There’s not much argument these days that Duke men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski is the best coach his sport has seen since that Wizard of Westwood guy — the late, great John Wooden — was winning 10 NCAA titles in 12 years at UCLA from 1964 through 1975.
And Krzyzewski didn’t need to become the first Division I coach to reach 1,000 wins — “Coach K for 1K” proclaimed the T-shirts and signs inside Madison Square Garden during the 77-68 victory over St. John’s on Sunday — to validate that belief.
The four NCAA titles he’s already won, tied for second with the late Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp behind Wooden, along with his two Olympic gold medals are far more than enough to prove Coach 1K’s genius.
Yet as remarkable as all those accomplishments are, they may be no more remarkable than the fact Duke stuck by him after his first three years on the job.
Just imagine someone going 38-47 over that span of time in today’s world — including a 43-point loss in his conference tournament game at the close of that third year — and the school keeping him for a fourth season.