Coaching search profile: Jon Scheyer

Name: Jon Scheyer

Age: 31

Current job: Associate Head Coach, Duke

Previous jobs: n/a

Career head coaching record: n/a

NCAA Tournament Appearances (record): n/a

Evidence of recruiting skills: As Associate Head Coach, Scheyer has received credit as the lead recruiter for incoming Duke players Vernon Carey, Zion Williamson, Cam Reddish, Jayson Tatum and others.

Items of interest: Do an image search of “Scheyer face”

On court: We do not know, but Coach K’s Duke teams are usually good about playing with some solid basketball concepts:

• force opponents off the three-point line...
• but defend the rim, and
• don’t turn the ball over.

Each Duke assistant who gets a new job is a little different, so we do not know what a Scheyer team would look like. We do know the the Duke official site credits him for working with some of their superlative guards.

Why he’d be a good fit: The Athletic Director Mike Cragg knows Jon Scheyer from Duke, and Scheyer has been elevated fairly quickly to an Associate position. He’s gotten enough responsibility to speak for the team. He was a very good shooter and a smart player.

Additionally, Scheyer has had some experience game planning with Coach Krzyzewski.

Here’s an article from 2014 on what Scheyer would be like as a head coach, according to him:

I think a lot goes into who you would be as a head coach. For me I would want whatever team I had, if I was a head coach, to play really hard and have a lot of fun playing the right way. I’ve always tried as a player to play the right way. And when I say the right way, I think basketball’s an unselfish game. You don’t give up on plays because, you turn the ball over, the best part about it is you would get the ball right back. Those are things that, really, Coach does so well. So if you could get your team to play close to what he’s gotten his teams to play it would be unbelievable.

Why it wouldn’t work: No experience as a head coach is tough to stomach after Chris Mullin, but that fact should not be a deal-breaker; it’s bad to make knee-jerk “opposite of THAT GUY” decisions.

But bringing Scheyer up puts him in a tough spot with a fanbase that would be down on the decision. The media would come with extra scrutiny (less friendly than the Duke media). New head coaches have their growing pains, and will St. John’s fans be patient?

And how will Scheyer adjust to recruiting players who aren’t in the top-10 of the rankings? How will he find an impact player in the Tri-state area’s recruiting circles? How will he know when he has a diamond in the rough?

What’s getting in the way: Inexperience. The idea of Scheyer will need to be sold hard through the media.

Final word: Too soon.