I would say that because of Cal, Kentucky is probably the most unstable program in the history of the NCAA.
Just because the guy brings in great recruiting classes year in and year out doesn't mean the basketball program is stable. Next years Kentucky team will not be like last years team. They will be much worse by most accounts.
Cal is now rumored to be a packaged deal with LeBron. If he leaves Kentucky will all of his recruits jump ship? That isn't a stable situation either.
My idea of stable is a stable coach is one that is never leaving, one who has a steady flow of talent coming in and out of the program and not just a steady flow of one and done's. Kentucky's program is anything but stable.
Not trying to be a smart aleck, but is our down decade 2000-2009, with 1 NC and 2 FFs? Or are we going for say 1995-2004 with 1 NC and 3 FF? I get lost sometimes.
I see in seasons ending 2000-2009 we won 291 games. Is that the tops?
For seasons ending 1995-2004 we won 276. I wonder if anyone tops us for either 10 year span.
I'd bet there are other much worse 10 year spans prior to Coach K. In fact, his first 10 years at Duke, I count "only" 231 wins (but four FF).
Easy source/link to check?
I am not sure why the UNC woes thread morphed into this, but here are my thoughts.
The first thing to remember is that Duke is bigger than its college basketball program. While I am typing this in my Duke 2010 NC sweatshirt I also understand that Duke is a great world class university. In my opinion Coach K is one of the two best college basketball coaches of all time. The next coach will probably not be as good. The program will suffer some. However Duke will still be a great world class university. So as fans and alums we will need to accept that whomever it is, it will not be another Coach K but life will go on.
I would expect that the hire will have high expectations for himself and the program. However as fans we need to be realistic. I look at UCLA post Wooden. Not sure that some of their fans even today accept that they can't win NCs every year.
Lastly I think Coach K is operating at perhaps his highest level right now. Last years coaching job was magnificent. I expect that he will leave the program in very good shape.
SoCal
True... I guess I was responding to the poster who stated that Duke has a recruiting advantage over other schools because they have a stable program. Duke has many recruiting advantages, but to a player who only plans on being somewhere for a year, having a coach that will be there for a while doesn't matter so much.
I did not write internal hire as is the subject line of your post. I wrote from within as in from within the program. Bucky was the head assistant for Bubas before going to WVU, and I believe was his first choice as replacement. I consider that hiring from within the program just as I would any of Coach K's former assistants, as opposed to hiring totally outside the program.
We agree on the coin toss.
Last edited by 77devil; 05-17-2010 at 02:41 PM.
I believe the Sage was referring to 2000-2009 which is commonly, but inappropriately, referred to by many pundits as a down decade for Duke basketball, notwithstanding the most wins of any D-1 program, because of their perception that Duke's performance in the Big Dance after 2004 was sub par.
You answer some of your own questions. Roy Williams should not be compared to Mike Krzyzewski (arguably, for many reasons, but I'll stick to one)... Roy is already the successor to Carolina's legend. So if anything... we should be comparing him to Wojo.
If coaches are going to be compared, we should stick to the parallels... Dean and K both inherited very good programs that probably weren't considered elite (although McGuire did win one for Carolina whereas Bubas and company did not). And then Dean and K raised the programs and became legends in their own right (one recently cementing himself ahead of the other, if he wasn't there already).
Roy is Carolina's third act, if you will. The comparisons to K are certainly fair because they overlap timewise and K is obviously still coaching at a very high level. But what Roy means to Carolina is more than that... it's a continued success at the level our own legend achieved. Duke has yet to cross that bridge. Carolina fans, petty as it may be, take pleasure in knowing that there has not been anyone to come out of the Duke program to have the success that Roy maintained at Kansas. Quite the opposite, in fact, when you look at Missouri and Michigan.
So we (or at least, I) acknowledge that K is now closer to Wooden than he is to Dean... and so long as Duke goes the way of UCLA and doesn't sniff a championship for twenty years after... well, I can live with that.
Oh, and I'm disappointed that the Wears transferred.
Well, that depends on what you mean by "sniff." UCLA did make an appearance in the 1980 final that was later vacated when the NCAA uncovered an inability to control the cheating there by UCLA's coach.
I'd have to check what coaching tree that guy represented, though.
Yes, there were stories to that effect at the beginning of the season: Duke won the most games during the period 2000-2009.
