NORTHBROOK, IL — Dave Weber wanted to give his team some rest.
It was in the middle of the 2005-06 season and instead of a regular practice, Weber opted for a shootaround inside the Glenbrook North High School gym.
But senior Jon Scheyer wasn’t interested in rest.
Weber put one minute on the clock with simple instructions: make 10 threes in a minute.
Scheyer did it, no problem. So Weber continued to up the stakes. And the clock.
Two minutes, 20 threes. Three minutes, 30. All easy for a young Scheyer.
“What’s next, coach?” he asked.
By five minutes and 50 threes, Weber decided it was enough. Spectators had gathered in the gym, watching as Scheyer drained shot after shot.
“No, I want to shoot more,” he told his coach.
Weber stayed firm.
“He would have stayed in the gym all night and shot,” Weber told the Fayetteville Observer. “He probably could’ve rested a little more, but that wasn’t in his DNA.”
Scheyer finished his high school career with 3,034 points, still fifth-most Illinois history. His accomplishments remain preserved inside Glenbrook North, most notably in a trophy case outside the main gym that houses his No. 30 Duke jersey, Mr. Illinois Basketball award, game balls and other reminders of all he accomplished during his high school career.
Walk a little further and go down the athletic hall, where a photo of Scheyer from his senior year of high school stretches along the top row with other “Spartans Athletes of the Class.” In the main gym, the 2005 state champion banner Scheyer helped deliver hangs on one end. On the other, a banner hangs dedicated solely to Scheyer and his accomplishments.
“He took over that city. He took over the state pretty much,” said Jim Miller, the former Carbondale coach who faced Scheyer in the 2005 title game – a game where Scheyer scored 27 points to lead Glenbrook North its first state title.
His current role as Duke basketball coach has brought Scheyer back to his Chicago-area roots to lead his Blue Devils against Arkansas in the United Center for a Thanksgiving Day clash some 25 miles from the gym where Weber once had to force a teenage Scheyer to rest.
The ultimate competitor
Scott Lidskin remembers playing a simple game of P-I-G with a young Scheyer in his backyard, except it was anything but simple. An hour-and-a-half passed and the two were still going, draining shot after shot.
“I’m like Jon, do we just want to stop?” said Lidskin, who coached Scheyer after first meeting him as a 5-foot 7-year-old.
Nope. The game continued, until Scheyer won.
“It’s just how he is,” Lidskin said. “He’s been competitive about everything in his life, and that’s why he’s so successful.”
At age 7 or 8, Scheyer was drawing up plays in his family’s suburban Chicago kitchen, jotting his ideas down in a notebook to later show Lidskin. Some eventually made it into the team’s playbook.
Years later, Scheyer borrowed one of those old plays for his first game as Duke head coach, one that ended in a Kyle Filipowski dunk.
“After the game, the first thing he said to me was, ‘How’d you like the first play?’” Lidskin said. “It was hysterical.”
When Lidskin visited in 2010 while Scheyer was recovering from eye surgery following an injury playing in the NBA’s summer league, he played a game of Monopoly with Scheyer and his family.
The outcome was not in Scheyer’s favor.
“All right, buddy,” Lidskin told Scheyer. “I gotta get back home to the kids. I’ll see you later.”
“Nope,” Scheyer replied.
And they continued to play until he won.
The prankster: ‘Classic Jon’
Following Duke’s 2010 national championship, Scheyer took to Twitter to celebrate.
“Holler at meeee!” he tweeted with a phone number. Only it wasn’t his – but the number of former Glenbrook North teammate Zach Kelly.
Sean Wallis, a former high school teammate and childhood friend who played college basketball with Kelly at Washington University in St. Louis, was with him at the time.
“Zach’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing,” Wallis said. “He still gets texts to this day of people thinking he’s Jon.”
In November 2024, Scheyer brought his old teammates and coaches to Cameron Indoor Stadium to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their state title. They played a game, saw the Blue Devils play and toured the facilities.
But Scheyer had a special twist: he brought the group into the film room and had them watch highlights – and lowlights – from their high school season.
“There’d be six plays of me making a three, making a great pass, all this stuff,” Wallis said. “Then it’s me dribbling off my foot, air-balling a shot. Classic Jon.”
High school phenom
Glenbrook North was playing at the prestigious Proviso West Tournament during Scheyer’s senior year with coach Mike Krzyzewski and then-Duke assistant Chris Collins in attendance. Facing a large deficit in the fourth quarter, the Spartans were on the verge of losing their 35-game winning streak that dated back to their state title win.
Coaches began packing up, but Scheyer wasn’t finished.
In 75 seconds, he scored 21 points – hitting 3-pointers, getting steals, finishing layups and converting and-ones. He fouled out to a standing ovation, finishing with 52 points.
Exhausted and dehydrated, Scheyer passed out in the locker room afterward and had to go to the hospital to be administered fluids. A few points shy of the single-tournament scoring record when he fouled out, Scheyer was determined to return and break it.
So, he did, returning by halftime of the Spartans’ next game straight from the hospital. He scored six points to set the record at 140.
“There was no way to hold him back, ever,” Lidskin said.
And while an elite player, Scheyer was an even better teammate.
“If Jon was on your team, you felt like you belonged on the court and could beat anyone,” said Michael Rubio, who played with Scheyer at Glenbrook North.
It’s those qualities that led Scheyer to Duke, where he played for and eventually succeeded Krzyzewski. In his first three seasons leading the Blue Devils, he notched 89 wins, tied for the most by a Division I coach in the first three years, and became the youngest head coach since 2011 to lead his team to the Final Four
For those who know him, they knew there was no other way his journey would unfold. And when they watch him on the Duke sideline now, they still see the same competitive teenager that once couldn’t stop knocking down threes in the Glenbrook North gym.
“Not only is he a special coach, but he’s a special person,” Lidskin said.
Anna Snyder covers Duke for The Fayetteville Observer as part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at asnyder@usatodayco.com or follow her @annaesnydr on X, formerly known as Twitter.
