Coach K just got his 900th win in College Basketball and many think he is the best College Basketball Coach ever.
I think he is, but I can see the merit for Wooden. I am sure others have their favorites eg. Bobby Knight, Adolph Rupp, and Dean Smith.
IMO, it is incredible that Coach K can turn Duke into a perennial contender in CBB. Duke is well regarded academically and IIRC, the only thing that Durham NC has his Duke. There is no other reason why anyone would want to go to Durham.
I voted for Dean Smith, but mainly because I’ve met both him and his wife, and he is truly one of the most decent, down-to-Earth, generous people I’ve ever met. He was an incredible coach as well and the impact that he had on so many players’ lives was enormous. I recall once there was a big reunion for the 1957 and 1982 NCAA Champ teams at UNC, with all the living former players and coaches. Michael Jordan was there and people went crazy when he was introduced - but the only person who received more applause was Dean Smith.
The other coaches are all legends in their own right. It’s fashionable for UNC fans to “hate” Coach K, but there’s no denying that he’s built an incredibly successful program at Duke and will forever be synonymous with that school (I’ve met him too, he’s a decent guy as well).
I think it’s remarkable what John Wooden accomplished in his career at UCLA. Their string of national titles in the '60s and '70s will probably never be duplicated or even approached by another team. Just amazing.
I’m not a fan of Bobby Knight personality-wise, but Coach K attributes a lot of his success to what he learned from Knight, so his coaching methods have certainly been a major influence on the game over the years.
Adolph Rupp was well before my time but he was another one of the great program-builders of this past century.
There have been other very influential coaches in the game as well, such as Phog Allen, one of the first great college coaches; Frank McGuire and Everett Case, who helped to make college basketball reach the mega-sport status it now enjoys in the South; and Clarence “Big House” Gaines who was one of the all-time great coaches of the CIAA.
Durham is a suburb of Raleigh. Where the University of North Carolina is. Also a suburb of Raleigh? Wake Forest, NC. Seems that there has to be SOMEthing that attracts elite basketball players…
As for my vote - I don’t really see how it could be anyone other than John Wooden. The man went 664–162 with 10 National Championships (those 10 being over a 12 year span).
The only arguement I can think of for it not being Wooden is the recruiting climate. Once his run started, it built on itself as the place to go to college if you wanted to compete for a national championship. The coaches who have multiple titles after the mid-70s had a harder job in both recruiting and keeping their players for the full four years. Still I have to go with Wooden.
Wooden was helped by always being the in West regional which was very weak. He had a cakewalk to the final 4 every year. PAC 8/10 was not very good either. But he still is a very good coach.
ACC hoops got very good partly because they had a great TV package way back in the 70s. Back then most other leagues had very few games on TV. That allowed the ACC to attract a lot of talent.
Have you ever set foot in North Carolina? Almost everything I quoted above is false.
Durham is near but not a suburb of Raleigh.
UNC is not in Raleigh.
Wake Forest, NC is not a suburb of Raleigh.
Wake Forest University is not in Wake Forest, NC. (This one actually surprises a lot of people.)
Wake Forest University is in Winston Salem which is not a suburb of Raleigh.
I grew up just a few miles away from UCLA and some of my earliest memories are of watching UCLA basketball with my Dad in the 70’s. This was a very easy pick for me.
I was in Raleigh for a wedding a few years ago. To suggest that Duke is not near Raleigh (I couldn’t care less about the (non-)distinction between “near” and “suburb”) is false. We went to visit UNC, drove for 15 minutes, and were walking on Duke’s campus. I was totally off base on Wake Forest, though.
UNC is in Chapel Hill, not Raleigh. NC State is in Raleigh. Chapel Hill is about 30 miles from Raleigh as is Durham. Durham and Chapel Hill are about 10 miles apart.
Whatever. If there’s nothing to do in the Durham area for Duke students, then there’s nothing to do in Chapel Hill for UNC students - but there’s still 30k of them, so there must be SOMEthing going on. Your point - “Duke is boring!” - is false. Nitpick what you like beyond that.
Edit: And I hate Duke, so damn you for making me defend them!
Nitpick? I never said Duke was boring. I doubt if any town that has a major university is “boring”, but Durham is “relatively” poor town compared to other college towns.
Duke is also very tough academically and for Coach K to consistently recruit outstanding talent to this school is remarkable. Remind me again how well the football team does. Most of the best CBB teams that also play Div I football occassionally have a good football team. Even Kansas was ranked high a few years ago. Duke has played two bowl games in the last 50 years.
Most Duke professors live in Chapel Hill and many Duke students hang out there.
Also I believe that most people here consider Wake Forest a suburb of Raleigh now, they are very close together since both places have expanded a lot. Raleigh grew north and WF grew south.
BTW, Duke also moved their campus, they started as Trinity College in Trinity, NC and moved to Durham because the Dukes gave them a ton of money.
I think the OP said that Durham was boring except for Duke/Duke-oriented areas. That’s not entirely true, but downtown Durham has been pretty desolate since the big tobacco factories shut down a few decades ago and other businesses closed down soon after (it’s starting to slightly rebound, little by little…but some parts of downtown are still deserted). FWIW, the area of Durham where the Duke students hang out is not considered downtown per se.
Chapel Hill is a smaller town but it’s a more classic college town, with the downtown area right next to campus and more businesses geared to the students and their visitors.
Raleigh (where N.C. State University is) is the biggest city of the three, but like in Durham, the N.C. State campus is removed from downtown. Downtown Raleigh used to be pretty sketchy, but it’s getting nicer nowadays.
And don’t worry about being confused re: Wake Forest U. - it USED to be in the town of Wake Forest, until it moved to Winston-Salem in 1956. The old W.F.U. campus is still there - it now houses the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
No, all that is very valid. The academic requirements are a big obstacle - more than location would be. I went to Notre Dame - so I know all about high academic requirements as well as being in a shit hole of a town.
Fun Duke Football Fact: Duke hosted and played in the Rose Bowl in 1942 - it was re-located from Pasadena due to fears of the West Coast being bombed (this was less than a month after the Pearl Harbor attack).