It was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, because prior to the 2010 season so many supposed experts had pronounced Duke a sinking ship, permanently surpassed by UNC, and a shadow of its former self. I was, in fact, referring to 2000-2009, mostly because I didn't have comparison data for earlier decades.
sagegrouse
Roy was born with a coaching silver spoon in his mouth. His first head coaching job is at Kansas, a school that like Duke and UNC does not have to go looking for players...players come begging to them. So Roy's resume says Kansas and UNC...wow! Who couldn't be successful coaching at those two schools?
I contend that had Roy started coaching at a South Dakota State or Army or Ball State or any one of hundreds of the non-power basketball schools none of us would even know Ol Roy even existed. Chances are he'd be a salesman at Pennys.
Roy's a great recruiter but he ain't much of a coach.
First I want to acknowledge your interesting post. I've not excerpted all of it, and I've no doubt you'll catch hell for something - just on general 9F principles.
Second, this thread sure has morphed. If my post needs to be moved, move it
Third, I'll be surprised if any Duke poster isn't pleased at an acknowledgement from a Heel as to K's being "ahead" of Dean, and moving into Wooden territory.
I guess it's just no good even questioning Wooden as the greatest, though it's been done, based on.... well, it's a big argument, for later.
But let's say, for argument's sake, that Wooden is tops, easy. Under that argument ["easy"], is K actually "closer to Wooden than he is to Dean"? Is that true?
FWIW, and to return the compliment in reverse direction, Dean Smith was a great, great basketball coach, IMO the most creative X/O and situation-strategy planner ever. Maybe he didn't invent all the following, and maybe not all of these were actually good for the game, but: save timeouts, jump-trap-D, using sideline as 3d defender, 4 corners, back tap on FTs, huddle, long-throw-to-halfcourt-quick-timeout, 2-for-1 shots at endgame.... and probably 5-10 more I just can't remember right now.
That K probably is right now generally thought to be ahead of Dean, possibly approaching Wooden, is remarkable.
K has accomplished more than Dean did as far as NC's go and soon- all-time wins. However, he isn't the innovator that Dean was. K is a great coach and will go down as one of the all-time best and he may end up being considered the best of the modern era. Not sure if Dean is part of that modern era though. I would say the modern era was the beginning of the 90's and while Dean coached to 97', Smith was in his prime in the 80's.
Dean was 66 when he retired and I'm sure had his reasons, but I thought that change in eras had something to do with his decision to step down.
A lot of what Dean Smith did involved having players for 4 years...the freshmen carried the projector and did menial jobs, there was a system and style that took a while to learn, and seniors were given great respect and privilege. It was hard for him to adjust to players staying just 3 years, and then just 2 years, or choosing a college but ending up in the draft.
On a slightly different note, I don't think Dean would have handled the 2009-10 version of the Tarheels the way Roy did...would have been more flexible in style, would not have criticized players publicly, and would likely have headed off chemistry problems. Good chance the team would have been better for it.
Two of Dean's greatest innovations were the shot clock and the 3-point shot, and I was there. It was the ACC final against Virginia and Ralph Samson in 1982 when Dean made his big move. UNC had a one-point lead, and Virginia was playing zone. UNC refused to run a play against a zone and simply held the ball for what seemed like two or three months.
So, we had the spectacle of the two best college basketball teams just looking at each other and doing nothing. I am sure the networks went berserk over it.
Anyway, the next year (at least as I remember it) we got the shot clock. And then Dean made a strong case that the shot clock would just result in packed-in zone defenses unless there were also a 3-point shot. So college hoops got the 3-point shot as well.
Pretty good innovation, Deano, for an afternoon of doing nothing -- literally.
sagegrouse
You may well be right. But ask Tubby Smith just how easy it is to maintain excellence at a blue blood. By all accounts, the epitome of class and a wonderful teacher, but not an elite coach. He took a championship level program and turned it into Sendek's N.C. State squads. If all it takes is to have a silver spoon, Kentucky wouldn't have Calipari right now. Roy was handed two of the best programs in history... and he kept them two of the best programs in history.
While I agree Roy has been particularly blessed, I disagree with the evaluation of Tubby Smith...who averaged more than 26 wins per season at UK, had several SEC championships, and a National championship. He had difficulty reaching the final four and had a couple of ten loss seasons, unacceptable at UK, but not NC State worthy bad. I agree he dropped them a step over his last few seasons, but not very far.