He might not have as many national championships as John Wooden and he has a ways to go before he catches Dean Smith in the wins column, but it doesn’t matter. Mike Krzyzewski could retire today and he would still be the greatest coach in the history of college basketball.
And frankly, it’s not even close.
The statistics speak for themselves. Three national championships, seven national players of the year, ten Final Four appearances, eight ACC titles, 64 NCAA Tournament wins and 621 total wins are just some of the staggering numbers that Coach K has compiled in Durham.
On Sunday, Krzyzewski’s Duke team won their 10th regional final in the past 18 years, a feat that becomes more impressive when you consider that North Carolina has won the next most in that span, with six.
Even more amazing is that in the last seven of their Final Four appearances, Duke has made it to the Finals six times, their lone slip-up in the 1998 semi-finals to eventual champion Kentucky. North Carolina, conversely, has gone 1-5 in their recent Final Four games.
Before I go any further, it’s probably important for me to give full disclosure on my personal feelings about Coach K. Namely, that I can’t stand him. I hate Duke and everybody associated with their basketball program. If I had to choose between watching Duke win another national title this year or getting 20 simultaneous root canals while listening to Creed’s entire catalogue, I’d choose the dental work, happily. To me, Duke losing is almost as good as my teams winning.
Krzyzewski is the biggest whiner in all of college basketball and relentlessly bitches to the refs, who in turn let Duke get away with murder while calling ticky-tack fouls on their opponents. In his early years at Duke Coach K insisted that there was a double standard in regards to the calls that Dean Smith got from the officials. 20 years later, Coach K enjoys the same luxury.
But, at the same time, I have to respect Krzyzewski… kind of. I don’t respect his attitude during games, his hypocritical relationships with the refs or his press conferences where the reporters treat him and his team with kid gloves (Christian Laettner received very little criticism for deliberately stomping on a Kentucky player’s chest in 1992. Do you think Stacey Augmon would have been treated the same). But at the same time, I do have to respect his numbers. The man had a winning record at West Point, for crap’s sake.
Think about it this way: if you had to choose one coach to coach one game with your life on the line, who would you pick? Even if you hate Duke as much as I do, you sure as hell know you aren’t going to be choosing Lute Olsen. Krzyzewski is the easy choice.
True, Coach K has seven less titles than John Wooden does, but Wooden coached in an era where only one team per conference advanced to the NCAA Tournament, thus leading to far weaker and smaller fields than there are today. Wooden’s UCLA teams needed only to win four games to earn their championship while all of Krzyzewski’s teams have had to win six. And while Coach K’s victories in the Final Four have come against powers like UNLV, Kansas, Maryland and Michigan, UCLA often beat up on the Drakes and Jacksonvilles of the world en route to their titles.
Dean Smith has Coach K beat in longevity, wins and Final Four appearances (11 to Coach K’s ten) and has some extraordinary stats of his own., the most impressive being that from 1964 to 1997, North Carolina never finished below third in the ACC regular season standings. But Dean didn’t get it done in the Tournament like his counterpart has, his only two national championships gift-wrapped by mental gaffes from Fred Brown and Chris Webber. (Brown threw the ball directly to UNC’s James Worthy late in the 1982 final and C-Webb took his infamous timeout against Smith’s second title team in 1993).
Some other incredible numbers for Krzyzewski include winning five straight ACC titles from 1999-2003, a 64-16 record in the NCAA Tournament (one win short of Dean Smith) and 80 weeks at #1 in the AP Poll.
And when compared to the other coaching giants, remember that Coach K’s numbers have been compiled in an era of parity in the college game. Players leaving school early, a bigger field in the NCAA Tournament and wider television coverage have taken away a little bit of the dominance that the traditional powers used to have. The Dukes and Kentuckys of college basketball still have their advantages, but they don’t have as strong a footing as UCLA and North Carolina had 25 years ago.
So say what you will about Mike Krzyzewski (I do) and root hard against his team this Saturday night (I will), but don’t let your disdain for the man and his program cloud the fact that when Duke tips off against Connecticut this weekend, you’ll be watching the best college coach of all time.