Jon Scheyer stresses importance of patience in Year 1 as Duke coach

Jon Scheyer was given an impossible task. Replace his mentor, the legendary Mike Krzyzewski as the head coach at Duke with no prior head coaching experience. The result was an up-and-down season that saw the Blue Devils get hot at the end of the year and win the ACC Tournament.

As Scheyer stressed, it’s important to be patient during his first season.

“The ironic part about the whole thing is, if you were to ask my family, my friends, they’d probably tell you I’m the most impatient person they know,” Jon Scheyer told ESPN. “So, for me this year, it took a lot just to stick with it and make sure I was doing the best job for our guys, for our players.”

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“And they’ve had an amazing attitude. Anytime they’ve gotten knocked back, it’d be easy to hang their head or to make excuses or to point the finger, and they’ve never done that. So, for me it’s been — I’ve just had an amazing year coaching these guys. I’ve enjoyed, really, every day because they take the coaching, you’re able to grow and to learn,” Scheyer said.

“And our mantra this year, I mean, we’ve said one vision, you got to stay connected with what the vision is. And we said we want to be playing our best at this time of the year, which we are.”

Ultimately, Duke earned a five seed in the NCAA Tournament, where the Blue Devils will play Oral Roberts in the first round.

Jon Scheyer shares what he learned in the Coach K transition

Transitioning from Coach K to Jon Scheyer was always going to come with some bumps in the road, but as Scheyer explained it was more important how people responded.

“I think you’re wondering, you know, when our players are put in that position, how do they respond? But you know, I’ve always prided myself on showing up every day, you know, doing my job and knowing our guys, or anybody in our program, can rely on me to be the best that I need to be. And so, I’m proud of our staff for the attitude that we’ve had, the togetherness to make sure our players feel that way. And I think that’s the biggest thing,” Scheyer said.

“I learned this from Coach K, but always to take accountability, take responsibility, I should say. You know, you have to be accountable too for, you know, I’ll tell our guys, ‘I called a play, I didn’t like what play I called. That’s on me. You know, I didn’t coach you as well this game.’ And I think that that togetherness, that buy-in both ways, it has to be there.”