#14: Coach K retiring after 2021-22 season

BREAKING: Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has decided to retire after this coming season, multiple sources told @stadium. Official announcement expected soon.

The leading candidate to replace K is assistant and former Duke player Jon Scheyer.

— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) June 2, 2021

If you thought the college basketball news cycle was beginning to slow down as we turned the calendar to June, you were in for a whirlwind day. The entire landscape of the sport was rocked to its core on Wednesday afternoon when Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski announced the 2021-22 season would be his last. On top of that, news is already coming out that associate head coach Jon Scheyer is expected to be named the coach-in-waiting, ready to take over after the season ends. Wow! Duke has had its fair share of off-season news this spring, but there’s certainly none bigger than this. An era is officially coming to an end, and while many may view this as sad news, Save Duke Basketball is pretty damn excited.

It’s safe to assume that there was at least some knowledge of Krzyzewski's departure within the program before the news broke on Wednesday. Up until just recently, the coaching staff was very inactive on the recruiting trail for 2022 and onward, which is rather disconcerting given the typical nature of Duke’s rosters over recent years. As far as the current players on the roster, The Athletic’s Brendan Marks has reported that it may have been a factor in a few of the transfer defections this off-season. So, while this is shocking news to the general public, I wouldn’t expect a huge ripple effect to immediately impact the Duke roster for the 2021-22 season.

Speaking of the upcoming season, it should be no surprise that this is going to be treated as one last “all-in” push to win Coach K a sixth championship. Sure, there have been teams between 2015 and now that have been viewed in a similar light, but to coin a phrase from another legendary head coach, this is officially “The Last Dance”. The talent needed for such a run is certainly on the roster and they’ll need no extra motivation than winning a title for their coach in his farewell season, but it will still be an uphill battle. Duke likely won’t enter the season as any sort of prohibitive favorite, nor will they bring back a roster with a lot of experience and cohesion. Fortunately, the protocols for off-season practice will be returning to normal this summer, and the team will have plenty of time to try and gel together before the season officially starts in November.

The news of Coach K’s retirement was inevitable, but the news of Scheyer as the alleged coach-in-waiting is a very interesting decision if it holds true. To start, he has zero head coaching experience and will be immediately thrust into the role at one of the five biggest programs in the country. He’s said all the right things as an assistant and is unquestionably a more inspiring choice than the rest of Krzyzewski’s coaching tree, but this hire could go any which way and nobody would be surprised. While Duke fans, including myself, may have dreamed of the world where Brad Stevens stepped in as the eventual successor, the fact of the matter is that Coach K had enough power within the program to ensure that there would not even be any consideration of an outside hire. While Duke did recently name a new athletic director, this is Krzyzewski’s choice, plain and simple. Out of all the realistic options, Scheyer is the one who doesn’t carry the baggage of a failed attempt to run his own program, and that was good enough to get the job.

After learning under an all-time great, Jon Scheyer will get his chance to lead the Duke program. (Source: Ball Durham)

What Scheyer does have going for him is an excellent reputation on the recruiting trail. He was heavily involved with some of Duke’s biggest recruits in recent years, including Zion Williamson and Jayson Tatum. Still, it will be interesting to see just how much drop-off there will be in the program’s ability to reel in big names without the allure of playing for an all-time great coach. Another big question is just how clean will the slate be when Scheyer eventually takes over? In the world of immediate eligibility for one-time transfers, it’s not completely unreasonable to think that Duke's 2022-23 roster may not return a single rotation player from the 2021-22 season. Coach K's farewell tour will be exciting, but it's hard to not imagine a rebuilding period immediately following it.

While Jon won a championship on a Duke team that featured five upperclassmen in the starting lineup, he’s only ever been on the coaching staff for what could be defined as the era where Duke fully embraced the “one-and-done” movement. With full program control, it’ll be very interesting to see which side of the spectrum he prefers. While the sport has seemed to shift away from roster constructions such as the 2010 Blue Devils, there are still plenty of programs who manage to “get old and stay old”, as former Duke assistant Mike Brey has termed it. Although Coach K has obviously shifted away from that in recent years, the Duke program was built on a 1982 recruiting class that stuck around for four seasons and came one game away from a national championship. The early recruiting classes for Scheyer will be fundamental in establishing his culture for the program, and also pivotal in laying the groundwork for continued success.

It’s no secret that the Save Duke Basketball blog has been pushing for Coach K's retirement for some time. It’s encouraging to see that both Krzyzewski and Duke have decided to rip the band-aid off quickly after a one-year farewell tour, rather than letting him continue to coach even further into his decrepitude. With that said, as the original blog post of Save Duke Basketball mentioned, there is no Duke Basketball as we know it today without Mike Krzyzewski. He has absolutely built the program into a college basketball juggernaut, and for that he deserves to be right in the discussion of the greatest coach of all time, regardless of level or sport. It’s easy to look at the program’s failures since the 2015 title or even nitpick the missed opportunities, i.e. 1999, that came in the peak Duke years, but to win five national championships over the course of his tenure is an outstanding accomplishment that few coaches have been able to match.

So, you may now be asking yourself, “Has Duke Basketball been saved?” Yes, the original purpose of this blog was to expose the shortcomings of the program over the past half-decade, but while Coach K may be moving on after the season, his imprint on the program will remain as long as any of his former players are roaming the sidelines. With Scheyer being the hand-chosen successor, it’ll be interesting to see just how far he strays away from the philosophies, mannerisms, etc. of his mentor. Until we find out what the direction is, the answer is still no. There’s a lot to speculate on with the future of the Duke program, but the idea of drastic change is something that has only been seen lately from a year-to-year roster standpoint. Whether it works out for Scheyer or not is something we won’t know for a few years now, but trust me, the change is good.