Jon Scheyer's Duke team must get down in the muck to stand a chance vs. Houston
DALLAS — One day, we may call Jon Scheyer one of the great college basketball coaches of his generation and be able to look back at the exact moment where it all started.
So far, that moment does not exist.
Scheyer is 36 years old. He’s the head coach at Duke. Because of the program he now runs and his ability to maintain the same level of talent that Mike Krzyzewski had over the last decade, it doesn't really matter if Scheyer does a good job by any traditional metric.
Until he wins a championship, or at least gets Duke back to a Final Four, Scheyer will be fighting against the reputation that most young coaches at top programs face: Too green, too inexperienced, too soft.
A year ago, Scheyer’s young Duke team could not help him get rid of the narrative. Facing a tough, veteran, grizzled Tennessee team in the round of 32, the Blue Devils and all their future lottery picks got pushed around.
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“The honest truth was they were tougher than us that day,” Scheyer said Thursday.
Fast-forward to this year’s tournament and Duke is a year older, thanks to several of those highly-rated freshmen coming back for a second year of college. They're also one round of the postseason better, having advanced to the Sweet 16.
What they aren’t — at least by reputation and results — is a year tougher. For the most part, Duke in Scheyer’s second year has mirrored his first: Some good performances, some confounding losses and no real evidence that it’s going to contend for a national championship.
For Scheyer’s long-term viability as Krzyzewski's successor, that has to change.
On Friday, it can change in an instant.
Because not only is Duke set for the biggest game of Scheyer’s young coaching career here in the South Regional, he’s facing the program that most embodies toughness and the development of players a program like Duke would never recruit in the first place.
He's facing No. 1 seed Houston.
“If we match their physicality, everything else will take care of itself,” Duke senior Jeremy Roach said.
It’s not that simple, though. Not against Kelvin Sampson’s Houston. Against this team, you have to feel it. You have to embrace it. You have to be ready for it or they’re going to leave bruises on the ego as well as the body.
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Just ask Arizona, which waltzed into the Sweet 16 two years as a No. 1 seed and left the arena having been beaten so bad that it seemed like an existential crisis.
“Houston is one of the teams where you're better served if you play them a couple times,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said at the time. "They do the things they’re good at at such a high level, it's hard for you to get comfortable the first time around.”
And what is it they do?
They make you feel their physical presence on every pass, every shot, every fight for a loose ball. They don't let you do anything easily. If you have to play pretty basketball to win, you’re probably out of luck.
Can Duke’s NBA prospects get down in the muck with a team like that? At this point in Scheyer’s tenure, it’s fair to be skeptical.
Duke can be brilliant. It can be fun. It can show flashes of incredible athleticism and skill. Guys like Kyle Filipowski and Tyrese Proctor are going to make a lot of money playing this game for a long time.
What they’re going to face Friday, though, is an entirely different kind of test — one they haven't passed yet in their college careers.
"Every experience has led to action,” Scheyer said. “You have to take action from it. Those experiences harden you. They make you tougher as long as you don't make excuses and you are really honest with what happened in the moment. You always learn something from those moments, but the tournament, it's one-and-done time. It's precious. That’s been a reminder for us along the way. It’s part of the development and growth of this team.”
Scheyer deserves support and grace as he navigates how to be a great head coach. He’s already proven that he can do the big stuff that's required to maintain a high-level program. More likely than not, the rest will fall in place over time.
Just consider: By the time Scheyer was a senior at Duke in 2010, Sampson had already coached nearly 800 games and been to 13 NCAA tournaments. You can’t fake those reps. Experience matters, and Scheyer will face an experience deficit quite often in these massive games.
It’s a factor Houston is uniquely built to exploit. But it's only an issue until it’s not anymore.
Duke can make it a non-issue on Friday. That might be just as big to Scheyer’s future as getting one step closer to the Final Four.