CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Days before Duke ascended a makeshift dais inside the Spectrum Center, having toppled Louisville 73-62 to win its second ACC Tournament title in three seasons, Blue Devils associate head coach Chris Carrawell phoned his boss.
It just so happens to be one of his best friends: Jon Scheyer.
Scheyer and Carrawell have been buddies since the latter joined Mike Krzyzewski’s staff in 2018, the two assistants bonding during the twilight of Coach K’s tenure. Ironically, it wasn’t until the pandemic, when separation became standard, that the two truly grew close.
“Before he moved into his big house, we stayed around the corner from each other, and during COVID, we would take walks together,” Carrawell said. “I thought, ‘This dude, he’s going to be a really good coach.’ … He’s just got the goods, man. You just know. Some guys just have it.”
Which is why months later, when Krzyzewski gathered his assistants in the conference room adjacent to his office and told them he intended to retire after the 2021-22 season, Carrawell was the first person to speak up and lobby for Scheyer: “I believe our next coach is in this room.”
On Saturday, inside a locker room still dripping wet from the Blue Devils’ celebration, Carrawell was asked why he had such strong conviction at the time and if what has transpired in the four years since then matches what he thought Scheyer was capable of.
“When I stated what I stated, I felt like he could do it. But to go out there and do it? You can feel like somebody can do it, then now you get in that seat, and you’re replacing the coach of all coaches …” Carrawell said, his voice trailing off. “You can never replace Coach K, but he’s done a heck of a job.”
Which is exactly what Carrawell relayed to Scheyer on the phone earlier this week: “I knew you’d be good, but I didn’t know you’d be this f—ing good.”
Throughout this ACC season — arguably the worst of the millennium, with only three teams guaranteed to make the NCAA Tournament, which would be the conference’s fewest since 1999 — the recent coaching brain drain has been relitigated ad nauseam. The departures of Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim, Tony Bennett and so on. The conference’s slippage isn’t solely because of the coaching turnover, but it would be foolish to suggest it hasn’t played a major role. This is the first ACC season since 1980-81 in which the league doesn’t have an active national championship-winning coach.
That’s what makes Scheyer’s accomplishments so noteworthy in leading Duke to a 31-3 record and likely a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament while sweeping the ACC’s regular-season and tournament titles outright.
The conference is desperate for coaching stars to latch onto. And now Scheyer, at one of college basketball’s biggest brands, has proven irrefutably that he’s one of them.
Scheyer became the first coach in conference history to win two ACC Tournament championships in his first three seasons as a head coach. (NC State’s Everett Case won the ACC’s first three league tournaments, but he was already in his seventh season when the conference was founded.) He did so without star freshman Cooper Flagg, who sprained his ankle less than 20 minutes into Duke’s first game. Moreover, it’s the first time since 2006 that Duke won both conference titles outright. The 37-year-old is now 85-21 through not even three full seasons, and his current squad has the second-best net rating ever in KenPom’s 29-season database, behind only 1999 Duke.
As Duke athletic director Nina King put it: “He’s executing the succession just absolutely perfectly.”
The last three ACC coaches to win two tournament titles in the span of three seasons? Krzyzewski, Roy Williams and Dean Smith.
The last three to win the regular-season and tournament championships outright in the same campaign? Bennett, Williams and Jim Larrañaga, who won over 700 games and is one of 17 coaches to lead multiple schools to the Final Four.
That’s the sort of company Scheyer is keeping. Already.
“He’s the Coach of the Year,” said junior guard Tyrese Proctor, who hit a career-high six 3s against the Cards. “No ifs, ands or buts about it.”
The Australian-born Proctor would know as well as anyone, as the lone scholarship player from Scheyer’s first team still suiting up for Duke. That that is the case, given their unlikely start, feels almost unfathomable now. Scheyer’s first recruiting interaction with Proctor was a cold call; the two hadn’t met. But when Scheyer rang, Proctor’s father came into his bedroom and passed off the phone. You can trace a throughline from that 15-minute call to Saturday’s victory.
“The way that he saw my future and his belief in me was a big thing,” Proctor said. “I cherish relationships just like (ours).”
When Proctor’s family visited Duke from Sydney, the way Scheyer took care of them and their arrangements struck a chord. It’s why Proctor was willing to reclassify up a year to join Scheyer’s first team — and why he’s stuck around.
In an era when first-time coaches, especially those succeeding totemic figures before them, have struggled to an outsized extent, Scheyer is an exception. Duke’s success is always the ACC’s success (and the same goes for rival North Carolina), but there’s a difference between a brand and an individual. Right now, the ACC has no coaching voice, nobody who can speak for the conference and force people to listen on a national level. The only two others who have made at least an Elite 8 are UNC’s Hubert Davis, the only active ACC coach with a Final Four appearance, and Clemson’s Brad Brownell.
But neither Davis nor Brownell has won a tournament title, nor do they seemingly desire being the ACC’s elder statesmen. Scheyer may not have the age, but the influence?
It’s grown dramatically, and the arrow’s still pointed up.
“He’s special, man,” said former Duke guard Gerald Henderson, one of Scheyer’s old Blue Devil teammates. “I texted him before the game. I said, ‘Man, you’re a champion. Go do what you do.’ He’s making all of us so proud.”
What Duke showed this week is as encouraging as anything the Blue Devils have shown this season in pursuing a sixth national title. Not only did Scheyer’s team trail by 14 against Georgia Tech on Thursday, but it had to overcome that deficit while withstanding the shock of losing Flagg and Maliq Brown in a matter of minutes. On Friday against UNC, Duke led by as many as 24 points but had to sweat out an all-time comeback, finally staving off the Tar Heels with seconds left. Saturday’s championship was more of the same: a halftime deficit, courtesy of Louisville’s 7-0 run going into the break and Terrence Edwards’ sensational 29-point scoring effort, where the hoop must’ve looked nine-feet wide.
All three times, a depleted Duke team rose to the occasion, all behind Scheyer’s level-headed decision making.
This is not to say the man is perfect. In the under-eight timeout, midway through drawing up a play, he dropped his dry erase marker mid-design and shouted “F—!” But even that seemed to calm his team: the ability to chuckle in the midst of a cauldron and then get back to the task at hand.
And now comes the ultimate springboard: for Scheyer, but also indirectly for the ACC. Anything can happen in a single-elimination tournament, but with Flagg set to return and Duke already this dominant, Scheyer’s deepest NACA Tournament run yet as head coach feels imminent. The ACC, surely, will be hoping that comes to fruition.
A national championship would be the ultimate rubber stamp for him as a coach. Not just as one of the future faces of the sport — as one of the best in the game right now, and potentially for decades to come.
“If you do it like (the coach you’re replacing), that’s where I think a lot of coaches fail,” Carrawell said. “He hasn’t tried to be Coach K, because you can’t. I think that’s the single best thing he’s done. He’s been Jon Scheyer.”
(Photo: Jacob Kupferman / Getty Images)
