With his assistants seated around the table, Krzyzewski revealed that he had reached a decision: He wanted to coach one more season and then retire. “Being in that moment, it was like, ‘Wow, this is arguably the greatest coach of all time stepping away from the game, and here I am witnessing it behind the scenes,” Smith says. Krzyzewski, who turns 75 in February, had long maintained he wouldn’t announce his retirement in advance, but he told the guys he wanted to be transparent with recruits about his intentions. He also liked the idea of having a clear succession plan in place. That meant asking the university to choose the next coach before the season started.
Upon hearing that idea, Carrawell spoke up: “I believe our next coach is in this room.”
All eyes turned to Scheyer. At 33, he was the age Krzyzewski was when Duke hired him in 1980. Unlike Scheyer, Krzyzewski had previous head coaching experience for five years at Army, but Krzyzewski strongly believed Scheyer was far more equipped to become the head coach at Duke than he was in 1980. Scheyer was a senior co-captain on Duke’s 2010 NCAA championship team, and he has been on Krzyzewski’s staff for eight years, the last three as associate head coach. They are fellow Chicago natives and kindred spirits, and they have talked many times over the years about basketball, life and the future. Yet until that moment, they had never discussed the possibility that Scheyer would be Coach K’s heir apparent.