Coach K to retire
- Thread starter freewillie07
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Along with all the other Duke assistant coaches who have left.
The spotty track record of former K assistants is kind of remarkable. Is Brey the only one to have had sustained success?
Duke is a crazy if it goes with this idea that you MUST 'keep it in the family." That program is too valuable to blindly take on someone who grows into the gig. Is it maybe that nobody wants to be the guy who follows K?
The Duke family choice gets a bump of supporter rah-rah for a couple years, then you're Indiana for the next ten years if you're mediocre.
The Duke family choice gets a bump of supporter rah-rah for a couple years, then you're Indiana for the next ten years if you're mediocre.
Man.... if I were a Duke fan, while I knew this day was coming soon, I would be pretty nervous that the best days are behind.
Exactly. K is a special coach, one of the 4 or 5 best coaches of all time. Duke isn't going to become NU basketball, but the run of success they've had the last 30 years will not be duplicated.
I'm of the opinion that great players make great coaches. The teams who win national championships ALWAYS have great players. Coach K and Coach Izzo didn't have them last year and didn't go anywhere. Sometimes teams like Loyola make a run, but they never win the title. When Loyola won the title in 1963, they had great players. So, if Duke hires Scheyer, their future success will depend primarily on whether he can continue the Duke recruiting tradition. It's pretty tough to remember a national champ that didn't have great players. Was John Wooden a great coach or did he recruit great players?
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "great players". Are they the best individual scorers? The players with the best handle? Or is it the players who combine to give the team a good chance at being successful? I'd suggest those things are related, but they aren't one in the same and I'd guess that we'd agree that the team with the most great players isn't necessarily the team that is going to win.
When it comes to college basketball, great coaches get great players. Coaching at the college level seems to me to be about how well you build and manage an organization as well as how well you can do X's and O's. There is clearly a reason why some programs emerge, but then when the coach leaves, they start to crumble. Coaching matters.
Coaching matters, but not nearly as much as in the NBA. There is often a substantial talent discrepancy between Duke and the teams they play. I think this is the reason the Coach K coaching tree has not had much success. X's and O's are not nearly as important when you can have Zion or RJ Barrett, Kyrie Irving etc. just run an ISO when you need a bucket.
I actually think Collins would have been "fine" if he ended up getting the Duke job after we made the tourney. If you give him (or any average coach) NBA talent every year then you're going to win games. Collins can recruit to NU he would have had zero problems recruiting at Duke.
See, I don't entirely agree. I think you guys are undervaluing the importance of the head coach. While we can't do the proper experiment to really test this idea, we can look at some examples of how coaching changes impact a program. For starters, if the coach didn't matter, then why do some programs get better when they hire a new coach, and then slip back again when that coach leaves? As for the big name programs - maybe they do sell themselves and anyone could take over, but I doubt it. We have certainly seen examples of new coaches at big name programs appear to do well at first, but then not be able to sustain the same level of consistent success? I think of UConn here after Calhoun retired. Kevin Ollie came in and won a National Championship in his first year! But then, very quickly, the program began to crumble. Pretty soon, UConn wasn't even sniffing the NIT and the university was desperate to get out of his contract. Other programs like Louisville after Pittino left have struggled to maintain the same level of success. Indiana after Knight is another obvious one. I don't think Duke will maintain their level of excellence either. I guess we get to find out!
Those are fair points. I think coaching matters just not to the same extent as in the NBA where every roster has outstanding talent. The counter examples to your point is Kansas. Roy Williams was considered a great coach (he also always had NBA talent). Bill Self took over and they are still an elite program that had no drop off. Now, maybe you can argue that Bill Self is also an elite coach. But what about Michigan? Michigan has one of the most iconic brands in sports (not just college) and they didn't miss a beat with Juwan Howard who is making his head coaching debut and took over for a "master tactician" I think coaches who come from Duke have a hard time adjusting to not having NBA talent as a safety net.
I think another advantage a program like Kansas has (and the same could have been said about Duke if they hadn't already announced their in-bred succession plan) is that they will appeal to the best coaching minds in the country. Kansas went from one great coach to another. Maybe the same is true for Michigan, but I really want to wait another year or two and see where Howard is once all of Beilein's recruits are gone. Let's see him develop his own guys. Dickinson looked like a great start, but the jury is still out.
Duke is one of the 4 or 5 best coaching gigs and they'll attract a top 4 or 5 coach to replace him.
That's an interesting comment (best coaching minds want to go to Duke) and one that seems to make sense on its face. But if that's the case, then why do those coaches "fail" when they become head coaches at other programs? I really think that they get used to relying on their superstars. Having Zion is the ultimate safety net when you're game planning.
I truly believe Collins would have been perfectly fine coaching at Duke.
Well... we're all going to get to find out over the next few years if just anyone can coach a program like Duke. Might be fun!
Yup. BTW - I appreciate the dialogue. Now that I'm stuck at home during COVID and can't have one too many beers at the bar and argue about sports, places like this become even more important. If we ever meet in IRL, Jameson on me!
Only 2 of Michigan's starters last season had ever played for Beilein (Livers and Brooks) and only 2 other rotations players (Austin Davis and Brandon Johns) had as well.
Hunter Dickinson, Franz Wagner, Mike Smith, Chaundee Brown, and Terrance Williams were all transfers or Howard recruits. And considering the massive leap up in quality of recruits he is bringing in, seems like he will not be hurting for talent to work with.
While with anybody you never know til you know, seems unlikely Howard will have anything other than a high level of success at Michigan. This past season was the program's highest rank of the KenPom era.
He'd be crazy to take that job. Sort of like moving to a mid-major in college ball.
I just stating that the would not likely be for the AD role as it was likely after what happened that the next up was more likely to be a minority or woman. I suppose that I could have said because he is old but that is a protected class as well. (it was meant as a joke in the first place as he has other things to do with his life and I could not see him coming to be our AD)
he's just the hot name that every NBA opening will throw out forever. This week he asked NBA teams to stop calling him because he isn't even considering listening to their offers.
How did Tommy Ammaker work out at UM?
Speaking of TA, there's was an article (think it was SI) which argued that Dook made a mistake in hiring Scheyer without taking a look at the HCs from the K-tree.
The article included Ammaker, Dawkins, Capel, etc. (not exactly a who's who list of HC success), but no mention of CC.
Arguably, CC has done more than those 3, but guess all that losing since the Tourney season really puts a stink in how you're perceived.
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