Jon Scheyer’s 21 points in 75 seconds: Inside the 52-point game he’s still not over
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Scott Powers
In 2005, Scheyer seemingly had it all — except a Proviso West Holiday Tournament title. His pursuit of that trophy is the stuff of legend.
CHICAGO — Jon Scheyer is synonymous with Duke basketball. The 38-year-old has spent a bulk of his adult life as a Blue Devils player, assistant coach or, now, head coach.
But before Scheyer wore Duke blue and white, he was one of Illinois’ greatest high school players while wearing Glenbrook North green and gold. Though Scheyer didn’t have the NBA career to match some of the state’s greatest prep players, he became a legend through his accomplishments at the northern suburban Chicago school and the attention that followed.
Do Scheyer’s current Duke players know all of this?
“No way,” Scheyer recently told The Athletic.
Scheyer’s legacy was largely sealed by his senior season at Glenbrook North. High expectations already surrounded Scheyer as he arrived as a freshman. He lived up to the hype as a 6-foot-6 guard who could do a lot of everything — but especially score. By his sophomore season, he was all-state. As a junior, he led Glenbrook North to a state championship. He signed to play at Duke as his senior season began.
Scheyer seemingly had it all. However, one accomplishment eluded him: a Proviso West Holiday Tournament championship. Of course, he wanted another state championship — Derrick Rose and Simeon Academy would later eliminate him in the state quarterfinals — but Scheyer really wanted to put a bow on his high-school career with a Proviso West tournament title.
“The only thing I hadn’t won was Proviso West, so I was determined going in,” Scheyer said.
That determination manifested in a 75-second performance that cemented his place in high school basketball lore in Illinois and beyond.
(Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images)
Name a great high school basketball player from the Chicago area, and they probably played in the Proviso West Holiday Tournament. Mark Aguirre, Isiah Thomas and Glenn “Doc” Rivers played at the tournament in the 1970s. Other memorable players include Hersey Hawkins, Jeff Hornacek, Michael Finley, Juwan Howard, Corey Maggette and Evan Turner. Kevin Garnett and Ronnie Fields put on a show at the tournament. More recently, Jalen Brunson was the headliner.
Scheyer took it in as a spectator long before he was a participant.
Joe Spagnolo, Proviso West tournament administrator, 1981-2013: Everybody wanted to see good teams, but when you had special players, you had tremendous atmosphere, and that was what we tried to do. We always tried to get players that were going to fill the seats, whether it was Corey Maggette or whether it was Jon Scheyer or Ronnie Fields or Kevin Garnett. That’s what the fans wanted, and that’s what made the event even better. It made it unique, elite, and it was certainly the best of its kind back at that time.
Scheyer: I love history in general. I love sports history and I love Chicago basketball history. So, I think that plays such a part in it, when you grow up and you go to see New Trier-Westinghouse at Proviso West, and you remember that, and you go see these other games, and then you get to be a part of that tournament.
Glenbrook North had been playing at a different holiday tournament but switched to Proviso West just as Scheyer arrived.
Dave Weber, Glenbrook North coach for Scheyer’s four years: Jon was coming in as a freshman the next year, and I went over to Proviso West and I met with Joe (Spagnolo) and I sat there and I watched a couple games. I was like, “Oh, my gosh, we’re going to get killed in this.” But I was like, “We got to do it. We have to do it.” I went home that night and I talked to our athletic director, and he says, “No way, you cannot do it.” But I did it and it turned out good.
Glenbrook North ended the 2004-05 season atop the state rankings and was still there when the Proviso West Holiday Tournament arrived in late December 2005. The Spartans entered as tournament favorites, on a 34-game winning streak and ranked No. 1 in the area.In the opening round, Scheyer scored 27 points as Glenbrook North defeated Leyden by double digits.Up next was Proviso West, the host school, on Dec. 28, 2005.
