‘It’s not crazy. We pulled it off.’ Duke’s plan comes together, rookie coach makes history

It was the audacity of it all that stood out, when the nets were cut and the trophy raised and the night crew came out with their brooms to sweep the floor for the last time.

Duke had set out to replace a legend, to manage a transition no one’s yet been able to manage, to carry the program across the threshold from one very long era into one very new one without losing its way.

On a Saturday night in the Greensboro Coliseum the Blue Devils not only won an ACC championship — something they’ve done 21 times before — but did something no one had ever done before.

It’s just one title, one step, not even an entire season let alone a string of them. There’s an NCAA tournament yet to be played, perhaps more history to be made, years ahead in an uncertain future, especially if the expected exodus occurs after the season, the usual cadre of newcomers arriving.

Photos: Duke defeats Virginia to win the 2023 ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament championship

But Jon Scheyer did something on his first try his illustrious predecessor had done only twice in his previous 10 tries. He became the third coach ever to win the ACC title as a rookie, the first ever to win one as a player and coach.

This much is certain at this point: The plan worked.

“It’s not crazy,” Duke guard Jeremy Roach said after Saturday’s 53-43 win over Virginia. “We pulled it off.”

A leap of faith

We is the correct phrasing. This was not solely Scheyer but the university that entrusted him with the future of a program that has come to define a university as much as its academics. It was the staff that wanted to work with him, including a newcomer from way outside the family. It was the players who signed up for the challenge knowing Mike Krzyzewski would be gone, a leap of faith into the true unknown.

That takes more than just confidence. It takes a willingness to confront the improbable if not impossible.

“I mean, somebody’s got to do it, you know?” Duke freshman Kyle Filipowski said, with the same insouciance the 7-footer attacked the rim.

It was truly a gamble. John Wooden couldn’t do it. Pat Summit couldn’t do it. As much as Krzyzewski always saw himself as a CEO or a general as much or more than a basketball coach, this was where his military background really came into play. He was going to relinquish his command to his executive officer without any loss of readiness, just like the manual says.

To the degree ego played into that final year — and the overblown Cameron finale smacked of hubris and would indeed come back to haunt Krzyzewski — there was always some method behind any madness.

Krzyzewski helped create the conditions for Scheyer’s success, giving both this group and Scheyer a clean break, a blank slate. Scheyer stepped into that void, prepared, ready, having spent a full year considering his options and charting, already, his own path. Perhaps nothing signaled that as much as the hire of Jai Lucas, a former Kentucky assistant without a branch on the Krzyzewski tree.

“The process is the process,” Duke assistant Amile Jefferson said. “You can’t cheat it. I came here because I believed 100 percent in coach Scheyer and his vision, and we’ve executed it perfectly. That doesn’t mean we’ve been perfect but it does mean that we’ve grown every day.”

Punching back

And as Duke grew — a familiar story of multiple freshmen starters finding their way in college basketball — so did Scheyer, perhaps no more so than after the Virginia loss and the botched officiating that opened the door to it. He’d been, to that point, reasonable with the officials. Mild, even, almost as if he was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe even, in the back-hallway gossip of the ACC, soft?

“You hear the whispers, right? You hear that stuff, the stuff that was going out,” Duke assistant Chris Carrawell said. “So now you’re like, OK — and that’s good for him. They keep hitting you? You’ve got to hit them back.”

That changed after Charlottesville, as Scheyer spent the rest of the season flirting with the inaugural technical foul of his coaching career. His case would no longer go unargued. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that his team seemed to feed off that, maybe as much a factor in Duke’s nine-game winning streak as the players-only meeting after the loss to Miami.

“Everybody’s looking at you. Everybody,” Carrawell said. “What happened happened. But the way you respond to it, the way he handled it — beautifully — and to do it in your first year, a lot of veteran coaches couldn’t do it. He’s always had the poise, though, so I shouldn’t be surprised. But when you’re in that seat, it’s a different seat.”

And sometimes, it’s the same seat. Frustrated with the officiating during the first half of Duke’s win over Miami on Friday, Scheyer gave up working the refs and sat heavily between Carrawell and Lucas, gesturing to them as he complained. It was the old sit-and-steam, straight out of the Book of K. Not everything has changed all that much.

Still, a plan working isn’t the same as everything going according to plan. Duke had its growing pains, its ups and downs, a procession to Saturday night that was anything but linear or smooth.

“For me, when you look at the plan that was in place, when you look at the people who are making those decisions, the support that I felt, that’s what gave me the confidence,” Scheyer said. “Then you follow it up with our program has always been about the quality people and players we can bring in. So to follow it up, to bring in these guys where they had the confidence to do that, that’s why I have the confidence.”

The plan worked. Scheyer took over for a legend and, by one standard by which Duke teams are measured, met the extraordinary expectations he inherited.

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