DURHAM, N.C. — The night before his first game against North Carolina, at least his first one as Duke’s head coach, Jon Scheyer participated in a familiar ritual. He met with the students — 3,000 of them, he said — inside Cameron Indoor Stadium, and delivered the de facto keynote address of the annual informal gathering that always takes place the night before the Blue Devils’ home game against the Tar Heels.
Scheyer’s predecessor, Mike Krzyzewski, began the tradition years ago. It’s a way for Duke’s highly visible men’s basketball program to connect with those who sometimes spend weeks in tents for this one game, and one night, and now it was Scheyer’s turn. He spoke of unity, “and being in this together,” he said, and the scene here on Friday night was still on his mind, 24 hours later.
By then the adrenaline still must have been running high. As a player at Duke, Scheyer experienced four years worth of games against UNC. He was on the Duke bench, as one of Krzyzewski’s assistants, for eight more seasons. Now, though, it was different: his first UNC game as a head coach. The first one he could take ownership of, as the leader of a program he first joined as a teenager.