The gym was packed, with a reported 4,300 people attending. Scheyer drew crowds, but playing Proviso West at its own tournament added to the stage. Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was even left looking for a ticket. His assistant coach, Chris Collins, who also played at Glenbrook North, was responsible for setting it up.
Tommie Miller, Proviso West’s coach: When they came into our gym, I knew that they hadn’t lost a game in a year and everybody doubted us. No one gave us a chance because of what Glenbrook North were at the time. I myself, I still got the suit that I wore that night to the game. It looked good. I wore it to church this summer. It look good. It was kind of an all-white suit. Something told me that I should not fear. I just felt good about that game.
Spagnolo: (Collins) goes, “We’re going to need three seats.” I go, “Why do you need three?” He goes, “Well, I need one for me, I need one for Coach K and I need one for the pilot because they’re taking a private plane in.”
Glenbrook North discovered early that it wasn’t going to be an easy night. Proviso West’s athleticism and aggressive full-court pressure bothered the Spartans. The Panthers led early and kept themselves in the game. The score was tied 49-49 after three quarters.Scheyer wasn’t having the best game, either. He had just 4 points in the third quarter and had 24 points going into the fourth. Proviso West’s Taurese Stinnett was mainly guarding him. It’s a responsibility he wanted.
Proviso West began to pull away as the fourth quarter went on. Scheyer scored a few more buckets, but he wasn’t breaking through, and his tournament championship hopes were fading. Glenbrook North trailed 71-58 with 1:24 remaining. Scheyer had 31 points.
From there, Scheyer created a folk legend. He hit two free throws. He made a 3-pointer while being fouled and sank that free throw. Seconds later, as Glenbrook North pressed, he stole the ball, scored a layup while being fouled and made that free throw.
Just like that, Scheyer had scored 9 consecutive points, and Glenbrook North was down by just 4 points with 1:10 left.
Stinnette: You’re always up for the challenge. They were No. 1 in the state. So I was pretty excited to play those guys. I underestimated Jon. I was waiting for him to more so dribble, blah, blah, blah, but he really knows the game.
Weber: I took my whiteboard and I gave it to the manager. I thought the game was over. I said, “Put this in the bag.” All of a sudden, he started hitting all these shots, and I’m like, give me that whiteboard again. It was just amazing.
Scheyer: I would call it desperation mode because it truly came down to wanting to win. That’s really what was behind it.
Scheyer was just heating up.He made two more free throws. He dribbled up the center of the court with one defender chasing him and another approaching him and pulled up a few feet behind the 3-point line. On the next possession, he stepped through two defenders and nailed another 3. Adding to the lore, the video on YouTube appears to show Scheyer making the 3-pointer with his left hand. However, the video was flipped horizontally, so the off-hand shot was merely an illusion.
Scheyer: I didn’t shoot it left-handed. Unless I’m making s— up, but I’m almost positive it was right-handed. … It’s still kind of a crazy shot because I picked my dribble up and two guys were on me, still stepping through and shooting that regardless.
Glenbrook North pulled within 2 points three separate times during that stretch, according to the Chicago Sun-Times’ report from the game.Scheyer could have cut the advantage even further, but he missed the first of two free throws on Glenbrook North’s next possession.
Scheyer hadn’t accepted defeat. He had one more shot in him. Within a few feet of crossing half court, he let go of a shot with a defender in front of him, and that fell through the net just as the others had.
Miller: He lost the game when he missed that free throw. It took the momentum away. If he hadn’t missed that free throw, we probably wouldn’t have stopped him.
Scheyer: I definitely remember the one from deep because they kept picking me up further and further. You know the funny part, looking back on film, my teammates are standing with their arms wide open. I said, “If you haven’t gotten the picture of what’s about to happen, guys, after the last 40 seconds, I don’t know what to tell you, but I’m shooting this one.” I felt like I’d make it.
Weber: I wasn’t coaching. I was watching like everyone else.
