It was a down year for the Big Ten, comparatively. The ACC, Big 12 and Big East all had a lot more depth. Illinois and Wisconsin were the only teams in the entire conference with wins against ranked, non-conference teams. The ACC had five teams with such wins.
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Jim Jackson said:
1. Will commentators please take Coach K's penis out of their mouths? 3 years ago, Indiana, also from the Big Ten, beat Coach K's Dukies in the Sweet 16. Friday night, another Big Ten team, beats them again. Coach K is a great coach, but for all the greatness lauded on him, in the "new" college basketball (where players either skip college or leave quickly, K's got 1 title, as does Izzo and Boeheim and Williams).
Firstly, almost nobody expected Duke to do what they did in the regular season. They lost their best player(Luol Deng), their leader(Chris Duhon) and their top recruit(Shaun Livingston) to the draft. They were a team that was not incredibly experienced, not overly talented, and certainly not very deep. On paper, this was one of Coach K's worst teams(at least of the last 15 years), so for him to get them a #1 seed and a place in the Elite Eight was pretty special.
He has more NCAA tournament victories than any other coach in history, and more Final Four appearances than any coach not named Dean Smith or John Wooden(twice as many as Bob Knight or Lute Olsen). He also has eight straight Sweet 16 appearances, and shows no sign of stopping that streak anytime soon.
In the last 15 years, Coach K has three titles. Nobody else has two. Discounting that fact because two of his titles were in an era when college players tended to stick around longer isn't really fair. He had no advantage over anyone else.
He recruits despite havng higher academic standards than most schools, graduates more of his players than most other athletic programs, and continues to win in what is usually one of the, if not the toughest conference. He turned down a coaching job on one of the most prestigious franchises in the NBA, and he's generally considered to be one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.
I'm far from a Duke fan, but I think Mike Krzyzewski deserves just about every bit of the praise he receives.
