It’s not easy to underrate the guy who has won more games than any other men’s collegiate coach, but I’m afraid I’ve managed. My boilerplate description of Mike Krzyzewski has been: Second-best coach ever. He’s actually better than that.
I cannot in good conscience put anyone above John Wooden, but Krzyzewski can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the late Wizard of Westwood. Even if Krzyzewski never wins another NCAA title — and he might well take one in the Georgia Dome eight days hence — he has been better for longer than the best there ever was.
Wooden’s 10 national championships were taken over 12 years. Half were won with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton, the best-ever collegiate players, but half were not. The true measure of the Wizard was his capacity to win it all with teams big and small, teams that resembled one another only in that they were guided by the absolute master.
That said, Wooden didn’t qualify for a Final Four until his 16th season as a college coach, and all 12 of his Final Four runs came between 1962 and 1975, at which point he retired. If Duke beats Louisville on Sunday, Krzyzewski will match Wooden’s dozen Final Fours, and he’ll have done it over a longer and much different time.
Krzyzewski’s first Final Four came in 1986 — his Blue Devils were beaten in the NCAA title game by Louisville, then coached by the former Wooden assistant Denny Crum — and here it is 2013, and Coach K is on the cusp yet again. And what’s his record in regional finals? An utterly unbelievable 11-1. (The exception came in 1998 against Kentucky in a game Duke led by 18 points.)
Rick Pitino, who now coaches Louisville, saw his Kentucky Wildcats undone in the epic 1992 East Regional final by a grand bit of coaching by Krzyzewski, who not only called the hope-against-hope inbounds pass from Grant Hill to Christian Laettner, but who told his Devils after Sean Woods had put Kentucky ahead with 2.1 seconds left: “First of all, we’re going to win.”
Twenty-one years later, the famous coaches are matched again. (It marks only the third Krzyzewski-Pitino meeting, Krzyzewski having won both.) As was the case before Duke’s semifinal date with Michigan State — the Devils won 71-61, making Krzyzewski 7-1 against the estimable Tom Izzo — reciprocal bouquets are being tossed.
Krzyzewski on the Midwest final: “Elite Eight games are huge anyway, but this one is like a national championship game.”
Krzyzewski on Pitino: “He’s brilliant. He’s charismatic. His players play hard. He keeps evolving his system. Rick and passion go hand-in-hand.”
Pitino on Krzyzewski: “Coach Wooden was the greatest teacher of any sport. Coach K is the modern-day John Wooden — just the way he carries himself, in the way he teaches values, in the way he coaches basketball. … Both of them, I couldn’t put anybody on any higher point than those two gentlemen.”
That’s surely the way to view the Wizard vis-a-vis Coach K: As Nos. 1 and 1A. What Wooden was, Krzyzewski is — and, even at age 66, continues to be.
Wooden never dealt with one-and-dones, and he didn’t have to establish a program with Dean Smith, the third-greatest coach ever, working eight miles away. The NCAA tournament in Wooden’s days included only 25 teams, not 68, and Eastern schools never got sent to the West Regional, which UCLA ruled with an iron fist.
It now takes four victories to reach the Final Four. In all but Wooden’s final season, four postseason wins made his Bruins national champs. Wooden finished with 47 NCAA tournament victories. Krzyzewski has 82. Note that Louisville, owner of two national titles and nine Final Four appearances, has won 67 NCAA games as a program.
Asked Saturday what it would mean to match Wooden for Final Four runs, Krzyzewski said: “I don’t think of history when I’m coaching. If you do, you’re looking in the rearview mirror. I’ve got to be in the moment for my guys. … I don’t want to count championships or games of Final Fours or Elite Eights. That would be a mistake.”
For a coach who has a team to prepare, it would be. For those of us on the periphery, it’s only proper that we give the head Devil his due. Those of us of a certain age were sure we’d never see another Wooden, but what Krzyzewski has done in the post-Wooden era compares with the wonders wrought by the Wizard himself.
Oh, and for those who believe Duke will be overmatched against Louisville: On this stage, Krzyzewski is never overmatched. As an underdog in regional finals, he’s 4-0.
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