Zach Kelly, Glenbrook North forward: Honestly, like it was amazing, but it was also kind of we’d been watching Jon our whole life, and it wasn’t shocking. We kind of thought he could do the unbelievable on the court.
Darious Watson, Proviso West guard: It seemed like everything was going slow, and the only person who was moving fast was Jon Scheyer. No matter where we looked, no matter where we went, he was already right there in that last 75 seconds.
Scheyer likely would’ve added a few more points to his final tally, but as he attempted to dribble around a pressing Proviso West defender_, he was called for charging for his fifth and final foul. Scheyer was in disbelief, extending his arms with his palms out at the referee. He remains in that state today._
Scheyer: That wasn’t a charge. You can’t call it in that moment. And 20 years later, I’m not over it still because I still felt like we were going to find a way to win. I think we were down 4 at that time, and you go to the free-throw line, you got two free throws and it’s a one-possession game. And so I’m not over it after 20 years.
Stinnett: That was a little sus’. I’m not going to lie.
Kelly: It’s too bad he couldn’t pull it off and win it. I really do think — you don’t want to put too much of a negative spotlight on it — but that foul call towards the end really just got in the way of … even if we would have lost with Jon still staying in the game, I just would have loved to have seen how it would have ended with him with zero on the clock.
Miller: It almost hurt me when he fouled out. And the ref who fouled him out. I didn’t even like that guy. He did some terrible games for me. It was a call that I wouldn’t have called, and I would have been upset if I got that call. But I’m surprised that ref gave us that call.
As Scheyer walked off the court, nearly everyone — even Miller and some of his players — applauded him. He finished with 21 points in the game’s final 75 seconds. He scored 28 of Glenbrook North’s 30 points in the fourth quarter. He finished with 52 points, breaking Ronnie Fields’ single-game tournament record of 51 points.
Weber: That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. The whole place, everybody, their fans, our fans, everybody that came to see that, I’ve never seen a visitor get a standing ovation like that. That was a very memorable moment in my coaching career. I was clapping for him, too. I was like, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe you just did this.”
Spagnolo: I had been there working the tournament back into the late ’70s before I was in a management position. I saw all these great players. No one ever got a recognition like that.
Watson: I was so relieved. I’ll be honest with you. I felt calmer, I would say, about the situation. He was just unstoppable for those 75 seconds.
Leave it to Chris Collins to lighten the mood.
Collins: Jon and I are really close, and he’s like a little brother to me. And being from the same high school, we used to talk a lot of trash to each other about who was better and all these things. Jon pretty much had broken every record that I had at the school, but I still had one, which was most points in the game, and I used to talk trash to him like crazy. I had 54 in the York holiday (tournament). So, I was hanging on to that by a dear thread and I just kept yapping at him, “You’re never going to get 54.” Just so happens we’re at the game and he scores the 21 in a minute, and I think he’s sitting on 52. And then they had the bang-bang play at half court where the kid jumped in front of them and it was a block/charge. And if they call the block, he’s going to make the two free throws and tie the 54, and if they called the charge, he fouls out, and the referee called a charge. Everybody in the crowd was booing except me. I was going nuts because the record stood and I could live to see another day.
Scheyer didn’t have perspective at the moment. He just knew he fell short of his goal of winning the Proviso West Holiday Tournament.
Scheyer: That night, I didn’t realize what happened, and I would’ve never fathomed that we’d be talking about this game 20 years from now because it was the most upset I’ve been after any high school game I played. Period. Like, I was devastated.
Miller: That was probably the best game of my coaching career.
Scheyer: I regret — I was so disappointed, I was crying so hard. There were a lot of people that were waiting for me after the game, and I felt embarrassed that we had lost, so disappointed. I didn’t shake people’s hands or take pictures. So for me, that was a lesson ever since then. Like, no matter what happens, just thanking people for coming, shaking their hand after the game. And little did I know, Jabari Parker is one of those guys that was at the game. Jabari told me that years later that he was there in the crowd and was waiting for me afterwards.
