2022-23

Season Overview

For the first time since 1980, someone other than Mike Krzyzewski coached Duke basketball. Jon Scheyer — the Northbrook, Illinois native who'd captained the 2010 national championship team, joined K's staff in 2013, and been named head coach in waiting in June 2021 — took the reins of a program that had just played for a national championship with 42 years of institutional gravity behind it. He inherited a roster that bore almost no resemblance to the one that had reached the Final Four: Jeremy Roach was the lone returning starter. Seven freshmen joined the team. The expectations, impossibly, remained the same.

The freshman class was ranked #1 nationally. Dereck Lively II (the consensus #1 recruit, a 7-1 center from Westtown School in Pennsylvania) was the headliner — a rim-protecting, alley-oop-finishing defensive anchor whose blocked shots would become the team's signature. Kyle Filipowski (#3 nationally, a 6-11 stretch center from Wilbraham, Massachusetts) provided the offensive counterpart — skilled in the post with an expanding perimeter game. Dariq Whitehead (#4 nationally, a 6-6 wing from Newark, New Jersey) was supposed to be the team's best perimeter scorer, but suffered a right foot fracture in August that kept him out until late December. Mark Mitchell (#19 nationally, a 6-8 forward from Kansas City) brought athleticism and versatility. Tyrese Proctor, an Australian guard who reclassified from the 2023 class, joined Roach in the backcourt. Graduate transfer Jacob Grandison (from Illinois) and senior Ryan Young provided depth.

The season was a rollercoaster that tested Scheyer's resolve at every turn. Duke opened ranked #7, beat #1-ranked Oregon State-bound Gonzaga — wait, no. Let me correct: Duke opened with a loss to Kansas 69-64 at the Champions Classic, with both Whitehead and Lively still injured. They beat Purdue 75-56 without those two as well, showing defensive promise. By early December, they'd lost to Illinois too. The early results without key players suggested a team still finding itself.

When Lively returned in late December, the defense transformed. By February, Duke was 16-0 at Cameron Indoor Stadium — including a signature performance against North Carolina on February 4 that crystallized the team's identity. Lively had 8 blocks and 14 rebounds, Roach scored 20, and Duke's suffocating defense held UNC to 57 points in a 63-57 victory that felt like a statement of program continuity under the new coach.

But the road was a different story. Duke lost at Wake Forest, NC State, Clemson, Virginia Tech, and Miami (an 81-59 blowout). The most painful road loss came at Virginia, where Duke appeared to have a go-ahead dunk from Filipowski that was controversially disallowed, leading to a heartbreaking overtime defeat. The Blue Devils simply could not replicate their Cameron dominance away from home.

On February 15, Jalen Johnson — wait, that was 2020-21. In this season, the controversy was different: road inconsistency and the pressure of following a legend. Scheyer navigated it with a maturity that surprised skeptics. His defensive coaching was elite — Duke led the ACC in blocked shots during conference play (4.9 per game), with Lively leading all freshmen nationally at 2.4 blocks per game despite averaging just 20.6 minutes. His emphasis on ball movement created stretches of offense that were, at times, breathtaking — a clear departure from K's more iso-heavy late-era approach.

The regular season ended with a sweep of UNC — Duke beat the Tar Heels 62-57 in Chapel Hill on March 4 behind a 22-point effort from Filipowski, with Proctor and Mitchell both scoring in double digits. Not a single player from the previous year's team returned for this rematch, and yet Duke swept the rivalry. It was Scheyer's first signature accomplishment: proving that the program's identity transcended any individual roster.

The ACC Tournament in Greensboro became the crowning achievement of year one. Duke entered as the #4 seed and demolished Pittsburgh 96-69 in the quarterfinal — a 27-point blowout where Scheyer emptied the bench. In the semifinal against #1-seed Miami — the same team that had beaten Duke 81-59 during the regular season — the Blue Devils shot 50% from three and 84% from the foul line. Dariq Whitehead, finally healthy after his August foot fracture, scored key late first-half points. Duke won 85-78.

The championship game against Virginia was a defensive masterpiece. After the gut-wrenching overtime loss at Charlottesville that could have broken the team's spirit, Duke held the Cavaliers to 49 points — Virginia's lowest output of the season — and won 59-49. The Blue Devils claimed the program's 22nd ACC Tournament championship, and Scheyer became the first person in conference history to win the tournament as both a player (2010) and a head coach.

Duke entered the NCAA Tournament as a #5 seed in the East Region, riding a 10-game winning streak — the longest by a power-conference team entering March Madness. They handled #12 Oral Roberts 74-51, with Roach scoring a career-high tying 23 points and Lively pulling down 12 rebounds with 6 blocks.

Then came Tennessee.

The fourth-seeded Volunteers brought a level of physicality that Duke's freshmen simply weren't ready for. Within the first two minutes, Uros Plavsic had committed two offensive fouls against Filipowski — and within six minutes, Filipowski was on the bench receiving medical attention for a bleeding wound under his eye. Tennessee's Olivier Nkamhoua scored a career-high 27 points, including 13 straight during a decisive second-half run. Duke shot 6-of-22 from three and managed just 52 points. Mark Mitchell, Duke's starting small forward, missed the game with a knee injury suffered in practice the day before. The Vols won 65-52.

'We ran out of gas down the stretch,' Scheyer said. 'You have to really work for everything in a game like this.'

The loss stung, but the season told a larger story. Scheyer had taken a team with seven freshmen, three significant injuries (Whitehead's foot, Roach's toe, Lively's early-season conditioning), and the impossible weight of following the most successful coach in college basketball history — and produced a 27-9 record, an ACC Tournament championship, and an NCAA Tournament appearance. Not a single player from the Final Four roster transferred. The culture held.

Lively declared for the NBA Draft and was selected #12 by the Dallas Mavericks, where he immediately became a key rotation player. Whitehead went #18 to the Chicago Bulls (traded to the Atlanta Hawks). Mitchell considered the draft but returned. And in a development that would define Scheyer's early tenure, every other significant player — Filipowski, Roach, Proctor, Baker, Mitchell — came back. Zero players entered the transfer portal. For a program that had spent a decade cycling through one-and-done rosters, the retention was unprecedented.

The returning core would form the foundation of the 2023-24 team that reached the Elite Eight. The Scheyer era had begun — imperfect, physical, and absolutely alive.

After a devastating overtime loss at Virginia earlier in the season — where a controversial disallowed dunk could have changed the outcome — Duke got its revenge in the most important game. The Blue Devils held the Cavaliers to 49 points, Virginia's lowest output of the season, in a defensive masterpiece that validated everything Scheyer had built in year one. Duke claimed its 22nd ACC Tournament championship, and Scheyer made history: the first person to win the ACC Tournament as both a player (2010, when he captained K's title team) and a head coach. The win capped a 10-game winning streak that included demolishing Pittsburgh, beating a Miami team that had embarrassed Duke during the regular season, and now shutting down Virginia. 'You guys were winners,' K would tell this team at the season-ending banquet — high praise from the man whose shadow Scheyer was supposed to be trapped in.