Mike Cagley, Co-Host Sports Spectacular

April 7, 2025

Duke locks up in a close game and loses after being outscored 11-1 down the stretch. They don’t get many opportunities to be tested in the weak Atlantic Coast Conference. If one wants a reason for Duke to try to get into a conference - either the Big Ten or the SEC (or even the Big 12), tougher teams that provide challenges during the regular season to prevent this type of loss would be a good one.

Meanwhile Illinois has lost Morez Johnson, Jr. and Tre White moved on to Michigan and Kansas respectively. The Portal Kombat season is in full swing!

Heat Check #1 – Is Underwood Devoid of a Plan? Maybe Wait to See How It Comes Together?

With the exits of Morez Johnson and Tre White, signs pointed towards another year of near total turnover for the Illini roster. It’s fair to want more continuity in rosters from season to season. This year’s final four shows that a solid nucleus of players returning results in a large positive impact on the chances for success during the season.

The signs for the Illini future got even more ominous when players pursued by the Illini in the portal chose to play for other teams. Watching Josh Dix leverage both Indiana and Illinois for a larger bag of money - all to pressure his preferred destination, Creighton, for even more money - was not a desired outcome.

When judging the offseason plan, what really counts is who the Illini end up with on their 2025-26 basketball roster. The staff has a list of players by position that they are working on – including players from Europe. It’s not a perfect world, so the staff must recruit multiple players at the same time (just like any other team does). It’s not like every player is on the same timetable for deciding. There will be days and there will be good ones. The timing is out of the staff’s control.

The staff is working on players that are ranked by position and priority. This means there really is a plan – and it is being worked. The 2024-25 Illini basketball team returned only Dravyn Gibbs-Lawhorn with his limited minutes. Yet with all the roster changes, the team was good enough to win a game in the NCAA tournament and tantalized Illini fans with possibilities until injuries and sickness limited the team’s overall potential.

Even as this Portal Kombat season moves forward, the Illini are mining the NCAA portal stateside - and leveraging European recruiting. This is the same European market where the Illini will soon be able to boast about having the school’s first one and done in the form of Kasparas Jakucionis. What fruit will this bear? No one is sure, but leveraging this success to maintain an Illini advantage in European recruiting seems to be a piece of an excellent roster building plan.

With the timetable of European tournaments and basketball league schedules, it may be in late May or early June when the team fully comes together. At that point, the roster will be mostly full (because in the portal era, the change seems never ending) and judgements on the plan and its results are warranted.

Until then, we’re all looking at a painting before it’s done. It might end up as a basketball Mona Lisa. Or it could be the basketball equivalent of a TruckStop black light painting. We don’t know now.

Why not buckle up and try to enjoy the ride?

Heat Check #2 – Jon Scheyer is Ryan Day

I’m convinced that Duke’s Jon Scheyer is the basketball equivalent of Ohio State’s Ryan Day.

Ryan was selected to be the Ohio State head football coach with a resume that was much lighter than his predecessor Urban Meyer. For example, Urban was head coach at Bowling Green, Utah and then Florida, where he won 2 national titles.

Ryan Day never had a head coaching position until he took over for Urban Meyer. It’s rare that the premier college football program in America hires a head coach with no experience as a head coach.

Since taking over, Day has done very well. He has a 70-10 record in 6 seasons. It took him until his 6^th season to win a national title – despite having what is arguably one of the top 3 rosters in the country for that whole time.

He has driven some crazy with his current inability to defeat Michigan. But this season the national title seems to have made that wound less painful for Ohio State fans. Would Ohio State have won one or two more with a more experienced coach? We will never know.

Duke hired Jon Scheyer to run what is the premier college basketball program in the country with a similarly weak resume. He has only coached since 2014, when he started as an assistant at Duke. Scheyer was elevated to Associate Head Coach from 2018 until 2022 when he took over for a retiring Coach K.

As head coach of the Duke Blue Devils, Scheyer will always be in contention for titles. According to the Wall Street Journal, Duke has a powerful NIL machine in place to continuously provide the Duke basketball program with the best talent in the country. Scheyer is also a charismatic recruiter in his own right. Adding his personality to the Duke machine will continue Duke’s blueblood status in college basketball.

Like Ryan Day, Jon Scheyer will win a national title (or more) because Duke will always be in the tournament and will always be one of the most talented teams. Scheyer’s challenge is facing coaches who came up the old-fashioned way, learning their craft at small schools and building up a Rolodex of experiences to draw upon when games get tough.

Scheyer is still at the place where the game is slowing down for him as a coach (like what happens for players when they move up to the next level). Sampson was able to take away Cooper Flagg and Scheyer didn’t notice the shots weren’t coming from the one player who could save the Blue Devils. The older coach who built his career one step at a time won the game with small details like press defense and the outstanding defense of out-of-bounds plays.

Scheyer couldn’t draw upon the experiences he built up by leading an Oral Roberts, or a Tulsa, along his career path. He couldn’t draw upon experiences gained while building programs at Bowling Green or Utah on his pathway to Duke.

Make no mistake, like Day, Scheyer will win his national title(s). He’s got too much talent and the machine around him is too efficient and effective to fail Duke. But it might take longer than one might expect.

If the head coaches had been reversed in Saturday night’s Houston vs Duke game, the Blue Devils would’ve won by 20 or more points. Sampson is that much better right now and that in large part is due to his experience.

This doesn’t mean Scheyer isn’t talented. It doesn’t mean he’s not competent. To make it simple, Scheyer at this point in his career doesn’t have the Rolodex of experience that many of the coaches who are vying for a national title possess.

He’ll obtain them, but the scars and learnings must be earned. Who knows, it might take six years for him to catch up and win that national title.

Time will tell.