A 37-year-old Naismith Coach of the Year Finalist with back-to-back-to-back NCAA appearances, Jon Scheyer is plugging in the gap left behind by the legendary Coach K.
Legendary Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski, popularly known as Coach K, spent 42 years at Duke and made a huge impact on Duke’s basketball. It is enormous pressure for anybody coming in to replace a legend, but Jon Scheyer has managed to make it look easy.
Jon Scheyer is the Guy Who Is Following ‘The Guy’
“One of the hardest things to do in sports is to be the guy that follows ‘the guy.’ Most coaches will tell you they want to be the guy that follows the guy who follows the guy,” college basketball insider Jon Rothstein said.
Replacing a legend is one of the hardest things to do in sports.
Jon Scheyer has made it look seamless at Duke. pic.twitter.com/lyUfJIQBLR
— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) March 27, 2025
Coach K is widely regarded as one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time. The 78-year-old won five NCAA championships (1991, 1992, 2001, 2010, 2015) and three Naismith Coach of the Year (1989, 1992, 1999). He also won Olympic gold with this USA men’s basketball team in Beijing (2008), London (2012) and Rio(2016).
Coach K is the coach with the most wins in NCAA Division I men’s basketball history and is also the first Division I men’s coach to reach 1,000 wins. These are ultimately big shoes to fill for his successor.
Scheyer has made the transition easy
Scheyer played basketball at Duke under coach K and also served as an assistant coach under him. It is safe to say he picked up a few things under the Hall of Famer. Sheyer officially became Duke’s head coach in 2022 after Coach K’s retirement.
Eyebrows were raised as expected when Scheyer was appointed due to Coach K’s remarkable success, but in three years, Scheyer has managed to turn critics into admirers.
The legacy left behind by Krzyzewski is a big one, but Scheyer has started on the right path. In Scheyer’s first season, Duke finished with 27 wins and advanced to round 32 of the NCAA tournament. In his season, they also finished with 27 wins and advanced to the elite eight.
In the 2024/25 season, Duke finished with 33 wins and is currently in the Sweet 16 round of the postseason championship, where it will face Arizona.
Scheyer is also credited with building a talented roster. Rather than using the transfer portal, he signed five players ranked in the top 50 by ESPN in the 2024 class. Duke also has the projected number one pick in the 2025 NBA draft, Cooper Flagg.
Duke is one of the favorite teams to win the national championship this year, and a lot of credit goes to Jon Scheyer for the work he’s put into the program.
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He currently holds the record for the most wins in his first three seasons of any coach in ACC history, with 82 wins. He is third for most wins in the first three seasons for a D1 head coach, with 87 wins, two behind Brad Stevens and Brad Underwood, who have 89 each.
Scheyer is a finalist for the 2025 Naismith Coach of the Year award alongside Auburn’s Bruce Pearl, Houston’s Kelvin Sampson and St. John’s Rick Pitino. This is an award Coach K won three times, and Scheyer winning it is one step closer to forging his own Duke legacy.
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