WASHINGTON — A few minutes before 9 p.m. ET Sunday, the last of Duke’s traveling party appeared at the end of the long cement tunnel running underneath Capital One Arena.
But as players and staffers made their somber final walk to the Blue Devils’ team bus, idling just off the court, not a single one dared look toward the hardwood — still covered with red, white and blue confetti.
Colors that celebrated UConn’s third Final Four berth in the past four seasons also taunted the top-seeded Blue Devils, who suffered another all-time postseason collapse under head coach Jon Scheyer.
Perhaps Scheyer, one of college basketball’s best and brightest young coaches, was already aboard when the last of his players ascended the steps. Or maybe he was still packing up in the funereal coach’s locker room. But whenever he and the team he assembled hauled out of the nation’s capital, this much is certain: A piece of him had not left the building, and never will.
For the third straight postseason, Scheyer’s Duke team is done in stunning fashion, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory via a cascade of errors and missteps. It’s also the second year in a row a generational freshman’s single-season Blue Devils career ended too soon. Scheyer wasn’t the one making the plays (or failing to do so) down the stretch against UConn — but he was responsible for stopping the spiral. It’s his job to instill confidence, to give his guys the road map out, when everything is crumbling around them.
But Sunday — in a 73-72 stunner, in which Duke led by as many as 19 — he failed to do so. Flat out.
“I’m incredibly sorry for these guys that they’ve got to go through this,” Scheyer said. “This is on us.”
Former Duke All-American and two-time team captain Jon Scheyer is the 20th head coach at Duke, succeeding Hall of Fame head coach Mike Krzyzewski. (Geoff Burke / Imagn Images)
If this were a one-off unraveling, it would still be painful, but less so. In a single-elimination tournament, things happen. But three postseasons in a row, all of which have ended via calamitous collapse, is a pattern.
Correcting it should be Scheyer’s No. 1 priority this offseason. And fairly or not, until proven otherwise, this is now part of the narrative for the 38-year-old who just finished his fourth season as Mike Krzyzewski’s successor at one of the sport’s bluest bloods.
Scheyer entered this season palpably aware of Duke’s late-game troubles. It was something he highlighted in the offseason, especially as he hired assistant coach Evan Bradds from the NBA’s Utah Jazz. Together with Bradds — who is leaving to become the head coach at his alma mater, Belmont — Scheyer expanded Duke’s late-game playbook, emphasizing more movement and creating actions that involved his best players: namely, freshman superstar Cameron Boozer and sophomore Isaiah Evans.
For most of this season, that worked beautifully. Duke went 8-2 in two-possession games before Sunday — including in its Sweet 16 classic against St. John’s — and regularly showed a level of poise down the stretch of games that belied this team’s relative youth and inexperience.
But Duke’s last four losses — to Houston in last season’s Final Four, then Texas Tech and UNC in the regular season, and now UConn — have all happened in the same manner: with double-digit leads that Scheyer’s Blue Devils failed to close out for one reason or another. The deep work on the issue by a coach as detailed and driven as Scheyer, who previously won national titles at Duke as a player and assistant coach, makes it all the more confounding how these cursed endings keep occurring.
Duke’s Elite Eight loss to NC State in 2024 happened with a team that had season-long flaws, which Scheyer worked to correct by flipping his roster to build around top recruit Cooper Flagg, the eventual Wooden Award winner and No. 1 NBA Draft pick.
Yet last season’s Final Four collapse to Houston — in which Duke led by nine with two minutes to play — remains as impossible and irreconcilable a year later as it was in the moment. Despite sporting an entire starting five of future NBAers and one of the best one-and-done freshman the sport has ever seen, Duke choked away its chance at the national championship game in epic fashion.
Duke had no one but Flagg to generate offense down the stretch. Then there was the inbounding issue, which first doomed Duke against the Coogs, and carried over against the Huskies.
