While you might have been watching basketball or rugby or even playing your fav online casino or any game and you get a news one of the most legendary coaching careers in NCAA basketball history has finally ended. What would be your reaction? Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski saw his Duke Blue Devils team get eliminated by the North Carolina Tar Heels in the Final Four down in New Orleans.
“Coach K” officially announced his retirement prior to the 2021-22 college basketball season, and it was a year long retirement tour. Ticket prices for Duke home games were outrageous all season long, and the team was just two games away from delivering him a title in the final season.
The Duke-UNC rivalry is the best in college basketball, but this was just the first time that the two schools had ever met in the NCAA Tournament. Duke was the higher-seeded team in this matchup, but North Carolina was able to use a late rally to eliminate their biggest rivals.
It was North Carolina that knocked off Duke in the final home game for Coach K as well, and the Tar Heels were up to the task as well. Not only will the Tar Heels now get to play for the national championship, but one of the best coaching careers of all time is over.
Jon Scheyer has already been named as the next head basketball coach at Duke University, and he was hand picked by Coach K. Scheyer has no head coaching experience at the college level, but has been on the bench with the Hall of Fame coach for a number of years.
Coach K has been at Duke University for 42 years and he transformed the small school into a national contender every single year. Controversy has rocked the college basketball world a number of times, but that was never an issue for Coach K.
A Legendary Resume
Most already consider Coach K as the best college basketball coach of all-time and it didn’t take him to retire before that was the case. While at Duke, Krzyzewski set a number of coaching records that will never be matched regardless of how long coaches stay at the Division 1 level.
Coach K began his coaching career at Duke back in 1980 and it took him a bit before he was able to get this program to the top of college basketball. After Duke got rolling though, they became a program that just continued to win conference titles seemingly every single year.
Duke went a remarkable 1,202-368 with Coach K leading the way, and they also went 101-30 in the NCAA Tournament during his career. The 1,202 wins is the most all-time and it’s hard to see anyone getting close to 1,000 in their own careers.
Duke won five national championships under Coach K and made it to the Final Four a whopping 13 times. The Blue Devils were also extremely dominant in the ACC as they won the ACC Tournament 15 times and also won 13 regular season titles.
Coach K was actually inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame back in 2001 as a coach, and is also enshrined with the rest of the Dream Team.
Team USA Career
When Coach K wasn’t leading the Duke Blue Devils to national championships, he could be seen on the sidelines leading Team USA to gold medals. Coach K first began his international coaching career in 1992 as an assistant coach with the Dream Team.
After a couple of failed gold medal runs for Team USA, the international committee chose Coach K to help turn things back around. Coach K restored Team USA as the best team in the world, leading his team to a gold medal in 2008, 2012, and 2016.
His time at the international level allowed him to coach some of the best players in NBA history and helped with his recruiting. Coach K built friendships with the likes of Kobe Bryant and LeBron James and those players helped push players to the Blue Devils program.
Coach K had already stepped down from coaching Team USA and Steve Kerr was put in charge of leading that team. These three gold medals just add to the legacy that Coach K was able to build while at Duke University.
