I really get nauseated with the constant fawning over Duke and Mike Krzyzewski.
There is no doubt that the coach and the program have among the best in college basketball for the last 20 years. But sometimes the attention and the homage just get to be too much. And I’m not only talking about Dickie V.
The latest example is Jeff Goodman’s column on cbssport.com, where “Coach K.’s Dukies” come in at #3 in the list of most impressive team accomplishments, behind only UCLA’s basketball dynasty and Butler’s back-to-back appearances in the Championship game. I don’t necessarily have an issue with the ranking. What gets me is the following statement: “However, what is also remarkable is the way Coach K built the program in Durham. It’s a team that won just 38 total games in his first three seasons at the helm and didn’t have tradition to fall back on.”
This isn’t the first time that I’ve read something like this. There seems to be a mistaken impression that Mike Krzyzewski built the Duke program from scratch. In the eighteen seasons before Krzyzewski took over the Duke program, the team went to four Final Fours, including two championship games, in addition to two Elite Eight appearances. Pretty solid for a program with no tradition. Moreover, in the three years before Krzyzewski took over, the team finished as follows under Coach Bill Foster: NCAA runner-up, NCAA participant, and Elite Eight participant. In Krzyzewski’s first year, the Blue Devils fell from 24 wins to 17 wins, followed by 10 and 11 win seasons. He was probably lucky that he survived his first three seasons; not many coaches would survive that type of start. (Of course the spin on that is that it took him three years to bring in “his kind of players”.)
Interestingly, Krzyzewski disciple Johnny Dawkins has had a similar start at Stanford. He took over a team that had won 28 games and gone to the Sweet Sixteen under previous coach Trent Johnson, and has so far managed 20 wins, 14 wins, and 15 wins – yet recently had his contract extended. It’s hard to believe that Stanford was unhappy with Johnson, who took the team to three NCAA appearances in his four seasons, but has been happy with Dawkins.
Again, I have no issue with Duke and Krzyzewski being considered among the elite, and arguably right at the top. But UNC has won just as many championships during this period, and Jim Calhoun has done a more remarkable job of program building, and won three championships to Krzyzewski’s four. For Pete’s sake knock the pedestal down to a realistic size.
