Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski to retire at the end of upcoming season
Duke’s legendary men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski will retire at the conclusion of the 2021-22 season and associate head coach Jon Scheyer will be named the coach-in-waiting, the school announced Wednesday.
Krzyzewski, who turned 74 in February, is the second-longest tenured coach in NCAA Division I. He has amassed 1,170 wins and counting since first becoming a head coach at Army in 1975. He became Duke’s head coach in 1980, winning 1,097 games with the Blue Devils. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim is the longest-tenured, having just completed his 45th season with the Orange.
“My family and I view today as a celebration,” Krzyzewski said in a statement. “Our time at both West Point and Duke has been beyond amazing and we are thankful and honored to have led two college programs at world-class institutions for more than four decades.”
Krzyzewski will end his career as the winningest men’s basketball coach in Division I history. He has led Duke to 12 Final Fours and national titles in 1991, 1992, 2001, 2010 and 2015. With North Carolina’s Roy Williams stepping down in April, Krzyzewski’s retirement plan signals a new era for ACC basketball.
As with Hubert Davis replacing Williams at UNC, Krzyzewski will be replaced by a first-time head coach who was a former player. Scheyer was a starting guard on Duke’s 2010 national championship team. He’s been an assistant coach on staff since 2014 and was promoted to associate head coach in 2018.
“The continuation of our culture at Duke is paramount to future success,” Krzyzewski said in a statement. “That is why I am so grateful that President Vincent Price, Kevin White and Nina King determined that Jon Scheyer represents our best path forward. He is clearly ready for this opportunity and has shown it repeatedly throughout his playing career and as a coach on our staff the past eight seasons. Jon is a rising star in our profession and Duke Basketball could not be in better hands in the future.”
In addition to his success at Duke, Krzyzewski led the U.S. to three Olympic gold medals as head coach from 2005-2016, restoring glory to a program that had failed to win gold at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.
“I can say without hesitation that Mike Krzyzewski is the greatest coach in the history of men’s college basketball,” Duke president Vincent E. Price said in a statement. “This is clearly demonstrated by his tremendous success at Duke — 1,170 career wins, five national championships, 15 ACC tournament and 12 ACC regular season titles — and his service to our country as the head coach of USA Basketball.
Krzyzewski made his retirement decision with Duke coming off a 13-11 season where the Blue Devils missed the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995. That was the season Krzyzewski missed the final 19 games as he recovered from back surgery.
The Blue Devils played in the next 24 NCAA tournaments before struggling during the pandemic-altered season.
From Army to Durham, Coach K’s career
A Chicago native, Krzyzewski played college basketball at Army for head coach Bob Knight. It was Knight who held the record for most career coaching wins in college basketball, at 902, before Krzyzewski recorded win No. 903 on Nov. 16, 2011. He’s been the all-time record holder ever since. He became the first men’s Division I college coach to record 1,000 wins on Jan. 25, 2015.
Krzyzewski took over the Blue Devils after Bill Foster had coached them to a final eight appearance in the 1980 NCAA tournament. Foster left to become South Carolina’s head coach and Duke went 38-47 with no NCAA tournament appearances in Krzyzewski’s first three seasons.
When the Blue Devils were humiliated 109-66 by Virginia in the ACC tournament to end the 1982-83 season, Duke boosters wanted Krzyzewski fired.
But athletic director Tom Butters, who had hired Krzyzewski three years earlier, decided to retain him as coach. Duke made its first NCAA tournament appearance under Krzyzewski the following season and, by 1986, played in the Final Four where the Blue Devils lost to Louisville in the NCAA championship game.
That season started a stretch where Duke played in seven Final Fours in nine years, with five appearances in the national championship game.
Krzyzewski led Duke to its first men’s basketball championship in 1991 and followed that up with another NCAA title in 1992.
“Simply put, Mike Krzyzewski’s legacy – never to be repeated again – is truly mind boggling,” Duke athletics director Kevin White said in a statement. “To suggest that Mike has more than earned the ‘GOAT’ mantle within the coaching community, both domestically and globally, is perhaps the greatest understatement of all time.”
Over the years, as numerous NBA teams sought to lure him away from Duke, Krzyzewski stayed in Durham. The closest he came to leaving was in 2004 when the Los Angeles Lakers offered him a five-year, $40 million contract.
Instead, Krzyzewski stayed with the Blue Devils, proclaiming that his “whole heart” was at Duke.
Duke turned into one of college basketball’s all-time great programs under Krzyzewski. He’s led the school to 12 of its 16 Final Four appearances.
After back-to-back losing seasons in his second and third years with Duke, the only losing record the Blue Devils suffered since the 1982-83 season was in 1994-95 when Krzyzewski only coached the first 12 games due to his health.
Jon Scheyer, a Blue Devils all-American guard
Duke is entrusting another Chicago-area native to keep the program at this level of success.
Born in suburban Northbrook, Illinois, Scheyer was an all-American guard with the Blue Devils. A team captain as a junior and senior, he averaged 18.2 points per game during the 2009-10 season that culminated with Duke winning the NCAA championship.
An eye injury suffered in an NBA summer-league game cut short his professional career and Scheyer returned to Duke as a special assistant coach on Krzyzewski’s staff in 2013-14. Promoted to assistant coach the following season, Scheyer helped coach the 2015 NCAA championship team.
He became an associate head coach under Krzyzewski in 2018 and has become renowned for his recruiting prowess.
This story was originally published June 2, 2021 at 1:38 PM with the headline "Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski to retire at the end of upcoming season."