In 1994-1995 season he coached till mid season, and abruptly quit and had hip surgery. In that way, nobody could blame K for the bad season. Duke finished 13-18 that season including 2-14 in the conference play. That team featured 5 Big Mac AAs - Cherokee Parks, Trajan Langdon, Ricky Price, Steve Wojo, Chris Collins. Can you name the one player who was nicknamed 'sissy' because he screamed so loudly after he made a trey? http://www.dukeupdate.com/Seasons/19941995_duke_blue_devils.htm
BTW, even this season, Duke has 6 McDonald's AA on its roster, ReDick, Dockery, Paulus, Boateng, McRoberts on its roster. If someone wants to blame Duke's loss this year on lack of talent, coach K needs to convince a couple of high school blue chips to walk-on on Duke's team. The following is a list of high school AAs (42) that played bball at Duke since 1978. They got 24 AAs in the last 12 seasons and was only able to produce 1 title plus another FF appearance. I do agree that K's legacy is mainly built on the incredible plays of Laettner, Hill, and Hurley in the early 90s. And Duke was unbelievably lucky during those two title runs including a Laettner buzzer beater that eliminated UK in 1992. http://www.dukeupdate.com/Records/mcdonalds_allamerica.htm
Well, that and winning 7 of the last 10 ACC regular season titles, 7 of the last 8 ACC tournament titles, an army of top 5 and top 10 finishes, etc. How many national titles did Dean Smith and Bobby Knight win? If these guys aren't great coaches, who is? The reality of the NCAA Tournament is simply that the best team rarely wins the national title. That is what makes it so much fun - if the best team generally won, why bother with the tournament?
do you know how many champions in the last twenty years we can say how lucky they were to win because of one game a team had them on the ropes. happens every year almost.
But could we have said it happened with every game like we could've if UConn would've won yesterday? That was unreal.
You know I am in Duke-hatevill in Arizona. They always gripe around here that Lute Olson doesn't get Mike K like respect. Objectively, he doesn't deserve it. Olson has been to half the final 4s and has 1/3rd the titles. Olson took a team with Arenas (almost 30 PPG scorer now), Jefferson (about 20PPG scorer), Woods (back-up C in the NBA), two very good international pro players (Garner, Wright) and some other good role players and LOST to Duke. Olson also had pretty much an intact team from a 97 championship (Bibby-Dickerson-Simon-Terry) and didn't make the final 4 the next year. Olson's team had a 15 point lead with 3 minutes to go to the final 4 last year and lost the game (Illinios). I will always rout against Duke, but K is the most consistently successful college coach. Jim Calhoun is a strong 2nd for having consistent elite teams. And they are still griping here in Tucson about Lute's lack of respect. Olson's a great coach, top 5 probably, but big gap between him and THE TWO most successfull coaches going right now is sizable.
Making a final four 1 out of every 3 years is not too shabby. There aren't many, if any coaches, that can match that record of success. And while he certainly has a lot of McD AA's, so do other schools like Kansas, Arizona, and UNC. McD AA's keep going there because he consistently keeps winning.
I will probably rank Roy Williams ahead of Jim Calhoun. Roy has 1 title and 4 FFs against Calhoun's 2 titles in the last 15 years or so. Sure Roy had that reputation of being the choker while at Kansas in the late 90s but Calhoun also choked (or underperformed) numerous times in the tourney.
I don't know, Roy W. had a big time reputation for his teams choking until last year. But I would probably put Roy W ahead of Olson and behind Calhoun--but all three are seperated by a title run from each other. Olson does have the longest current streak for getting his team in the turney by a solid margin I believe.
