At long last, we know who Mike Krzyzewski’s successor will be at Duke. And it’s not who many people thought it would be, safe to say.
For years, many conversations were had wondering who it could be given a rash of possibilities and knowing that his retirement was surely a long time away. The speculation was fascinating at times in part because of the long timeline and also because none of the potential successors have distinguished themselves well ahead of the others during their head coaching tenures.
Naturally, most figured the guy who would succeed the living legend would come from inside the Duke family. It’s how many blueblood programs do it. Arch-rival North Carolina has done it for years, with long-time Dean Smith assistant Bill Guthridge succeeding him, followed by Matt Doherty and then Roy Williams before tapping Hubert Davis earlier this spring to succeed Williams. There were plenty of possibilities, but for a long time, the question was whether any would do enough to make sense in the role.
The first thought was Johnny Dawkins, one of the all-time great players at the school and the long-time top assistant in Durham. Many thought he would stay in Durham until Coach K retired and then move over a chair, but no one can blame him for taking head coaching jobs elsewhere given that at those times it was clear that retirement wasn’t coming anytime soon and anyone who gets into coaching wants to run their own program. His record as a head coach has been a mixed bag, and after getting UCF into the NCAA Tournament a few years ago and losing a heart-breaker to his alma mater, the Golden Knights have cooled.
Quin Snyder had some success at Missouri, but ultimately flamed out and ran afoul of the NCAA. He’s now in the NBA and surely not coming back to the college game. Any chance he had of succeeding his mentor went out the door a long time ago, to the point where his name hasn’t come up in such discussions since the end of his run at Missouri.
Tommy Amaker once looked like a real possibility, and perhaps was a renewed one as he turned Harvard into an Ivy League power. Before that, he didn’t exactly set the world on fire at Seton Hall and Michigan, but his run in Cambridge may have changed some perceptions when it came to the possibility of running his alma mater. It’s been reported that he and Dawkins were the two others Coach K considered besides the one who got the nod. You couldn’t blame him if he went with Amaker given his more recent run of success at a school that had very little beforehand.
Chris Collins at one time was mentioned among the possibilities, especially as his name would come up for many coaching vacancies when he was an assistant at Duke. He is getting his trial run at Northwestern now, and when he got them to the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever, his chances of succeeding his mentor may have gone up. But the program has faded since then, unable to make a return trip and back to being nationally irrelevant as the Big Ten’s profile has raised significantly.
Steve Wojciechowski looked like a possibility once upon a time, but was just recently dismissed from Marquette after just two NCAA Tournament appearances in seven years. He had an opportunity to make a case, and at times it looked like he might make an interesting one, but the Golden Eagles have a lot of resources and didn’t do as much as the school’s higher-ups want.
Jeff Capel has been more recently thought of as the top possibility, and he had a good run at VCU and at first at Oklahoma when he became a head coach. He returned to Durham after those years and looked like as good a candidate as any, but at Pittsburgh his tenure has been up and down; there is forward progress, but how much is tough to tell.
Once upon a time, I thought Mike Brey was the best candidate among those in the family, especially as he really got Notre Dame going during the latter part of their Big East days. Word is he didn’t want the job if it ever opened, and he had found a home in South Bend, anyway. It became clear that he was surely going to retire there, and now that the Irish have faded a bit of late, he might not be the most popular choice right now.
After all of this and plenty of others being talked about, it is Jon Scheyer who will get the nod in a year. Scheyer played there after starring in Illinois, and has been on the bench since a little after his playing days. Needless to say, in many discussions of who might get this job, his name rarely if ever has come up. But Coach K has been grooming him for this ever since he joined the staff in 2013 and then was elevated to Associate Head Coach in 2018 after Capel left to run the show in Pittsburgh.
In light of the prognosticating over the years, it’s interesting to see who ended up getting the job after all. While there are certainly cases where it’s not a challenge to figure out who gets to succeed a legend, this was not one of them. Starting in over a year, we will get to see how this all works out.