Coach K Coaching Tree Grows
There is a new bud on the Coach K coaching tree.
Greg Paulus, last seen as the starting Syracuse quarterback and assistant coach at the Naval Academy, has become the video coordinator for the Ohio State men’s basketball team.
The former Duke point guard and 2009 Duke graduate, now 24, will slowly start the long climb to head coaches seat.
This isn’t so say that Paulus will be in line for the Ohio State job (a top 10 national job), but it does make him another branch on the every expanding Coach K coaching tree.
One last interesting fact, no team coached by one of Coach K’s former players has ever beaten the Blue Devils.
Duke Adds Jeff Capel As Assistant Coach
Duke has added Jeff Capel as an assistant coach, deepening the talent next to Coach K on the bench.
“He is an outstanding coach and will be a great fit in our program,” Mike Krzyzewski said in a statement released by Duke. “Jeff has been a highly successful head coach at the Division I level and he will continue that here at Duke. Adding a coach of his caliber will make everyone in our program better.”
Capel was fired by Oklahoma earlier this year after back-to-back losing seasons at the Big 12 school, even though he still had five years left on his contract.
“After careful consideration, it has been determined that our men’s basketball program would be best served by a change of direction,” OU athletic director Joe Castiglione said in a statement. “Jeff Capel has worked diligently on our behalf, and for that we are appreciative. He has many outstanding qualities and we wish him success as he moves forward.”
He was 96-69 in five seasons in Norman, but just 17-36 in the past two seasons after taking a Blake Griffin-lead Sooners team to the Elite 8 in 2009.
Before his time at Oklahoma, Capel served as the head coach of Virginia Commonwealth for 4 seasons and had a 79-41 record while collecting one trip each to the NCAA and NIT tournaments.
Capel, a former four-year starter at Duke, is best known for hitting a running 40-footer against North Carolina in 1995 to send the game into a second overtime, a game Duke eventually lost.
The ex-Oklahoma coach joins a staff that includes Steve Wojciechowski and Chris Collins. Nate James, a Duke assistant coach for the past 3 seasons, has been named a special assistant. As a special assistant James will continue to help develop in-game strategies, but will not be involved in on-court coaching.
Capel adds nine years of head coaching experience to a staff that has a pair of 10-year assistant coaches (Wojo & Collins). Could this be Coach K and the university looking forward to the day when he steps down as the head coach of the Duke men’s basketball team?
As a Top 3 job, Duke will have its choice of coaches when Coach K finally steps down (hopefully 5 or more years from now after another National Championship or two) and Duke maybe planting seeds now for that transition to take place.
[poll id="18"]
Top 10 Recruit Considering Duke
Last week Rodney Purvis de-committed from Louisville and has said that Duke, along with Kentucky, NC State and Louisville are among the schools he is looking into.
The high school junior guard de-committed after the Louisville assistant who recruited him, Tim Fuller, joined Frank Haith’s staff in Missouri.
“I had built a very good relationship with Coach Fuller during the recruiting process,” Purvis said. “With the coaching changes at Louisville, I was going to have to start building new relationships with the staff.”
“My family and I talked it over and decided that if I was starting to build a new relationship that I should consider other schools as well.”
The 6-foot-4 guard from Raleigh’s Upper Room Christian Academy averaged 25.4 points per game last season for a team made up mostly of freshmen and sophomores.
Upper Room coach Avie Lester said Purvis “emphasized to me that he has never said that he would not go to Louisville.”
“My family and I talked it over and decided that if I was starting to build a new relationship that I should consider other schools as well.”
This is good news for Duke as Purvis (#1 SG on ESPN.com) would be a great addition to Rasheed Sulaimon in the 2012-13 Duke incoming class.
The two shooting guards would be needed in the future, with Austin Rivers most likely a one-and-doner, Seth Curry and Andre Dawkins seniors that season, someone will need to pick up the slack going forward.
Coach K Set To Retire…
… in 7-10 years.