This season’s trio of defeats — by five combined points, two of them on de facto buzzer-beaters — all coincided with frontcourt foul trouble and a subsequent drop-off in defensive aggression.
But Sunday’s has to be the most painful of them all. The most difficult to comprehend.
After weeks of injuries, of surviving-and-advancing, No. 1 Duke finally seemed to recapture its Death Star form just in time for the Final Four. Boozer was doing National Player of the Year things, torching UConn’s defense. His twin brother Cayden was driving to the rim at will, looking seasoned beyond his years. It was the Duke machine to the fullest extent, the golden ticket there for the taking.
Only, then came the nightmare. The second-half unraveling. And the fateful, final possession that will be replayed every March from now until eternity. Cayden Boozer’s ill-advised half-court turnover, then Braylon Mullins’ magic 3.
In the wake of the loss, Scheyer was crushed. Emotionally, obviously — but also by the public, quick to crucify him as a postseason choke artist.
“I could not be more disappointed and feeling for our guys, at the same time just trying to process what happened,” Scheyer said. “I don’t have the words.”
Nuance dies in social media echo chambers. Yes, he deserves a large share of the blame for Duke’s loss, but he also deserves credit for getting this team there in the first place.
He replaced a starting five of NBA draft picks, landing another iconic freshman star in Cameron Boozer and surrounding him with complementary pieces. He developed backups from a year ago, such as Evans and center Patrick Ngongba, into every-game producers. Duke swept the ACC regular-season and tournament titles for the second year running and won more games (70) in a two-year span than ever before in program history.
And although the three consecutive Elite Eight berths pale in comparison to what could’ve been, it’s hard to argue Scheyer isn’t on his way to eventually getting over the hump.
It took his predecessor six years in Durham to make the national title game and 11 seasons until he hung the Blue Devils’ first banner. Bill Self needed 15 seasons to win his first ring, after multiple devastating first-round exits. John Wooden won a record 10 national championships, but none until his 16th season.
The list goes on. It took Roy Williams 17 years to buck his label as an elite coach who couldn’t win it all. John Calipari needed 20 years and three schools before he ascended the college hoops mountaintop. Heck, Jay Wright was at it for over two decades and still needed Kris Jenkins’ buzzer-beating 3 to win the first of his two championships.
This stuff is hard. It takes time.
Even if frustration is warranted at this moment. Even considering Scheyer has any imaginable resource at his disposal.
Under scrutiny, will Scheyer make changes in the wake of another collapse? Or double-down on the processes that largely work?
With Cameron Boozer likely on his way to the NBA, Scheyer could pivot toward experience, which has been proven to win in this era. Consecutive generational freshmen got Duke deep into the postseason, but look at how this season’s semifinalists were built.
UConn, Illinois, Arizona and Michigan have at least two upperclassmen starting, and rank top-150 nationally in average D-I experience.
Duke started just one upperclassman Sunday — senior forward Maliq Brown, who entered the starting five only recently due to Ngongba’s injury woes — and ranked outside the top-300 nationally in experience, at under one year. That’s less than all but one other NCAA Tournament team: Saint Mary’s, which went one-and-done without a singular talent like Boozer.
That’s not to say Scheyer’s larger strategy doesn’t work, considering every Final Four team this year also has at least one elite freshman in its rotation. But it has now been a decade since a team last won it all relying primarily on freshmen — and this is a time when NIL deals and abundant transfer options entice players who otherwise may have gone pro to stay in school.
Scheyer already has another top-ranked high school recruiting class coming in, but there’s still room for him to bring back contributors from this season, not to mention adding a top transfer or two.
None of that is going to change Sunday’s outcome.
But Scheyer has been too good, too fast, to imagine he won’t be back here. That Duke won’t be back. And while this is now his reputation — at least until it isn’t — that doesn’t mean Sunday will always define him.
“We’ll reflect,” Scheyer said. “We’ll learn, do all that.”
And maybe be better situated to avoid the next all-time heartbreak before it happens.
