A Tale of Two Coaches

The annual rivalry game between Duke and North Carolina has seen countless battles. From Walter Davis’ buzzer beater and Jeff Capel’s half court prayer, and every game in between, it goes without saying that this the top rivalry in college sports. The players come and go and the student’s matriculate and graduate, but the constant is the passion that this game creates and the fervor that the fans have toward the game. As a native New Yorker and confessed Duke fan, I’ve decided to take a look at this year’s game through the looking glass of Roy Williams and Mike Krzyzewski.

My brother Russell is a life long referee and now is an athletic administrator in Milwaukee. When he was in high school, he was registered with the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials (IAABO). When he was a junior in high school, he would referee inter squad games between local colleges. One weekend the United States Military Academy (Army) was having one of their regional barnstorming Black and Grey games and my brother called the game. That is when he encountered a rising star in college basketball named Mike Krzyzewski.

Time would pass by and my brother would attend college at the birthplace of basketball, Springfield College in Springfield, Mass and serve as the team manager for the Men’s basketball team. As the team manager, his duties involved facilitating and accommodating the teams that would come in for the annual preseason Hall of Fame game. In his sophomore year, the North Carolina Tar Heels were on the ticket. As he would make sure the facilities were up to snuff for UNC and their demigod of a coach Dean Smith. One of his key duties was to make sure the brand new balls, were not too brand new and to take them outside and get them broken in. He received these orders from one of Dean Smith’s emissaries, Roy Williams.

I started memorizing and internalizing college sports (and statistics) when I was able to stay up late in 1985 and watch the epic NCAA Final between Georgetown and Villanova. My brother had came home that weekend and was due to graduate shortly after that game and my mother allowed me to watch the game in its entirety with him. It was then I became hooked on college hoops and all I needed was a team to cheer for. But we’ll get back to that later.

Mike Krzyzewski only lasted at Army for a few seasons and headed to Durham as the new head coach of the Duke University Blue Devils. The dean (no pun intended) of college basketball coaches at that time rested only eight miles away. At the time North Carolina State was the chief contending rival of the Tar Heels after Duke which had seen some final four glory in the late 1970’s faded in the by 1980. Needless to say, Mike Krzyzewski took his fair share of lumps in his initial years at Duke. A funny thing happened on the way to Humilityville, he started to win, and win a lot. Those wins brought about a new culture at Duke. Student’s turned Humilityville into Krzyzewskiville, and a coaching star was born. His name would be Coach K.

In 1990 after a string of Final Four appearances, Duke got blown out by a freakish team in UNLV. And coincidentally, that’s when I started to like them. Maybe it was because of my boy I went to military school with grew up with Bobby Hurley in New Jersey. He would try and play like Hurley and always tell a story about him. He was white but you couldn’t tell him he wasn’t a brother. Maybe it’s because of my stats teacher was Coach K’s company commander at West Point. Col. Reed was the man, and I can see him making Coach K assume the front leaning rest position. Or maybe it was my family friend that went to UVA and pledged a fraternity with Grant Hill’s best friend. It was probably when his best friend paged Grant from my house and Grant called him back on my house phone. All of those things and the winning made me a Duke fan for life.

Kansas had won the national championship in 1988 with Danny Manning acting a fool on the court. That dude just dominated! After KU’s success, Larry Brown left, and a new coach was to be hired. KU hired the the assistant coach that gave my brother the distinct basketball ball “breaking in”direction; Roy Williams. He was a career assistant at North Carolina and a junior varsity player for the Tar Heels during his collegiate days. Needlesstosay, he was primed for a prime coaching gig, and it doesn’t get more primetime than KU. Roy Williams was in the big time. He was no longer Roy Williams. He was now Roy. And it didn’t take long for him to meet his mentor’s new nemesis.

To get to that nemesis, Roy must face his mentor in the 1991. Dean v. Roy; Teacher v. The Student. Bill it however you want, Roy’s team lead by Adonis Jordan and Rex Walters was too much for the Tar Heels and Dean got two technicals in the process of losing to his alma mater and student. Kansas was on track to win their second championship in three years and the only thing standing in the way was Roy’s inbred enemy, Coach K and the Duke Blue Devils.
Unlike the blowout the Devils faced the year before in the finals, Duke had someone no other team in the nation had; Grant Hill. Bobby Hurley made sure everyone in the arena and viewing public knew that Duke had a leaping gentleman on their team and at the end of the day; Roy got worn out by Coach K in a singular tense. This was the start of a beautiful “non-friendship.”

Time passed and Roy would dominate the Big 8 and then Big 12 conference. First came a lightening quick guard from California named Jacque Vaughn, then a mid west biggun in Raef LaFrenz, and then Roy’s version of Grant Hill signed with the Jayhawks in Paul Peirce, and with that, Roy had assembled one of the best basketball teams of the 1990’s. It’s just they could never get back to the NCAA finals and the media would attach a monkey on Roy’s back that would grow into King Kong.

