Duke vs. Siena: Jon Scheyer, Gerry McNamara bring rare NCAA Tournament history

When top-seeded Duke faces off with No. 16 Siena in Thursday’s first round of the NCAA Tournament, the matchup will feature a March Madness rarity: coaches who won national championships as players. 

And in Duke’s Jon Scheyer and Siena’s Gerry McNamara, we have two millennial captains of the sharp-shooting, slick-passing variety. 

Scheyer was a multi-year starter and All-American for the Blue Devils whose best campaign came as a senior, helping propel Duke to a title-game win over Butler in 2010 with 15 points and five assists in the final. 

A two-time All-Big East guard at Syracuse, Siena’s McNamara hit six 3-pointers during a first-half barrage in the 2023 national title game against Kansas. McNamara scored 2,099 career points with the Orange, while Scheyer finished with 2,077 under Mike Kryzewski at Duke.

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This is only the eighth time in NCAA Tournament history that former players who won national championships in uniform will now square off during March Madness as coaches, according to CBS Sports Research. 

NCAA Tournament games between coaches who won titles as players

McNamara never missed a start during his career with the Orange and helped Syracuse capture a championship in 2003, with heralded freshman Carmelo Anthony and veteran Hakim Warrick alongside of him in the starting lineup. McNamara stayed four years at Syracuse and in his final season delivered a stirring Big East Tournament Championship, saving a Syracuse season that otherwise would have ended on the wrong side of the bubble.

Syracuse won four games in four days at Madison Square Garden, including an upset of UConn in the quarterfinals that went to overtime courtesy of McNamara’s one-legged three-pointer. 

Former Syracuse coach and college basketball Hall of Famer Jim Boeheim said he has watched nearly all of his former player’s games this season with Siena. 

“He’s easily the most popular player, I think, we’ve ever had. ” Boeheim said Friday on ACC Network. “We’ve had better players, but I think he’s the most popular player we’ve ever had.”

McNamara has led Siena to 23 wins this season, only his second at the program after he was hired in 2024 to resurrect a group that had lost 28 games the previous campaign. McNamara was previously an assistant Syracuse under Boeheim and his short-lived successor, Adrian Autry. 

“It’s a little easier today because of the transfer portal, but it’s still not easy,” Boeheim said. “He’s just done a great job. It’s really more a tribute to coaching than the transfer portal because he had to make so many adjustments. He didn’t get five guys and then put them out there and they played all year and won. He got seven or eight guys, lost two or three. … He navigated that, and that’s what coaching is. I’m very happy for him.”

Scheyer and the Blue Devils are one of the NCAA Tournament favorites to cut down the nets in Indianapolis, fueled by production from various elite-talent freshmen. Scheyer led Duke to a Final Four appearance last spring and finished 35-4 overall, but this year’s team is tracking to best that mark as the ACC’s regular season and tournament champions.

Duke is the No. 1 overall seed in March Madness and is 126-42 (.750) all-time in the NCAA Tournament, marking the best winning percentage in tournament history by a team with a minimum of 20 games played, per 247Sports.

The Blue Devils have won 11 straight games entering the NCAA Tournament. Scheyer said Sunday that attempting to scale down the moment for his eight-man rotation, which is heavily first-year players without March Madness experience, is the objective before tip off.

“I don’t think ignoring it the answer, we just try to address it right away and normalize the fact [that\ this is what you wanted,” Scheyer said. “This is right where you wanted to be in position in the NCAA Tournament (as) the 1-seed. You’ve earned this opportunity. We talk about being present every day and what comes with the great parts, comes with how to handle the distractions. I would call them distractions, because there’s a lot of attention on it and that’s exactly what you want it to be.”

Duke opened as a 29.5-point favorite against Siena, one of the first round’s largest spreads, via FanDuel Sportsbook.