Jon Scheyer Is Doing it His Way

Within the span of a couple of weeks the Duke Blue Devils announced that they’d retained rising senior forward Maliq Brown, junior guard Caleb Foster, rising sophomores Darren Harris, Isaiah Evans and Patrick Ngongba and a recruiting haul of Cayden and Cameron Boozer and Nik Khamenia (Huh-men-ia). In an age where teams are having to rebuild from the bottom up each season, Duke has strived to do things their way. Jon Scheyer during his tenure at Duke has forged a distinct path in terms of player development, recruitment and retention. With the news that Jon Scheyer, after a Final Four run and coming a few plays short of playing for a title, was able to retain a good portion of his roster should come as no surprise to Duke fans and the rest of College Basketball. In an age of tampering, direct payments and the college basketball portal – it’s definitely an accomplishment to have players consistently sticking around. There will be obvious departures from Duke with the level of talent they typically recruit and bring in. Duke is not immune to losing players to the portal, just last season the program lost Sean Stewart, TJ Power, Mark Mitchell, Jeremy Roach and Jaylen Blakes to the portal, but still, Jon Scheyer upgraded, and it produced one of the best seasons in program history. Still, the preference for this staff and program has always been to promote from within, build those relationships over the course of recruiting cycles and “foster” them – no pun intended.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to doing things the Duke Way. One of which is Duke will never be the oldest team in college basketball, or at least are unlikely to be. This is due in part to the stage at Duke being one of the biggest and brightest as well as the high level of talent that matriculates to Durham year in and year out. The plan has always been to bring in high level players that have an array of timelines. Some will be one and done players, some will be on a different path. The keys to culture are the players that tend to stick around for more than a year, some more than 2. Coach Scheyer has focused on having honest conversations with his guys and setting the expectation as well as the benchmark. Every recruit to a man has talked about the vision Jon and staff lays out for them – setting the tone with recruit and parent alike.

Sure there are many ways to build program culture but to have that culture endure over time and throughout coaching tenures takes some level of continuity. The coach can’t always be the provider of culture, player-to-player, having the expectation be set at the peer level is a wonderful advantage of continuity. Coaching can establish culture, but players carry it forward. The other distinct advantage of continuity are those relationships. Coaching depends on relationships, especially at the college level. If you have those established, it’s one less thing a coach has to worry about. Trust has been earned over years as opposed to the speed-dating timeline of the portal which, in terms of talent, can be an amazing tool, but there’s also a chance that who you bring in may not be who you believe them to be in terms of culture. Fit is and has been just as important as function.

One has to wonder the ramifications long term, building the bulk of your team through the portal. Time will tell if there is a negative effect on program culture, and maybe culture isn’t as important to some schools as it is to Duke. There’s not one right way to do this thing. Certainly it has worked out for some teams in the short term, and let’s face it, coaching nowadays is a short-term gig, especially if you can’t show proof of concept early. It is indeed a luxury to have guys that already know the expectation in Durham, they’ve practiced against the best and not only do they have trust in the staff, but the staff has trust in them.