This isn't as easy as Jon Scheyer is making it look
Yes, Scheyer took over a great situation. But others in situations like his have failed before, something we were reminded of just hours after Duke punched its Final Four ticket.
They say you never want to succeed the legend; rather, you want to succeed the guy who succeeds the legend.
But is that really true?
Lately, major college sports has given us plenty of examples of why it is.
And plenty of reasons why it isn’t.
Jon Scheyer clinched his first Final Four appearance on Saturday with No. 1 seed Duke’s dominant 85-65 win over No. 2 seed Alabama. Scheyer was predecessor Mike Krzyzewski’s hand-picked choice to take over the Blue Devils after Krzyzewski’s retirement in 2022. While the move may seem obvious in hindsight — Scheyer is now 89-21 overall, 48-12 in ACC play and has two ACC tournament titles to his name in three seasons — remember that Duke brass had wished to hire Harvard’s Tommy Amaker as its next head coach.
Advantage, Coach K.
Disadvantage, conventional wisdom.
And yet, in the wee hours after Duke’s Elite Eight win, reports began to surface that Kevin Willard had agreed to become the next head coach at Villanova, which had fired Kyle Neptune after three underwhelming seasons.