Forget Auburn’s No. 1 overall NCAA Tournament seed. Don’t mind the season-long narrative about the preeminence of the SEC, which is represented in the national semifinals by both Auburn and Florida. We can talk about outstanding Houston if and when the Cougars rise to the occasion of a heaven-or-heartbreak weekend in San Antonio.
It’s Duke that’s going into the Final Four as the serious favorite, and everybody knows it.
That makes Blue Devils coach Jon Scheyer a bigger deal than he has ever been in his basketball life. To most of the country, he’s the fresh-faced 37-year-old trying to walk in the footsteps of Mike Krzyzewski, the most revered men’s college basketball coach since John Wooden. In our neck of the woods, of course, one can’t help but watch Scheyer in this tournament and think back to his days as a 3,000-point scorer and state champion at Glenbrook North.
But I wonder if enough people remember just how great — not good, great — Scheyer was as a college player.
Krzyzewski’s Duke team that won all the marbles in 2010 had seven players who’d play in the NBA, none of them named Scheyer. But it was Scheyer, a 6-5 point guard who dropped no jaws but unfailingly made the right play, who led the Blue Devils in scoring, assists and steals. He made all the clutch free throws. He deflected anti-Duke sentiment from parts of college basketball fandom without even trying. He was an All-American and — on a team without future lottery picks, let alone a Cooper Flagg-level superstar — Mr. Indispensable.
Coaching, though, turned out to be his bag. After Chris Collins left Duke in 2013 to run his own program at Northwestern, other Krzyzewski assistants moved up a chair and Scheyer joined the staff as low man on the totem pole. A dozen years later, he’s a third-year head coach with 89 wins under his belt — eight of them in the Big Dance — and a chance to become the youngest men’s coach to cut down the nets since NC State’s Jim Valvano in 1983.
“It’s special,” he said. “You feel a great deal of responsibility to be the head coach at Duke. You want for your players to be able to experience this.”
Krzyzewski has kept a low profile since stepping down, not hanging around the team too much publicly or behind the scenes. Scheyer seeks him out often, though.
“It’s been, like, a beautiful thing, very organic and natural with Coach K and I,” he said. “We’re still as tight as could be. I’ve wanted this. I want him to be proud when he watches us.”
Three-Dot Dash
• BEFORE SCHEYER AT BOTH Glenbrook North and Duke, there was Collins, who — with better timing — might have made a fine Blue Devils coach himself. But Collins is locked in at Northwestern, where this week he agreed on a two-year contract extension through the 2029-30 season, which would be his 17th at the school. It’s hard to believe the Wildcats could do much better than Collins if they tried, not that we’re about to find out, right? …
• THE FINAL FOUR COACHES have some personal connections that go beyond the norm.
After Scheyer became head coach, one of the first things he did was put out a feeler to Houston’s Kelvin Sampson about getting their teams together to scrimmage before the season. Scheyer was a huge admirer of Sampson’s teams’ toughness and togetherness and hoped to learn a thing or two. Beyond that, he got a friend and mentor. Sampson checked up on him often that season, and the two have become good friends despite their 32-year age difference.
Florida’s Todd Golden got his first Division I job when Auburn’s Bruce Pearl hired him as director of basketball operations in 2014. A year later, Golden was promoted to assistant coach and his former role filled by Pearl’s son, Steven. The younger Pearl and Golden already were thick as thieves because they’d played and won gold medals together representing the U.S. in the 2009 World Maccabiah Games in Tel Aviv, Israel. The coach of that team? Bruce Pearl. …
• FOR ANYONE WHO COMPLAINS about four No. 1 seeds being in the Final Four — only the second time that has happened — consider the alternative. Two years ago, upset-filled earlier rounds led to UConn, Miami, San Diego State and Florida Atlantic all making it to Houston. Attendance for the semis and the final was terrible. The TV ratings were down, too. As crescendos go, it’s hard to top this. …
• DUKE’S “O” VS. HOUSTON’S “D” is pretty much the coolest thing ever. The Blue Devils have the best offense in the country, and the Cougars the best defense. By the metrics, they’re among the most dominant teams of the last 20-plus years. Does great offense beat great defense? Maybe it will this time — Duke is a strong favorite to advance — but the Cougars also are a lot older, and that can matter a ton.