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This past spring, the annual coaching carousel was very slow, mostly due to the pandemic of course.
It may speed up quite soon as one Power Five coach has already been fired, another may be in trouble and one more prominent coach isn’t looking too secure.
We’re talking about Penn State’s Pat Chambers, Wichita State’s Gregg Marshall and Arizona’s Sean Miller.
Chambers has already been fired, Marshall is in trouble for alleged abusive behavior towards players at Wichita and previously at Winthrop, and on Friday, Arizona received a Notice of Allegations from the NCAA, which certainly puts Sean Miller’s future in peril.
Why do we mention it?
Because one of the prime candidates for any major job is going to be Duke assistant Jon Scheyer.
Our guess is that Scheyer believes that he could be in line for the Duke job at whatever point Mike Krzyzewski retires, and the guy clearly has a lot left in the tank.
On the other hand, Scheyer is still young at 33. The Duke job holds immense advantages - it’s in the ACC, there is a powerful legacy that stretches back much longer than most people realize and the facilities are off the charts. We’re not talking about just Cameron but everything from the practice gym to cutting edge nutrition and sports medicine and more technological advantages than most people have any idea of.
Still, he wouldn’t be the first young assistant who decides to strike out on his own rather than wait for the job to open up. Denny Crum did it at UCLA and Mike Hopkins did it at Syracuse. Shoot, Jeff Capel might have done it at Duke.
The bad news for all three schools is obvious. The good news, if they end up pursuing a new coach, is they have all the time in the world to look for replacements. Anyone who doesn't pursue Scheyer, universally seen as one of the most promising assistants in the country and who has learned from the GOAT since he was 18, is basically guilty of malpractice.