Coach K rode his Final Four success to 1994 losing to Nolan Richardson and hisForty Minutes of Hell, Arkansas Razorback squad in my new adopted hometown of Charlotte, NC. I was a student at UNC-Charlotte when they played and was crushed when Scotty Thurman hit that crucial jumper over Antonio Lang. When Thurmond hit that shot, he brought Duke into a reality that took years to address. The mediocrity that followed was due to Coach K hitching his wagon to three semi-decent guards that all coach in college basketball now (go figure). It got so bad in 1995, that a bad hip and worse recruiting sent him packing for a season and sent Duke from the penthouse to the outhouse in less than eighteen months.

Kansas was rocking. Jeff Boshee could hit jumpers from half court it seemed like and in 1997 Kansas had one of the best teams of the 1990’s barring two years of dominance by UNLV and two years of dominance by Michigan’s Fab Five (sans National Championship). Scot Pollard, Craig Ostertag, Raef LaFrenz, Jacque Vaughn, and Paul Peirce all would play at least five years in the NBA, yet in 1997, Arizona behind Mike Bibby and Miles Simon went on to win the championship, surprising all who had either KU or UNC in their bracket (I had Vince Carter, Ed Cota, and Antwan Jamison).

The college game grew more individualistic in regard to AAU scoring clinics posing as AAU games. Coaches, sneaker pimps, and runners flooded to see the new marvels jump and score in bushels. Dick Vitale, Nike, and ESPN made college basketball too hot for TV, and the recruits knew it. In the grand scheme of things, it became apparent that coaches needed players more than players needed coaches. And with that notion out of the closet, the game had finally caught up with Dean, causing his surprising retirement. His loyal assistant Bill Gutheridge would take UNC back to the Final four and he then would retire. Over 30 years and two coaches later, and a strange denial of a coaching offer from Roy, UNC turned to another alumnus who was budding into a star in the coaching ranks, Matt Doherty, a former Roy Williams assistant. Doherty would lead football power Notre Dame to the top of the Big East, and when UNC came calling, the echoes and Doherty were gone.

Coach K had to rebuild and re-recruit the type of player that was cache in college basketball in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. He didn’t have to stray too far from his model of getting kids from two parent households, but did stray to get William Avery and Elton Brand (who is from my county in New York). Straying gave Coach K his first taste of modern internet age college basketball and those two would be the first to leave Duke early for the NBA draft. There was quid pro quo for Avery and Brand. They got Coach K to the NCAA Finals and positioned themselves for the NBA lottery. As mentioned before, Coach K needed them more than they needed him. Coach K really hasn’t been the same since.

Matt Doherty was a train wreck at UNC. To be completely fair, he did go to one Final Four during his three year stint on the Hill. But he also lost 20 games in one season and that was all she wrote for Matt Doherty. In 2003, loaded with Sean May, Raymond Felton, and Rashaad McCants, UNC made a move for their native son. It made sense for Roy as well. He was just finishing up getting beat by Carmello Anthony and Gerry Mac and Jim Boeheim’s traveling circus in the 2003 NCAA Final’s, and the King Kong on his back were too big to handle. Kirk Heinrich and Nick and Nick Collison were leaving KU, and he had nothing really coming in. Time is now. The time had come for Roy to head home to Chapel Hill.

Their initial encounters went Coach K’s way and lead Coach K to his last Final Four in 2004. Roy was just starting. He took the players that Doherty recruited and yelled at too much at (that’s what I heard) and made them play the up tempo that Adonis Jordan and Jacque Vaughn made famous. In time he got Coach K’s number and in 2005, he won it all. There went King Kong and there went Coach K’s advantage.

Roy went on to own Coach K. His prize player Tyler Hansbrough only lost to Duke twice in four years and never lost in Cameron Indoor. Sports radio chatter in Charlotte had grown to be unbearable. It took only a little while and Roy had a powerhouse again just like at KU. But one thing would always come up, especially among fans in the know. Did he earn it? Roy unlike coach K never built a program. He never coached at an Army or something comparable. He went to KU and UNC, two of the top five winningest programs in NCAA basketball history. Where was the sweat equity? Where was the long bus rides? Where was the getting paid to get beat by a power house? Could you faulty a guy for taking the KU and UNC jobs? Wouldn’t you take them? One can’t fault George W. for being born a Bush, and one can’t fault Roy for going to, playing JV for, and assistant coaching at UNC.

Now comes the 2010 meeting of Roy and Coach K. UNC was a buzz saw in 2009 and didn’t even make the games close in the tourney, except for LSU. Duke was average at best, with an average point guard so average that he went to play football at Syracuse this year. Roy was supposed to be sitting in the catbird seat this year with his army of All-Americans coming in. One of his All Americans was supposed to be a ‘one and done’ player.Coach K has a team of upper classman and Roy has a team of generally new players.

There’s one thing that is new though. Roy isn’t winning. He isn’t winning with kids that weren’t supposed to be projects, but were to reload the buzz saw that was of 2009. Great expectations or great hype? Now we get to see coaching at it’s finest. Coaching between the two of the greatest to ever done it, if you believe the media. One coaches at a school that educates the world’s priveledged and the other coaches at a school of the North Carolina’s priveldged. One coaches to a fan base of blue shirts and khaki pants wearing fans. The other coaches a fan base of ultra rowdy future Wall Street barons. The Prince and the Pauper... You decide who is who.