Michigan State vs Duke - Coach K Wins 903

• Laley23

  

  Crazy to me that Knight and K are arguably the 2 greatest basketball coaches to ever live and 1 recruited the other 45 years ago, yet tonight they were able to share an embrace after K passed Knight.
• georgemc80

  I was pondering after the game last night and this might deserve its own thread, and someone can start it if they like, but what was my favorite of the 903 (831 at Duke of course).
  
  
  Its a question for Duke fans, but basketball fans in general probably pulled for Duke at one point or another...
  
  Some of my nominees:
  
  4 Championship games of course
  UNLV
  Kentucky in 92
  Maryland (10 pt defecit under a minute)
  Temple to go to final four
  Georgetown to go to final four
  Laettner beating Connecticut in final four
  
  
  Ultimately, I will never forget Laettner's shot against Kentucky.
  There are many wins...what say you...which is your favorite K win?
• sleeper

  

  Red Rider Nation;973192 wrote:We will find out how terrible Duke is in 2 weeks when we come to Columbus and kick that @ss!

  I'd bet with you, but you have no credibility and would probably just disappear.
• dlazz

  ESPN sure is sucking Couch K off for win 903.
  
  Shame on ESPN for showing this game on ESPN and putting the other (better) game on ESPN2.
• swamisez

  

  The most jubilant I have seen Coach K came after Laettner's game winner versus UConn.
  
  I would think beating UVA by 30+ in 1986 after losing to them in the ACC tournament by 43 a few years earlier.
• swamisez

  

  dlazz;975177 wrote:ESPN sure is sucking Couch K off for win 903.
  
  Shame on ESPN for showing this game on ESPN and putting the other (better) game on ESPN2.

  I say the same thing when they put Ohio State on in primetime on ABC during football season.
• georgemc80

  swamisez;975183 wrote:The most jubilant I have seen Coach K came after Laettner's game winner versus UConn.
  
  I would think beating UVA by 30+ in 1986 after losing to them in the ACC tournament by 43 a few years earlier.

  Ah...I forgot, I was just 12 when they got manhandled Virginia....that had to be satisfying.
• Iliketurtles

  

  My favorite moment was at Maryland in 2001 down 10 with a minute to go because I was there. If not for being there I would say the 2001 Championship then Kentucky in 92.
  
  Worst moment would either be the 1999 Championship game, 2002 against Indiana, or Duke/UNC in 1995 and 2005
• dlazz

  My favorite was whenever Duke lost because fuck Duke.
• Laley23

  

  Id say it would have to be the 2002 win versus Indi.....oh wait :laugh::laugh:
• georgemc80

  Bitches be hatin
• swamisez

  

  2002...the last year of Indiana's basketball relevance.
• Laley23

  

  swamisez;975577 wrote:2002...the last year of Indiana's basketball relevance.

  Kind of. Except they were ranked in the top 10, 3 separate years since then. But they have been down no question. I think Crean has them in the right direction though. Even through just 2 games, I think they have shown tremendous improvements from last year. I love that our 2 sophomores are our best players (arguably). Shows a lot of solid player development.
  
  IU will compete for the B1G title next year, and has an outside chance (like 40%) to make the NCAA this season. Tonight is a big test, AT Evansville....and Ive probably jinxed them, lol.
• reclegend22

  

  The most special Coach K and Duke moment for me personally is the win over Butler in Indianapolis for the 2010 national championship. Not only did it return Duke to the mountaintop of the sport and close a much publicized -- and celebrated -- six-year drought of the Blue Devils not making it out of the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament, a period during which Krzyzewski faced an outpouring of unbelievable scrutiny from talking heads and fans across the country alike who were calling it the beginning of the end for a fading star, but I was also perched in section 447, seat 28 of Lucas Oil Stadium, hanging on for my life. One of the greatest moments I've ever experienced on this earth. And I'd like to think I've had a lot of pretty good moments during my life.
  
  To people who don't follow sports, that probably sounds crazy. You just have to be a fan to understand.
• ironman02

  Great accomplishment for Coach K. Like wildcats said, I despise him, but I also respect what he has done.
• bo shemmy3337

  I am sorry I think coach K is great but what if an average coach coached at duke as many years as coach K? I really don't think the win total would be that far off
• Iliketurtles

  

  bo shemmy3337;975722 wrote:I am sorry I think coach K is great but what if an average coach coached at duke as many years as coach K? I really don't think the win total would be that far off

  SMH.... Coach K made Duke what it is and that's pretty much all I am going to say and really all that needs to be said.
• Hb31187

  

  Hes a great coach, but if any of the bigger name coaches had been at Duke that long (Boheim, Izzo, Calhoun, Williams ect) I think theyd be about the same win total, I agree with that part. But hes def better than an average coach
• bo shemmy3337

  Iliketurtles;975730 wrote:SMH.... Coach K made Duke what it is and that's pretty much all I am going to say and really all that needs to be said.

