USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo said Tuesday that “all leads point to Coach K coming back,” following a report by the Boston Globe that Krzyzewski has agreed to return as U.S. Olympic basketball coach.
The Globe report cited two sources close to the situation.
Interesting move on Krzyzewski’s part, especially considering the decline Duke has suffered during the time he was attending to the 2008 Olympic team. As we have discussed here before, the current state of things in Durham cannot be completely laid at the feet of Krzyzewski’s Olympic endeavor. The dud-like nature of the 2005 recruiting class and a steady stream of transfers/early NBA entrants has depleted the talent pool at Duke. Where the Olympic commitment becomes an issue is in Krzyzewski’s ability to focus on recruiting to shore up his roster amid the rampant attrition that appeared to be going on. At this point the program is possibly in a worse state than it was four years ago when he was named to the Olympic post because at least then Johnny Dawkins was the chief assistant. Dawkins is now at Stanford and that means the Steve Wojociewski and Chris Collins are going to be doing the heavy lifting out on the recruiting trail with some assistance from Nate James. I cannot imagine that is a best case scenario.
However, the one bit of daylight Duke has in regards to this issue is the fact they are poised to bring in a top ranked class for 2010. According to everything I have seen, Harrison Barnes is a Duke lean and if the Blue Devils can land him and maybe even #1 PG Brandon Knight the class would be stacked. That would place less pressure on Krzyzewski recruiting wise during the summer of 2010 when he is coaching Team USA at the World Championships. He then could make a concerted effort in 2010-11 to make a run at a title which may be his last best shot since Barnes and possibly others might bolt for the NBA after that.
Then again, this may also be about legacy as wb3 pointed out in an email to me this morning. Krzyzewski could be aware that he is past his prime and time is a bit short to really build the roster up for another sustained run. If that is the case why not add a 2nd Olympic gold medal to your resume as a coach and head into retirement as the NCAA leader in wins as well as the guy who saved USA basketball?
Whatever the case, on the surface this move appears to hurt Duke and by extension help UNC maintain it’s present perch above the ACC as well as in the UNC-Duke rivalry.
![[Bloglines]](http://www.tarheelfanblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/bloglines.png)
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.tarheelfanblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.tarheelfanblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.tarheelfanblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[MySpace]](http://www.tarheelfanblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/myspace.png)
![[Technorati]](http://www.tarheelfanblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/technorati.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://www.tarheelfanblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://www.tarheelfanblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://www.tarheelfanblog.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
that is disappointing news about harrison barnes. he seems like a great kid.
I personally think this is an ego thing. I think he just wants to have one more gold medal as a head coach than Dean does. But that’s just me.
And hey, you never know with Barnes and Knight. Everyone thought that McBob and Paulus would be sure things in ‘05, as evidenced by both being rated higher than a certain all-time ACC scoring leader and the class as a whole being rated second by scout.com. We all saw how that turned out.
Who is to say he gets one more gold medal? Maybe you guys didn’t bother to watch the last game against Spain? It was not exactly a cakewalk.
At this point in K’s career, he may have a personality that meshes better with pro players than it does with college guys. I don’t know. I am not out there. We all know that, in general, guys are either pro coaches or college coaches. Larry Brown is proposed as the exception to this rule, with his huge assortment of NBA titles, i.e.,: one.
Calipari, Pitino, and Brown seem much more symbolic of the general lack of ability of successful college coaches to transcend the differences between the levels. If K had left in 2001, perhaps it would have been to the betterment of both his legend and to the betterment of the Duke program, which has now gone 8 years without a title and 5 years without a Final Four.
Expectations often get ratcheted upward due to previous success, but remind me to check back in 2017 to see if you guys are still entirely content with Roy if he hasn’t won another title, or in 2014, if he hasn’t made it back to the Final Four. Somehow I doubt it.
K is doing fine. His 2010 class will lead him back to the promised land. A couple of final 4’s probable. None of us know whether or not they will be a good enough team to advance to a finals game. They went to the sweet 16 with the class they just had, so Id imagine that they will do marginally better with these highly sought after recruits coming in.
UNC supposedly had the greatest class of all time back in 1991, but it really didn’t turn out that way. Rozier left. Sullivan never really turned out. Reese ended up being just okay, but far from an elite swingman in UNC terms. Phelps was solid but no Ty Lawson. Montross had one really great year that happily corresponded with career years by two guys outside of the class, George Lynch and Donald Williams. So, you never really know how good a recruiting class will turn out, even at UNC.
I know when people look back and compare the 1993 Heels with Michigan, or the 1994 team, it is perplexing. Pierce Landry was the “worst” player on the 1994 team. That team had 11 guys who would end up starting at either UNC or USC(in the case of Larry Davis). How could that team not win it all? I think that had to be the most disappointing year in UNC history in terms of missed expectations.
And before we get too excited about how great, supposedly, our front court is going to be this year, that 1994 team had Zwikker, Montross, Salvadori, and the “short”, at 6′ 10″ Rasheed Wallace as its frontline. It had Reese and Stackhouse as wingmen. It had Phelps and McInnis at point guard. It had Donald Williams and Calabria at shooting guard.
If 1997 and 1977 were Dean’s masterpieces, 1994 had to be, by far, the least productive season of his in terms of wins per talent quotient.
Is that why, the very next year, UNC was back to its tradition of having several no-names on the bench, such as Ed Geth, Charlie McNary, Clyde Lynn and Octavius Barnes?
I’m not saying he IS going to get another medal. I’m just saying I think he WANTS one more in an effort to one-up Dean as he’s spent his career trying to do. Part of me also thinks he’s doing this in an effort to prove he can succeed at the pro level without actually going to the pro level.
I truly believe he would not do nearly as well in the pros as he does in college and he knows that. At dook, he’s destined to be worshiped by all in royal blue forever, so long as he keeps them in the tournament, even if it doesn’t translate to a national title. If he goes to, say, LA and doesn’t get a ring, the fans in purple and gold will turn on him quickly.
As for recruiting, as I already said, the experts can laud his 2010 recruiting class all they want, but his 2005 class was ranked second overall and all they could show for it was two sweet 16s, and two first-weekend exits. At this point, I think some of the recruits he goes after get five stars because they’re being recruited by dook, not necessarily because they’re actual five-star talent.
You are all posting on here as if both Barnes and Knight are already inked at Dook. I find this both fascinating (in a negative sense) and premature. It’s like saying that James McAdoo and Roscoe Barnes are locks to come to UNC. Also, per a source that I cannot name, word has it that Barnes is far more impressed with UNC’s basketball program than Dook’s. That coming from a pretty reliable source. What do I make of that?
Freaking NOTHING. Too much time on our hands. Barnes is certainly not a Dookie, and Knight, if anything, is a Connecticut lean.
Geeeeesh.
The subtext to the K legacy will be that he orchestrated a series of late-career moves to detour attention from the lack of success against his archrival. This is all so very predictable.
YAWN.