Jon Scheyer, with Duke in Final Four, makes replacing icon look easy

[ad_1]

Just three years into his tenure, Jon Scheyer leads Duke into a Final Four game with a powerhouse program that has quickly been remade in his image.

Duke, Auburn, Houston players talk NCAA age limit before Final Four

Men’s Final Four players weigh in on if college basketball should have an age limit

SAN ANTONIO – Years after he walked away from the job that seemed like any basketball coach’s dream, Gene Bartow would joke about it. It wasn’t so much that he was worried UCLA would fire him, he said.

“But assassinated? That’s a different thing.”

Bartow, who died in 2012, was 44 years old when he got an offer he couldn’t refuse: Replace John Wooden, who announced his retirement on March 29, 1975, and won his 10th NCAA championship two days later.

But it didn’t take long before Bartow realized he made a mistake leaving Illinois after one season. The pressure of replacing Wooden and the microscope he was living under in Los Angeles made him miserable and paranoid. The stress ate away at him, literally. And even though UCLA went 52-9 under Bartow, reaching a Final Four and a Sweet 16, he left after two years to become the athletics director and head coach of UAB’s startup program.

“Deep down, I thought we might be able to win the national championship that third year and I kind of wanted to battle on through it,” Bartow told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “But I kept thinking, ‘Even if we do, even if we go undefeated and win the national championship, would it really change some of the things that were ingrained?’ “

For generations, Bartow’s early departure and the four coaches after him who either failed miserably or couldn’t cope with the demands of the UCLA job, defined one of the most prominent axioms in sports: You never want to be the coach who follows a legend.

So when Duke announced on June 4, 2021, that 33-year-old Jon Scheyer would replace Mike Krzyzewski the following April, it would have been reasonable based on history to predict the worst. To…

[ad_2]
Source link : https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/columnist/dan-wolken/2025/04/05/duke-coach-jon-scheyer-final-four-coach-k/82894211007/

Author :

Publish date : 2025-04-05 10:03:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.