After spending a final season as understudy to Mike Krzyzewski before taking over the top job at his alma mater, one of Jon Scheyer’s first official acts as head coach of the Duke Blue Devils was to schedule a scrimmage to see just what kind of makeup his initial team had.
His first call, his only call, was to Houston Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson. Scheyer didn’t just want an easy warmup to build confidence in a group of young five-star freshmen mixed with a handful of veterans held over from the Final Four run a year prior, he wanted to test his team. He wanted to push them. He wanted to exhaust them.
