Jon Scheyer Duke grade after four years: CBS Sports writers assess tenure, March struggles

Jon Scheyer has done almost everything right at Duke.

He’s recruited at an elite level, won at a historic pace and built teams good enough to win a national title.

But four years in, his tenure is being defined by how those seasons end.

Duke’s latest exit — a blown 19-point lead to UConn in the Elite Eight — is the kind of loss that will sting the entire offseason, and it follows last season’s Final Four collapse against Houston and an Elite Eight defeat to NC State the year before. 

We are suddenly four years into the Scheyer era, so we asked our CBS Sports college basketball writers to evaluate the body of work and assign a grade — weighing a historic start against the way Duke’s seasons have ended.

Gary Parrish: A-

Any conversation about Scheyer has to start by acknowledging the following facts: 

1) He’s 124-25 through four seasons with two ACC regular-season titles and three ACC Tournament titles. 

2) He’s one of only three coaches to ever make three Elite Eights before turning 40 years old. (The others are Dean Smith and Bob Knight). 

3) He coached in the 2025 Final Four. 

4) Nobody has ever won more games in their first four years as a head coach. 

5) His .832 winning percentage at Duke is higher than the winning percentage Coach K posted at Duke – and Coach K is widely considered to be the GOAT of college basketball coaching.

Are Scheyer’s second-half collapses in back-to-back NCAA Tournaments an issue?

Of course they are.

YearRoundOpponent (Seed)Largest Deficit2026Elite EightUConn (2)19*2025Final FourHouston (1)142024Elite EightNC State (11)92023Round of 32Tennessee (4)6

And don’t forget about the loss to 14-loss NC State in the Elite Eight of the 2024 NCAA Tournament. Win that game, and don’t lose to UConn in the Elite Eight of the 2026 NCAA Tournament after taking a 19-point lead, and Scheyer would have three Final Fours instead of one. Don’t blow a nine-point lead with less than three minutes to play against Houston in the 2025 Final Four, and he might have a national championship too.

So, sure, one way to look at Scheyer’s four years is to focus on the fact that his team has been eliminated as a favorite in four straight NCAA Tournaments. That’s not good, obviously. But everything else is excellent, and it’s hard for me to give any grade lower than an A to anybody who is literally off to the winningest start in the history of Division I men’s basketball coaching.

Bottom line, in each of the past three seasons, Scheyer has had a team good enough to win it all — and all indications are that he’s going to keep building them. Assuming he does, he’ll get his national championship someday. Remember, it took John Calipari eight trips to the Elite Eight before he eventually won the national championship at the age of 58. It took Bill Self four trips to the Elite Eight before he won the national championship at the age of 45. So, if anything, Jon Scheyer, at the age of 38, remains ahead of all reasonable schedules. And a fluky loss, this past Sunday, terrible as it was, shouldn’t do much to take away from that.

Matt Norlander: B+

The tourney crashouts are brutal and play the biggest part in why Scheyer can’t be in the A category four years in. His overall record, his recruiting prowess, his modern approach to roster-building and his demeanor taking over in an extremely hard situation (replacing Coach K) have been terrific. Scheyer was the right guy, no doubt about it.

But the tournament is the biggest deal and how you go out matters to the question at hand here. Year 1 vs. Tennessee doesn’t even count; that was an understandable learning curve. But in Year 2, Duke was a 4-seed playing NC State, an 11, and blew a double-digit lead in the Elite Eight before losing 76-64. That’s a slice.

The Houston gag in the 2025 Final Four is one of the, what, five worst in tournament history? Duke was the best team by a comfortable margin that season, finishing No. 1 at KenPom easily, but blew it by scoring one field goal in the final 10 minutes. Then you toss in the 2026 collapse, becoming the first No. 1 to blow a 15-point halftime lead against any team. Some of this falls to Scheyer. I’m not nearly as down on him as others are, but the nature of these losses are concerning and have now attached themselves to Scheyer’s reputation on the whole. That’s the power of the tournament.

Cameron Salerno: A-

I’d like to submit a reminder that dnder Krzyzewski, Duke had plenty of seasons in which it failed to play for a national title while having either the best college player in the sport or the best draft prospect. In Coach K’s final season, Duke lost to North Carolina in the Final Four with Paolo Banchero, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft. And North Carolina was an 8-seed that season! 

At any rate, fair or unfair, until Scheyer wins a national title the “March-collapse” label is going to follow him. He’s a great coach, but the losses to Houston and UConn are going to sting because a player of Flagg or Boozer’s caliber isn’t walking through the door. Perhaps Scheyer will have to re-tool his roster-building approach around more transfers than glitzy freshmen, and maybe that will be for the best. Again, at most places, 70 wins in the last two years is an A++++. But at Duke, it’s a slightly lesser grade.

David Cobb: A-

Scheyer is doing a fantastic job of acquiring talent and is successfully scheming around that talent in big-picture ways. He clearly understands how to build a roster and how to program it in a way that maximizes its potential in the regular season. But there is something fundamentally amiss about the program’s psyche in the most pressure-packed moments. We are at three seasons in a row that Duke has choked in big games it had no business losing.

Chalk it up to the randomness of the NCAA Tournament, if you wish. But at this point, it’s something that requires a long look under the hood. Perhaps the answer should be a change in the way Duke simulates late-game situations in practice. Maybe Scheyer should bring in a sports psychologist, if not for himself, then for his team. Maybe he should stop putting the basketball in the hands of freshmen when the season is on the line. All in all, this is going fantastically better than some of the other coaching handoffs to handpicked successors that we’ve seen recently. But it can’t be an A or an A+ when you factor in the trend of abrupt and painful endings.

Isaac Trotter: A-

Life comes in pairs for Jon Scheyer these days. He built two good teams in his first two seasons at the helm. He built two excellent teams in his last two seasons as the Duke engineer. He’s also suffered two of the most catastrophic March losses in recent history. 

Duke is 70-7 in the last two seasons, and yet, Scheyer has this dark cloud hanging over his tenure largely because of an iffy over-the-back call, the inability to inbound the basketball, a last-second blunder of a pass and a 33-foot prayer that was answered by the basketball Gods.

Everyone is a loser in March until it isn’t. Scheyer has to wear this until he wins the title. Rest assured, if he stays at Duke, that crowning moment is coming eventually because the recruiting has been an A+. Cooper Flagg and Cameron Boozer were somehow even better than all the hype.

It’s what makes these projectile vomit losses even more baffling for us and gut-wrenching for Scheyer.

I don’t think a title for Duke is all that likely next year, just based on what the roster is shaping up to look like. But when that breakthrough emerges, it may come in pairs.

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Brad Crawford