Though the Proviso West tournament title evaded him, Jon Scheyer won the NCAA national championship with Duke in 2010. (Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images)
Parker, who was 10 years old at the time and later created his own Illinois high school basketball legacy before playing at Duke, wasn’t actually there. He wished he was there.
Parker: I was at the game either after or before. But as soon as it hit the headlines, it was like the holy grail, because the only thing that you’ve seen, like it wasn’t on social media, so the only way we knew about it was on the newspaper or everybody saying, “Man, you missed a good game. He had like 21 in like 30 seconds.” So, luckily, I think we went back to the holiday classic and bought the DVD. So, we bought the game, and I had the game on the disc, and that’s when I saw it.
DVDs of that game got around. Proviso West sold the originals, but so many bootleg copies floated around. That’s how current basketball agent Daniel Poneman, who was a high school student and publisher of an Illinois high school basketball website, saw it.
Poneman: I remember meeting Dan Laffee (a well-known high school basketball fan). He said he has all these DVDs. The one thing I asked was I need a DVD of the Jon Scheyer game at Proviso West because I wasn’t there and I need to watch this for myself. And I got those DVDs; he gave me like eight copies of the DVD. It was like grainy footage. It’s like you heard that it happened, but you couldn’t believe that it was true because it just seemed too impossible. Like that many points and that short of time, how could that even be true? Until you see it for yourself, like, “Oh, my god, it’s actually happened.”
Jalen Brunson: You saw the video, and it was nuts. It’s crazy. … He’s definitely one of the best. I wasn’t living there when he was playing, but when I got there, you always heard stories how he played, what he did for his team and his area. Definitely on the Mount Rushmore.
Fans poured into Proviso West the next two days to watch Scheyer, even though Glenbrook North was in the consolation bracket. He scored 41 points the next day in a win over Fenwick. His body was drained from the week. But he also was three points away from breaking Ryan Hogan’s record of 140 points in a single Proviso West tournament.
Scheyer: I remember being exhausted the next morning when I woke up and I could barely walk, actually, and I got rushed to the hospital. I think probably there’s a part of you that knows you got a chance to break a record and all that, which is great motivation, but also I prided myself I’d never missed a game in my life and I didn’t want to start then. Even in my college career, I didn’t miss a game, so I was really proud. I was just doing whatever I could to get back, and I got one IV bag. I said to my dad, “Let’s go,” and my mom sat my ass down and said, “You stay for the second bag, you’re not going anywhere.”
Scheyer got the second bag and went straight to Proviso West. He joined the team at halftime and scored 6 points in the second half to finish the tournament with 140 points.
Scheyer finished his high school career with 3,034 points, ranking fifth in state history. He was every Chicago-area publication’s player of the year as a senior. He was also voted the state’s Mr. Basketball and selected to play in the McDonald’s All-American Game.
Recognition for his 21 points in 75 seconds followed him for a while. On WGN-TV in Chicago, he was asked to do various tasks in 75 seconds. After arriving at college, he agreed to a similar ask from a Duke improv group.
Twenty years later, Scheyer has much more perspective on what he did that night at Proviso West and why it’s still remembered long after the fact.
Scheyer: The Duke improv one, looking back now, I’m like, “Oh, God, just take it down, please.” Take it off so nobody can see it. But it was really funny. It cracks me up that it became such a thing. I think the further out it goes, the more you realize scoring 21 points in a minute 15 seconds is a hard thing to do.
One of the first games we ever played at Proviso West was against Whitney Young. I remember this big guy from Whitney Young — I go to shoot it, and he blocks my shot with his elbow and it follows through and smacks me in my nose. That was one of my first experiences. And then you go a few years later and you’re breaking Ronnie Fields’ record.
It truly came from the love of the game, the respect for the players, the teams and the history of Chicago. For me, that’s really special and is always gonna be really meaningful to me, being able to be a part of Chicago history.
