A few days still remained before the launch of the 2026-27 college basketball season, and already Duke was off to a magnificent start for 2027-28. The commitment of 6-foot-7 wing Asa Montgomery of Hillgrove High in the Atlanta area gave the Blue Devils a second 5-star recruit for their next freshman class, with every reason to believe coach Jon Scheyer is not finished assembling young talent.
Montgomery became the 25th top-25 prospect to commit to Scheyer since he was designated by the university more than six years ago to succeed legend Mike Krzyzewski at the close of the 2022 NCAA Tournament. What began that summer with Scheyer on the road evaluating and pursuing prospects and Coach K back in Durham preparing his final team has turned into a rare example of a program successfully navigating the transition from legend to successor.
Dean Smith’s October surprise retirement in 1997 led North Carolina to two different coaches and an embarrassing 8-20 season in 2001-02 before Roy Williams returned home and rescued the Tar Heels. It became a struggle at Indiana after Bob Knight was fired in September 2000 for comportment issues, and IU still is endeavoring to regain its equilibrium more than a quarter-century later. Syracuse is on its second coach since Jim Boeheim awkwardly announced his retirement in March 2023, and the Orange haven’t seen the inside of March Madness since 2021.
Krzyzewski enabled Duke to avoid all that by choosing to plan his retirement.
And for that, he was subjected to a season-long harangue launched within the social media, podcast and traditional media universes. There were myriad allegations he was going on his “retirement tour” strictly as a method of self-aggrandizement.
A lot of that, but certainly not all, was the product of North Carolina fans weary of hearing about their rival’s great coach, even before their program dealt Krzyzewski the final two defeats of his career. But the Tar Heels’ transition from Williams’ unexpected retirement in March 2021 to alumnus Hubert Davis wasn’t designed in the same way – and did not turn out to be successful.
It is not easy to pull off what Duke did in the way the university did it. One of the few similar projects occurred at Purdue in 2004-05, when Matt Painter was asked to return to his alma mater after one splendid season at Southern Illinois and prepare to take over for the great Gene Keady following his last year. I spent a few days embedded with that program for a magazine story in The Sporting News, and I got the sense Keady wouldn’t have minded continuing if he could have presented a better case than one NCAA Tournament win in his final five seasons. Seeing the program turned over to one of his progeny was an attractive alternative, and 501 victories later it’s an obvious smash.
It was much more of a struggle at Syracuse, where assistant coach Mike Hopkins privately was informed as early as 2007 he would be Boeheim’s eventual successor and officially received that designation in June 2015. Boeheim publicly declared he would retire in 2018, at age 70, but Hopkins left to coach the Washington Huskies in March 2017, when it became clear that would not happen.
It is possible to plan for retirement, but the occasion is something many coaches have come to fear rather than embrace. And thus we see these episodes of coaches retiring on the very eve of an approaching season, leaving they recruited and the schools that helped make them wealthy with few options. And there are those who delay the inevitable for so long failure starts to become an option, making it impossible to convert from an enduring brand of excellence to one of boundless potential.
Krzyzewski’s willingness to explore another phase of his life – and to do this deliberately, not suddenly – has been the essential ingredient of Duke’s continued presence near the top of the sport.
Duke’s eternal critics inevitably will scoff that the move from Krzyzewski to Scheyer not only was simply about K being celebrated throughout his final season but also has been a disappointment. Because, you know, zero championships.
Let us consider, though, the numbers that insist otherwise:
* One NCAA Final Four appearance;
* Three Elite Eight appearances in four years;
* A .733 winning percentage in NCAA Tournament games;
* Three ACC Tournament championships;
* Two ACC regular-season titles.
Scheyer has been in charge of the Devils during two of the most horrific collapses in recent March Madness history. They blew leads of 14 points in the final 8 minutes against Houston in the 2025 national semifinals and 17 points in the final 17 minutes of last year’s Elite Eight matchup with UConn. That’s been enough to prompt some online critics to dismiss him as a coach, or label him as someone who can’t win the biggest game, following the same pattern for blasting coaches set long before Twitter or Reddit were in operation.
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No. 1 seeds: Florida, Duke, Illinois and UConn open the season on the top line
When Jim Calhoun didn’t make a Final Four in his first dozen years at UConn, he was harangued by many in the media despite producing five Big East titles and three Big East Tournament titles in that period. It was the same for Bill Self after he’d gone through nine NCAA Tournaments (and four Elite Eights) at Tulsa, Illinois and Kansas without reaching the Final Four. Now they’re both in the Hall of Fame.
And it was true for Krzyzewski, who first saw his job security at Duke imperiled after three seasons without an NCAA bid – athletic director Tom Butters famously presented him with a contract extension to reassure him the critics wouldn’t prevail – and later was hounded for failing to win a title through 10 seasons and four Final Four appearances. When the Devils at last earned the championship trophy at Indianapolis’ RCA Dome in 1991, Krzyzewski told me in the hallway afterward she’d begun introducing herself as “Micki I’ve Never Won the Big One Krzyzewski”.
Three decades later, she was in the back seat of the golf cart with her husband while he was transported away from his final press conference as Duke coach and into retirement. We all knew that moment was coming, it just happened to arrive following a national semifinal loss to Carolina rather than the championship game victory that would have been the more romantic scenario.
Scheyer has been in charge ever since.
And the Duke basketball operation still is moving forward.
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