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Next week, long-time Duke University men’s basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski will coach his final regular season home game for the Blue Devils as they face arch-rival North Carolina. He is retiring after this season after 41 years with Duke.
If you’d like to purchase a ticket to Cameron Indoor Stadium to watch that final home game, one source indicates that one ticket will cost you over $3,000!
The 75-year old basketball legend has his team ranked in the top ten yet again this season (currently at #7 with 24-4 record) as the Blue Devils have won eleven of their past twelve games. Coach K continues to add more wins to his NCAA men’s basketball record total of 1,121 wins and counting.
He received his start as a head coach at his alma mater, Army. After completing his required service time upon graduation, a 28-year old Mike Krzyzewski returned to coach the West Point Cadets for five seasons as the team posted 73 wins and just 59 losses in what is considered one of the toughest coaching assignments in America.
Coach K was offered the head basketball coaching job at Duke University in college basketball’s tough Atlantic Coast Conference in 1980. Before the new coach’s arrival in Durham, the Blue Devils had appeared in just three NCAA tournaments over the previous 14 seasons.
Under Mike Krzyzewski’s direction, Duke University has been a constant in the NCAA’s “March Madness” college basketball tournament with an incredible 35 appearances and five national championships in his 41 years at Duke.
Coach K may be the best known college basketball coach of our time, but there are others who have done a great job of turning around college basketball programs, too.
Had anyone heard of the Gonzaga men’s basketball program before coach Mark Few arrived on the scene in 1999? Since 1963, the Zags from Spokane, Washington had participated in the “Big Dance” just twice in 36 seasons!
Now in his 23rd year as the head coach at Gonzaga, the 59-year old coach has put his team into the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament in every season since arriving at Gonzaga.
The only thing which has escaped Mark Few’s Gonzaga team has been their first national championship. Though the coach’s career winning percentage is ranked #1 in NCAA history at nearly 84%, his Gonzaga team has twice finished runner-up in the NCAA tournament. This year’s team is now 23-2 and ranked #1 in the country with just two regular season games remaining.
Perhaps this will finally be the year where the Zags and Coach Mark Few will cut down the nets.
Down in the SEC, Auburn University men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl has literally turned around the school’s basketball program since his arrival on campus eight years ago. This year’s team was briefly ranked #1 in the nation for the first time in Auburn’s school history. The Tigers are currently ranked #3 with a sterling 24-3 record and is expected to contend for the national championship next month.
Prior to his arrival at Auburn in 2014, Bruce Pearl enjoyed six years of success at the University of Tennessee. His teams won 70% of their games and made the NCAA “March Madness” tournament in each of his six years at Tennessee.
Unfortunately, the head basketball coach was caught in a lie to the NCAA about whether a basketball recruit and his family had attended a cookout at Pearl’s home. The coach was eventually fired by Tennessee for other reasons, and the NCAA infraction related to his recruiting kept him out of college coaching for three years from 2011 until 2014.
When he was given a new chance to coach at Auburn, Bruce Pearl said, “I’m humbled and blessed to be back in the game that I love. I don’t know how long it will take, but it’s time to rebuild the Auburn basketball program, and bring it to a level of excellence so many of the other teams on campus enjoy.”
Bruce Pearl is Auburn University’s 20th head basketball coach in 116 seasons. Mathematically speaking, there has been a new men’s basketball coach at Auburn every 5.8 years.
In those 116 years, Auburn has advanced to the NCAA’s championship game just one time. That came in 2019 when Coach Bruce Pearl’s team lost a 63-62 heartbreaker to Virginia in the championship game. This year’s Auburn squad is hungry for another chance during March Madness.
Meanwhile in Houston, the men’s basketball program for the University of Houston Cougars has seen a renaissance under the direction of head coach Kelvin Sampson. The long-time college basketball coach had built winners at the University of Oklahoma and Indiana University before he (like Bruce Pearl) was slapped with recruiting violations for allegedly sending text messages to a high school recruit.
While he served his NCAA suspension away from college basketball, Kelvin Sampson became an assistant coach in the NBA. After a few years in Milwaukee, the former college basketball coach moved to Houston and served as the NBA Houston Rockets’ second in command for three seasons.
After six years in the NBA, Kelvin Sampson received another chance to coach college basketball with the University of Houston Cougars in 2014.
Houston’s college basketball team became a national power in the early 1980’s with the high-flying Phi Slama Jama teams featuring future Hall-of-Famers Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. However, from 1993 through Coach Kelvin Sampson’s arrival on campus in 2014, the Cougars had been selected to play in just one NCAA March Madness tournament in 21 years.
Under Coach Sampson, the University of Houston’s basketball teams have made the past three NCAA tournaments and played in their first “Final Four” last year for the first time since the team’s glory days of 1984.
Like the other coaches featured in this story, Kelvin Sampson is considered a great basketball teacher.
Earlier this season, the Cougars (currently 23-4 and ranked #14 in the nation) lost a 2-point decision to Wisconsin. After the loss, Coach Sampson utilized a lot of practice time with his team to improve their poise and execution during the final five seconds of play.
It recently paid off.
With just 5.4 seconds remaining last Sunday in their game at Wichita State, Houston guard Jamal Shead took the inbounds pass, raced up the court, and passed the ball to an open teammate for the uncontested game-winner with 1.3 seconds remaining. The hours of practice resulted in a crucial road win for the Cougars and a valuable lesson for future games.
After losing the game to Wisconsin, Coach Kelvin Sampson said, ”We kept putting five seconds on the clock, five seconds on the clock, five seconds on the clock to get a feel for what we can do in that amount of time. Jamal learned from failure, and that led to this success.”
Quick turnarounds also happen in women’s basketball programs, too.
LSU’s new women’s basketball coach is certainly no stranger to turning around a college hoops program.
When Kim Mulkey arrived on the job at her first head coaching job in Waco, Texas at Baylor University back in the year 2000, the Baylor women’s team had gone 7-20 the year before. The Lady Bears had never been invited to participate in the NCAA women’s tournament field.
After 21 years at Baylor, coach Mulkey’s teams won over 85% of their games, three national championships, and were a part of the NCAA tournament field in all but one season.
Earlier this year, the Hammond, Louisiana native and Louisiana Tech University grad decided to return to her home state with the intention of reviving the fortunes of the LSU Lady Tigers.
It didn’t take long. In year #1, it is “Mission accomplished!”
The LSU women’s basketball team is currently ranked #8 in the country with a 23-4 record in year #1 under Coach Kim Mulkey. In LSU’s last home game against #17 Florida, over 13,000 fans packed into the Pete Maravich Assembly Center to cheer-on the team’s 66-61 win. The Tigers will host rival Alabama tonight in Baton Rouge in LSU’s final home game of the regular season with a chance to clinch no worse than second place in the SEC.
That’s pretty good for a team which went just 9-13 last season.
Even Coach Kim Mulkey has been in awe of what this year’s LSU women’s basketball team has been able to achieve this so quickly. She said, “Still didn’t think we would be doing what we’re doing. That’s probably my personality. I’m kind of cautiously optimistic. Just stay focused in the moment, and let’s just get better every day. You couldn’t project or foresee what we would be doing.”
Each of the basketball coaches covered in this story has terrific recruiting skills along the ability to teach basketball fundamentals and strategy. Though each coach has a unique personality and temperament, their intense desire to mold each of their teams into a potential national championship winner nearly every season truly sets them apart.
No matter where they happen to coach, winning just seems to follow them.