  Yea Duke was really bad before he got there.
• bo shemmy3337

  Hb31187;975811 wrote:Hes a great coach, but if any of the bigger name coaches had been at Duke that long (Boheim, Izzo, Calhoun, Williams ect) I think theyd be about the same win total, I agree with that part. But hes def better than an average coach

  I agree and I did not mean an average coach would win the same amount of game just not that far off. I am saying 25 to 30 wins or so less. that is a lot but the record would have been broke by this time next year had an average coach been at duke all those years plus one. Not taking anything away from him but the name alone is going to get you 18 wins a year IMO.
• Laley23

  

  bo shemmy3337;976016 wrote:I agree and I did not mean an average coach would win the same amount of game just not that far off. I am saying 25 to 30 wins or so less. that is a lot but the record would have been broke by this time next year had an average coach been at duke all those years plus one. Not taking anything away from him but the name alone is going to get you 18 wins a year IMO.

  Sure, maybe now after K retires and Duke has a name. If an average coach had come to Duke, UNC would have 10 national titles right now. K made Duke to what you are making them out to be. If an average coach had taken over all those years ago, Duke isnt Duke and they arent getting #1 seeds all the time.
  
  Its the opposite of what his mentor, Bob Knight did. Knight came to Indiana who already had 2 national titles under Branch McCracken. K came to Duke who had only had a blip of success and built them into one of the 6 bluebloods.
• reclegend22

  

  Hb31187 wrote:Hes a great coach, but if any of the bigger name coaches had been at Duke that long (Boheim, Izzo, Calhoun, Williams ect) I think theyd be about the same win total, I agree with that part. But hes def better than an average coach

  
  
  Where this assumption misses the mark is that, as Laley alluded to, Duke wasn’t the Duke we know today before Mike Krzyzewski. He had to rebuild a struggling program from the court up to turn Duke into the premier basketball school in the country that it is today. Krzyzewski has created and developed such an iconic brand at Duke under his watch that many kids come to play for him because of his legend. I'm not so sure any of the other coaches you mention, despite being damn fine coaches, have been able to create that same type of aura and prestige surrounding their brand.
  
  Duke certainly wasn’t lacking in basketball history when Krzyzewski arrived in Durham. Eddie Cameron, a basketball and football coach and athletics administrator at Duke for over 50 years and the man for whom Cameron Indoor Stadium is named, is the founding father of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The Blue Devils appeared in three Final Fours in the 1960s under the helm of Cameron's successor, ACC legend Vic Bubas, and were the nation’s runner-up with Bill Foster at the reigns in 1978. Lore cloaks the basketball program nestled inside this university’s gothic walls. It is a top five all-time program, one of the royal families of the game. Duke is still Duke, in the same vein that North Carolina is still North Carolina, but Coach K took it to another planet in terms of sustained excellence.
  
  Why Coach K has won 903 games. Consistency. At the highest level.
  
  In terms of pure domination of a conference, Krzyzewski's run in the ACC since 1999 is one of the greatest the college game has ever known. The Blue Devils have won the conference's tournament championship in 10 out of the past 13 seasons. At three wins apiece, those 10 title runs in addition to the three other ACC Tournament championships that he had won in '86, '88 and '92 have given Krzyzewski 39 victories to add to his record career total of wins. Those two handful's worth of ACC titles won by Krzyzewski since 1999 are as many as the number of ACC titles won by any other school in the history of the conference outside of North Carolina (which has won 18).
  
  He has reached the NCAA Tournament in every season as a coach since 1984. That’s a record 27 straight trips to the Big Dance. And in those 27 appearances, Krzyzewski has won more games than anyone in the history of the profession. He is 79-23 in the NCAAs, good enough for an all-time best winning percentage of .775. Jim Boeheim, by comparison, since he was mentioned, has only 41 career victories in the tournament and has missed it entirely four times since 1997. The next closest active coach to Krzyzewski is Roy Williams with 53. Even if Coach K were to walk away from his post today, and never coach in another game again, for the 61-year-old Williams to pass that mark before he turned 68, Williams would need to win the NCAA championship six consecutive years and then advance to the Sweet 16 in the seventh. And that's if Krzyzewski never coached another game as long as he lived. Remarkable. If Krzyzewski coaches another decade like many close to the Duke program think he very well might, it is likely that his final NCAA tournament wins record will never be touched. Reasonably, one could speculate that final NCAA total being somewhere in the range of 100 wins.
  
  Krzyzewski has coached in 11 Final Fours -- the second-most ever behind only John Wooden's 12 -- and has advanced to the national championship game in eight of them. The four national titles Krzyzewski's teams have achieved give the man known simply as K 12 career wins at the Final Four and a championship for Duke in three different decades. A legacy of consistency unparalleled in the modern era.
  
  If you think Roy Williams, Bill Self, Jim Calhoun and Jim Boeheim would have all enjoyed that same string of success had one of them been given the keys to Duke Basketball in 1980 instead of Coach K, maybe you're right. There's no real way of knowing. But I wouldn't bet the program on it.
  
• reclegend22

  

  Nobody will ever read all that (haha, that looks like a passage from the New Testament), but Coach K's record of 903 is worth a lot more than some here are contending.
• dlazz

  reclegend22;976354 wrote:Nobody will ever read all that

  true.
  
  plus Duke sucks.
• reclegend22

  

  dlazz wrote:plus Duke sucks.

  That is a very astute observation of the topic at hand. At least you spelled it right. Thanks.