St. John’s Basketball: 5 Coaching replacements for Chris Mullin
By Joey Loose
3. Jon Scheyer (Duke assistant)
Scheyer starred at Duke and was a member of the team that won the 2010 national championship. He’s been an assistant under Krzyzewski for the last five seasons and was promoted to associate head coach this past season. He doesn’t have any head coaching experience, but he’s learning under one of the best college coaches of all times and has already exhibited himself as a talented recruiter.
That lack of head coaching experience won’t sit well with Red Storm fans, but Scheyer has helped Duke recruit studs like Zion Williamson, Jayson Tatum, and Cam Reddish to the school in recent years. He would not be able to land the same level of talent initially in New York, but Scheyer would certainly be able to put together some well-rounded teams.
Former Krzyzewski assistants populate teams all over the league with varying levels of success. Scheyer is just 31 years old and could sit on the Duke bench for years to come, or he could try to build his own program like many before him have done. While Johnny Dawkins failed at Stanford and Tommy Amaker failed at Michigan, Mike Brey has built success at Notre Dame and Chris Collins led Northwestern to their first NCAA Tournament. None of these accomplishments matter for Scheyer, know only that he’s trained under one of the best basketball minds in America.
Scheyer hails from the Chicago area and a job in New York might not exactly be in his recruiting footprint. He’ll be mentioned for this job because Mike Cragg spent decades at Duke and has watched closely as Scheyer developed from recruited guard to associate head coach over the last dozen years. That lack of head coaching experience will be a turn off after what happened with Mullin, but this would be a talented young coach getting his shot to run a program.