With An Elite Eight In Year Two, Jon Scheyer Is Pretty Elite Himself
This is pretty impressive company
There are those who are critical that Duke lost in the Elite Eight this year, but a sense of perspective is helpful: Jon Scheyer got to the Elite Eight in his second year and at the age of 36. That’s really extraordinary. How extraordinary?
Consider the following list of Hall of Fame coaches and how long it took them to match or exceed Scheyer’s run. Roy Williams and Tom Izzo are the closest.
There are different circumstances of course.
Bob Knight and Mike Krzyzewski started at Army and there was never a chance that Army was going to get to the Final Four. Knight got there in Year Two at Indiana and Coach K made it in Year Six at Duke.
Some guys, like Jay Wright and Tony Bennett, also started at schools that have a tough time in March (Hofstra and Washington State), while others (John Thompson and Jim Calhoun) started at afterthoughts Georgetown and Northeastern.
But then there’s John Wooden who started at UCLA in 1949 when you started in your natural geographic region and the field was much smaller. Undeniably brilliant, Wooden didn’t make a deep run until 1962.
You can argue too that, well, Scheyer took over at Duke and that’s an easy platform to make a deep run. Well, yes and no.
Duke is the biggest brand in college basketball but Scheyer, as we have discussed previously, only had two players back from Mike Krzyzewski’s last team. For a still-young coach to get a very young team to the Elite Eight in his second year is a spectacular accomplishment. We didn't do a comprehensive search - you could argue Steve Fisher at Michigan, for one - but as far as we know, no one else except Hubert Davis has ever matched or exceeded what Scheyer just did and only Bob Knight got that for, or in his case farther, at a younger age (Knight took Indiana to the Final Four in just his third season).
- Roy Williams: 3
- Tom Izzo: 4
- Dean Smith: 6
- Billy Donovan: 6
- John Calipari: 7
- Lute Olson: 7
- Bill Self: 7
- John Thompson: 8
- Bob Knight: 8
- Rick Pitino: 8
- Scott Drew: 8
- Tony Bennett: 10
- Mikę Krzyzewski: 11
- Jim Boeheim: 11
- Jim Valvano: 12
- Jay Wright: 12
- Dan Hurley: 13
- John Wooden: 14
- Jim Calhoun: 17