ACC Notebook: A career in context
Jim Sumner, ACC Columnist
It's tough to come up with anything truly unique about Mike Krzyzewski and his record setting career.
That doesn't mean it's not awfully impressive. Do the math. Win 30 games for 30 seasons and you're only a few wins behind Krzyzewski.
Needless to say, 30 wins is pretty tough, 30 years is pretty tough. Combining them is really tough.
Full disclosure. I attended my first basketball game at Duke when Johnson was president; that would be Lyndon not Andrew. I was in the house when Duke Indoor Stadium became Cameron Indoor Stadium. I was there when students held up "Fire Bucky" signs. I was there for Gminski and Dawkins and Laettner but I was also there when Duke went 0-9 against Ralph Sampson, when Duke lost at home to Appalachian State and Wagner, when Cameron Indoor Stadium was considered an aging liability, not an icon.
So, I'm going to try and put Krzyzewski's accomplishments in some historical context.
For some reason, Vic Bubas and Bill Foster keep creeping into my mental narrative. Krzyzewski didn't invent basketball at Duke. CIS was named after Eddie Cameron for a reason Vic Bubas went 213-67 in his ten years at Duke, with Final Four appearances in 1963, 1964 and 1966.
But Duke fell on hard times in the 1970s. Duke went 76-82 from 1972-1977, 19-53 in the ACC. You know that ACC Tournament that Duke keeps winning? Duke went 1-8 over an eight-year period.
While this was going on, NC State was winning a national title, Lefty Driesell was sort of building Maryland into the UCLA of the East, Dean Smith was Dean Smith, Virginia and Clemson were building programs, although Clemson's Tates Locke was cheating like crazy to get there.
These schools all had something in common. All were large, state-supported universities, with large student bodies and large alumni bases, most of whom tended to stay in state.
Contrast Duke. The once proud Duke football program was beginning a long, painful decline and many thought hoops was following. The fan base was too small, the academic standards were too high, the infrastructure was outdated. Duke basketball wasn't just bad, it was irrelevant.
But then Foster struck gold, going from the 1977 ACC cellar to the 1978 NCAA title game. For three years, Duke was back.
Then Foster was gone. He always enjoyed building a program more than sustaining one. When South Carolina came calling, he packed his bags.
It's hard to overstate the shock felt when Foster was replaced by 33-year-old Mike Krzyzewski. The school newspaper headlined "Coach Who?" Krzyzewski was 73-59 at Army, 9-17 in his final season there, a virtual unknown. Surely, Duke could do better than Mike something-or-other.
Krzyzewski inherited some upper-class talent from Foster and went 17-13 his first year. But his first two recruiting classes were almost complete wash outs, resulting in 10-17 and 11-17 seasons in his second and third seasons in Durham.
To put that in context, Duke had posted one 16-loss season in the previous 75 years. After three seasons, Mike Krzyzewski had posted the worst and second worst seasons in Duke basketball history. Counting his last season at Army, he was 45-64 over four years.
Yikes.
Clearly, the three-year Foster run was an aberration and Duke basketball was indeed past its prime.
This is where the obligatory Tom Butters praise comes in. But it's true. The Duke AD actually received death threats for refusing to admit his mistake and move on. No one would have blamed him for making a change.
Instead, he gave the embattled Krzyzewski an extension. He knew what he had, an insight that shouldn't be undervalued.
Krzyzewski never looked back. The Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, Jay Bilas, David Henderson class began their Duke tenure with that 17-loss season and ended with a 37-3 season and a gut-wrenching loss to Louisville in the title game, an epic journey that no Duke class since then has been forced to replicate.
What makes Krzyzewski so successful? His players talk about his commitment, his intensity, most of all his passion. His ability to articulate and sell a vision may be his greatest asset.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm and all that.
But there’s more.
I once asked a program insider the secret of Krzyzewski's success. The response? "He has the best time-management skills of anyone I've ever met."
Those are words to storm the beaches. "C'mon boys, let's take that hill and organize things."
Not the response I expected. But all the passion in the world isn't going to get the job done in the absence of competence. And the man knows what he's doing.
Any successful person needs to balance core principles with flexibility. We've heard a lot about the former. Is there anyone who doesn't know about the fist, who doesn't know that Duke basketball would play man-to-man defense descending into the gates of Hades?
But the latter part of the equation is sometimes ignored. Krzyzewski is a master at sculpting his team to its talents. Duke made the 1988 Final Four with 6-5 Robert Brickey jumping center. The following two seasons, Duke made the Final Four starting twin towers. Nine different Duke players started at least five games in 1991, as Krzyzewski probed and tested, mixed and matched, finding the right combinations.
We know how that season turned out.
Duke ran its way to the 2001 NCAA title and walked to the 2010 NCAA title, the latter with a converted shooting guard running an offense of staggering efficiency.
How long will this go on? In some respects, Krzyzewski has mellowed over time. He's a grandfather many times over and the technical fouls don't show up all that often anymore.
But I don't sense any decline in his competitiveness. He can still blister a half-time locker room with the best of them. Deep down, he still hates to lose as much as he did when he was starting out and that drive has carried him a long way from the streets of Chicago. Health and passion are the two variables. Given those, he could keep this up for some time and set a Cy Young-like mark that may never be challenged.
A lot has changed at Duke since those woeful days in the middle 1970s. Duke has leveraged Krzyzewski's success into an infrastructure boom that NBA franchises envy. The school is still small, the academic standards are still high and even in its home city, Duke is surrounded by fans of the lighter blue persuasion.
None of this was inevitable or even likely. But it happened.
Required Reading
A veteran writer's take on the ACC.
Holy Cross trounces Boston College. So does UMass.
Steve Lavin compares Mike Krzyzewski to John Wooden.
What I Knew
Boston College lost virtually everyone of consequence from last year's 21-13 club and replaced them with a lineup longer on numbers than lofty prep rankings. So, we knew Steve Donahue was faced with a major rebuilding job.
What I Should Have Known
But this big? BC lost to Holy Cross. By 22 points. This would be the Holy Cross of the Patriot League, a league which only gives need-based scholarships.
Stat of the Week
0. 902. 904 and counting.
Zero is the number of games played in the NCAA Tournament by the United States Military Academy, aka Army. The latter two numbers are the college wins of the two men who were head coaches at Army from 1966 through 1979. Ironic, much?
I'm not going to go all be-the-best-you-can-be on you. But think recruiting at your school is tough? Imagine telling top prepsters they've got a five-year military commitment looming on the horizon. Might be a reason for that NCAA drought. But it appears to be a pretty good way for hall-of-fame-coaches to learn their trade.
An early bright spot?
Mid-majors killed the ACC last season and this year is off to a
shaky start. The league proclaims itself as the nation's best
basketball league at every opportunity. Historically, that
may be true. The ACC has dodged some early bullets.
Boston College 67, New Hampshire 64 comes to mind. But Holy
Cross and Iona have posted RPI-draining wins against the
ACC.
The best early news comes from Wake Forest. Ordinarily, wins by an ACC school over the likes of Loyola or Georgia Southern wouldn't be very impressive. But it's an improvement over last season's Deacon train wreck.
Sumner's Take
Enough already. How can every college freshman basketball player dream of playing in the NBA, if there's no NBA to dream of? I realize the NBA Players Association isn't Pipe Fitters 101. But destroying a union is so last century. Work it out.
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