month of March twice in trying to measure up with Krzyzewski. A second-round exit to the Tennessee Volunteers in his first season can probably be accepted, given the freshness of an initial trip to the NCAA tournament. A talented team losing a halftime lead to an 11-seed and their local rival, the NC State Wolfpack, in last year’s Elite Eight, less so.
At the Prudential Center on a very late Saturday night, however, Scheyer laid to bed those that would cast aspersions about his place on the bench. He fully cast off any lingering pining for the only head coach most of his fan base had ever known. In the wake of beating Alabama, 85–65, and cutting down the nets to earn Duke’s first trip to the Final Four of the post–Coach K era, Scheyer has fully put his stamp on the Blue Devils.
“As I was going through the interview process, I did my homework. When you look at successions, very rarely do people succeed following, and Coach K is one of one, but following a legendary or a great coach,” said Scheyer of the man who recruited, coached and mentored him before handing him the keys as his designated successor before their shared run on the bench in 2021–22. “I’ll tell you, for me, a huge thing was having that year, though. For Coach K to be able to have the vision—I don’t know how many coaches genuinely want to see the program succeed when they leave. And for me, I’ve always wanted to make him proud. Part of his legacy isn’t just the wins. I want his legacy to be how our program continues to be right there as a top program.”
Duke is indeed back on top, not just of the East Region in the Big Dance but on top of all of college basketball this season. It is the only team ranked in the top five of KenPom’s offensive and defensive efficiency and is on pace to have one of the most dominant campaigns ever by a slew of metrics if it finishes the job the first week of April in San Antonio.
In reaching the Blue Devils’ 18th Final Four in program history, though, they had to do so with Coach K nowhere near Newark.
They had to do it in the present. They had to do it with a 37-year-old barking out offensive rotations and calming his team down with strategic timeouts to keep the Tide at arm’s length in a game they led from wire to wire. They had to cap off one of the most dominant runs in the tournament’s history—scoring 85 points in all four of their wins—with having Scheyer making a different kind of face as he waved a net around to a crowd of staffers and family members that had also seen him do the same as a player, assistant and, now, as the head coach at his alma mater.
“He’s brilliant. He is a brilliant basketball coach, but he’s so steady,” athletic director Nina King says. “It’s obviously his first head coaching job. He’s young. He’s so smart. But to actually be the leader and take command, what he’s done in three-plus years, he’s done it brilliantly.”
Scheyer is set to become the eighth person to both play and coach in the Final Four, but is aiming for history in Texas next week because nobody has won it all in both at his alma mater. He certainly has the team to do it—not just one that has won 31 of their past 32 since Thanksgiving, but the odds-on favorites from the bookmakers to those that were on hand to see them make Alabama look like just another routine ACC opponent taking a bludgeoning despite the primetime stage of the Elite Eight.
Much of that comes down to the presence of Scheyer’s star pupil and the East Region’s Most Outstanding Player, Cooper Flagg.
With Duke alum and NBA commissioner Adam Silver watching on from the stands, the likely No. 1 overall NBA draft pick continued to underscore why this team is so hard to beat. He finished a modest 6-of-16 from the field for 16 points and nine rebounds, but Flagg’s ability to draw opponents’ attention pays dividends for the team Scheyer carefully constructed to bring out the best in him and vice versa.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the guys sitting next to me and the guys in the locker room. All credit to them, the coaches for putting me in really good situations, spots on the court, giving me the ball in the right spots,” Flagg said. “And then just allowing me to play free off the ball, on the ball, whatever it was, just letting me be me.”
It’s not just a matter of Flagg drawing a double team when he gets the ball at the elbow or out on the wing, it’s how seemingly the entire game revolves around him for long stretches—including during a nearly 12-minute stretch against the Tide in which he didn’t make a field goal but kept Duke humming at both ends of the court.
Flagg was more than capable of getting others into the flow, less as a 6' 9" point-forward and more as the hub in an offense that has been moving with incredible precision since his return from a high ankle sprain in the ACC tournament.
His movement against Alabama on Saturday saw him often pull a second defender when he drove the lane, only for fellow freshman center Khaman Maluach to receive an alley-oop to flush down several times on his way to 14 points. Flagg’s ability to help swing things along the perimeter also led to plenty of open looks for Kon Knueppel (game-high 21 points) and Tyrese Proctor (17) as well.
And, of course, there was time for Flagg to take it for himself against an Alabama defense that was often flummoxed at what he was going to do next, including a hook shot in the lane with just under three minutes to play that seemed very much like a dagger.
“[Scheyer] was transparent 100% about what he was looking for and in terms of pieces to build a team around Cooper. And with Cooper, I think he did an expert job,” says Kelly Flagg, Cooper’s mother. “The trust that he has built with his players, they play for him as well. Also the fact that Jon Scheyer has walked this road, he’s been where they are, and so I think that’s a big piece of that. They can rely on what he says, rely on his word, because he’s done it.
“And, you know, he’s a master, he really is.”
The offensive numbers Scheyer orchestrated with Flagg & Co. do draw the casual fan in, but this remains a Duke team that is relentlessly oppressing on the defensive end with length that is pretty much unparalleled in the sport right now.
After the Tide set an NCAA record for three-pointers in the Sweet 16 against the BYU Cougars, Duke held Alabama to just 8-of-32 (25%) from beyond the arc and turned guard Mark Sears into a pumpkin—his first points coming nearly 18 minutes into the game on a 2-of-12 shooting effort.
It would be one thing for a player to have an off night offensively for Alabama after a historic one two days ago, but against the Blue Devils that extended to very nearly every player on the roster as the Tide were held to their second-lowest output of the season.
“Yeah, obviously a tough night for us. Duke obviously had a big part to do with that. They’re a great team. They’ve got great players. Coaching staff did a good job getting them ready,” Oats said. “Duke is as good a team as we’ve seen all year. We’ve got some really good teams in the SEC, and they’re at that level, and it wasn’t meant to be for us tonight.”
That started to become clear as the second half wound down and Scheyer called a timeout with his team looking to build on an 11-point lead with just over six minutes to play. Actor Ken Jeong was shown on the jumbotron at the break and a large cheer was elicited out of the heavily pro-Duke crowd.
After politely waving in acknowledgement, a cardboard cutout of Scheyer suddenly appeared in frame next to Jeong, who turned and didn’t hesitate in plopping down a kiss on the fellow Blue Devil’s 2D likeness to draw even more laughter and applause.
Not only did the team promptly double their lead in conjunction with a nearly five-minute scoring drought from Alabama, but the smooching comedian very well could have summed up the feelings the fan base has for its coach at the moment.
Scheyer didn’t hesitate in following guy at Duke. Perhaps that was because he knew deep down he had plenty of his own players capable of making the past the past and ushering in a new era in Durham, N.C.
As a result, the guy after the guy is now no longer measured by his predecessor’s long shadow and he can finally step into the light of basketball’s brightest stage to stand on his own.