Lessons To Be Learned?

[peteandpete]

I have an honest question and would appreciate some feedback. I spent 30 years as a public school teacher, coached high school athletes, and consider myself a lifelong learner. Having majored in psychology, I tried to apply knowledge about how we learn to help my students be more successful. Coach K has talked about the importance of relationships in his approach to coaching. My question is related to the changing composition of his teams in the last few years. How does he evaluate his performance? What lessons, if any, are valid from year to year? How does he decide what is more helpful to allow his players to be successful - figuring things out for themselves or giving them a specific play in certain situations, for example. As a teacher, I certainly felt the conflict of addressing required standards with brand new students with different abilities from year to year (but I didn't get to recruit). Evolution and comfort are often uneasy bedfellows and I admire his ability to interact so well with young people as he ages.

[weezie]

pete, I think you answered your own question. No matter how he's being knocked about by critics, he's got an unshakable faith in his guys and vice versa.

Loyalty, effort and integrity, that's what K sells better than anyone on the college coaching scene. One loss might sting but he won't allow those players to be defined by that loss and he will always, always be standing behind them.

For decades he has told all of us that each team is different, but that the Duke mantle is a heavy one. Each team figures it out as best as they can, some better than others.

[johnb]

I have an honest question and would appreciate some feedback. I spent 30 years as a public school teacher, coached high school athletes, and consider myself a lifelong learner. Having majored in psychology, I tried to apply knowledge about how we learn to help my students be more successful. Coach K has talked about the importance of relationships in his approach to coaching. My question is related to the changing composition of his teams in the last few years. How does he evaluate his performance? What lessons, if any, are valid from year to year? How does he decide what is more helpful to allow his players to be successful - figuring things out for themselves or giving them a specific play in certain situations, for example. As a teacher, I certainly felt the conflict of addressing required standards with brand new students with different abilities from year to year (but I didn't get to recruit). Evolution and comfort are often uneasy bedfellows and I admire his ability to interact so well with young people as he ages.

I don’t know if the coaches do a formal self evaluation during or after the season.

I also don’t know what they actually think of any players, or how they adjust their coaching/counseling based on what they know of them. The coaches say certain things, and I doubt they lie, but there is simply no way they are being transparent.

I don’t know how well or how much K interacts with his players. They seem to respect him, but I don’t hear much from them that is different from what division 1 players tend to say about their coaches. They use the term GOAT, which is reasonable, but they don’t critique. Ie, players hardly ever say anything that is critical of a coach or a teammate, and that’s especially true of Duke, which is notoriously tight lipped. When I was at Duke, I didn’t hang with the athletes, but I had personal info about prominent athletes (data observed by me from random dorms and parties) that were never revealed. The coaches and players simply don’t talk.

One difference between Duke b-ball and your role as a teacher: Duke gets judged by how many games it wins in the tournament, banners, revenue, and those reminders of success that are flashed up on the sidelines in Cameron. This year, we won the ACC, marketed Duke successfully, avoided crises, and will add a couple of all Americans and one npoy to the flashing lights in Cameron. Nevertheless, the public summary is likely to be underachievement—if we really had 3 of the top 5 players in the country and an elite PG and a bunch of other elite recruits, why were the games even close? K is not judged the way you would be: externally, he is judged almost entirely by team success. This year, the team gets about a B+.

Another difference: Crude, rough, abusive behavior which would lead you or me to get fired seems to earn praise for guys like Izzo. As long as his teams win.

Another difference: great teaching can motivate a marginal student to competence (D to B). B players for Duke basketball don’t get into games. Did Robinson or Vrank improve this year? I have no idea, though they both looked pretty good when they went in. I guess we could say that the non freshman rotation players were B players, but they are only B players in the Duke universe.

The crux is just unknowable. Which players aren’t as good as the public thinks? Which players are jerks? Bad teammates? Good teammates? We simply never hear K’s 3D view on his players, though we did get a hint lately of what he thinks of Cam’s communication skills, at least when it comes to transparency about injuries.

As a teacher myself, success is complicated: transmission of info, good/professional behavior, identifying the details and working them over with the students, until the students absorb and move forward with more autonomy. Etc. and none of that ever gets a teacher a bannner (or an annual salary 10% of K’s), even if you’re lucky enough to recruit a whole bunch of students who are themselves winning banners.