Duke's Scheyer ready for leadership role

Duke's Mike Krzyzewski says his experience coaching Team USA has taught him to be more open to change, and if he learned anything in the past year, it is that Jon Scheyer is the Blue Devils' unquestioned leader with the ball in his hands.

"We probably should have been playing with Jon leading our team from the start of the season," Krzyzewski said Sunday at the ACC's Operation Basketball in Greensboro, rather than just the final dozen games, "because we were really good. ... He should have been given the opportunity to just lead us."

Because Scheyer, a 6-foot-5 senior, had to adjust to that role during the season, he was less prepared for how defenses attacked him (see: loss to Villanova in the NCAAs Sweet 16) than he will be this season, both he and Krzyzewski said Sunday.

Scheyer noted that he's had the entire offseason to prepare mentally for his role as Duke's primary ball-handler.

"I've worked really hard on my ballhandling and ... to learn how to attack different types of defenders," he said. "I know teams are going to try to pressure me, try to wear me out, so I have to be in better shape. I need to make it as easy as I can breaking their pressure."

The demands on him also are greater this season because Duke simply doesn't have as many guards.

"In the past, we had five or six guards. I would say we were a quicker team," Scheyer said Sunday. "This year, we're a bigger team. That's not good or bad. It's just different, so we want to play the game inside more."

Gone are Greg Paulus and Elliot Williams, the latter a promising freshman who transferred to Memphis after last season. Swingman Gerald Henderson, Duke's best player creating shots for himself, left early to enter the NBA. The Charlotte Bobcats took him 12th overall in the first round of the draft.

That leaves Scheyer and Nolan Smith as the only guards with any real major-college experience. With a thinner backcourt, Scheyer said, Duke won't extend its defense as much and will focus more on keeping opposing players out of the paint.

He also expects a more confident Smith to ease his burden.

worked hard during the offseason."

Just in the nick of time, Andre Dawkins also has arrived.

"He definitely can give us firepower off the bench. He's really strong, and he can score," Scheyer said of the freshman, who enrolled at Duke a year earlier than expected.

Scheyer said he's aware of the talk that Duke has slipped in the overall college basketball scene but insisted that the team's expectations have not.

"I don't want to feel like we have to make up for last year or the last two years, because we don't. We've had good seasons. At the same time, we want to do more."

He said the Blue Devils, who have not made it to the Final Four since 2004, can actually play better together at the end of games.

"We don't necessarily have a player like Gerald who could create on his own," Scheyer said. "... I don't think that since I've been here we've really had that full togetherness that when something goes wrong we've been tough enough to say we're going to win no matter what. That starts with leadership."

And that starts with him.