But before that happens lets concentrate on how next season will start.
900 wins.
That’s the number of wins that Coach K will have when next season starts. After tieing, then passing his mentor Bobby Knight in the first two weeks of the season, every game after that he’ll be extending his own record.
So, the next question becomes, where does he stop?
What future number is going to be the new gold standard for Division 1 Men’s basketball coaches?
Before that number is set, lets get a look at some of the other milestones that Coach K will hit.
The obvious one is 1000.
1000 wins is a huge number, but it won’t happen until the 2014-15 season, unless Duke averages 34 wins over the next three seasons and Coach K hits 1000 during the 2014 NCAA Tournament. Something that seems very unlikely.
In case you’re wondering, Coach K has won 100 games over three consecutive seasons just once in his in his career. Between the 98-99 and 00-01 seasons Duke won 101 games.
[My predictions are based on the guess that Coach K will average 28 wins going forward. Here's how I came up with the number. Over the course of his 31 seasons at Duke, Coach K has averaged 26.6 wins per season, over the last 10, he's averaged 29.4 wins. 28 is somewhere in between, so I decided to go with that number.]
If the 28 wins per season is accurate, then Coach K will hit 1000 wins sometime halfway through the 2014-15 season. Late January/early February during the ACC season seems like a good time for 1000, so make your travel plans now.
The next major milestone would be win 1073, which would give him 1000 wins at Duke.
If you use the 28 wins/season as a guideline, win 1073 will occur during the 2017-18 season. Like win 1000, it would most likely occur during the ACC season, this time early-to-mid January.
Coach K will tell you that all those numbers are nice, but the real number he is concentrating on is 5. As in National Championships.
Number 5 would put him second alone, behind only John Wooden (who Coach K wouldn’t catch even if he stayed 70 years at Duke) and cement his face onto the Mount Rushmore of Men’s College coaches.
Another milestone within reach is 100.
100 NCAA Tournament victories.
Right now he is at 79, in 27 NCAA Tournaments. That’s a shade less that 3 NCAA wins per NCAA trip. Over the last 10 years, he’s won 22 games. So, between his past 10 years and overall average, he might hit 100 NCAA victories in 2019 or 2020.
Of course, all these numbers depend on the health of Coach K and how long he decides to coach. He turned 64 back in February and I hope he’s got 9 more seasons in him, that would give him an even 40 at Duke and he’d be 73 when he retired.
Lets take a look at the ages of other great coaches when they retired. Bob Knight retired at 67, John Wooden retired at 65, Dean Smith was 66, Eddie Sutton was 72 and Lute Olsen was 74.
We can see that coaching until the age of 73 isn’t out of the question, but it may be unlikely. Coach K is in good health, he’s only had one major injury during his coaching career (in 1994-95), but still, coaching into the mid-70s is not out of the question.
[poll id="17"]
Is Alex Murphy Joining Duke A Good Thing? No.
Alex Murphy has decided to enroll at Duke a year early.
But is it the right move? I don’t think so.
Instead of becoming a Blue Devil for the 2012-13 season, he joins Austin Rivers, Michael Gbinije, Marshall Plumlee and Quinn Cook as part of the 2011-12 incoming class.
The 6-foot-8 small forward has been called a ‘clone’ of Kyle Singler and will look slide into starting rotation in his place, but will he be able to carve out enough minutes?
Murphy is going to have plenty of competition to get into the starting lineup as next years Duke’s team looks even deeper than this past year. Is his decision to join the team actually good for Duke? How much playing time is going to be available for him?
At the point, Quinn Cook and Tyler Thornton will split all the minutes, as the only two point guards on the roster.
The two and three positions will be filled by Austin Rivers, Seth Curry and Andre Dawkins, who should command about 70-75 minutes at the 2 and 3.
On the inside, Ryan Kelly, Mason & Miles Plumlee will each get 20-25 minutes, as Coach K prefers to play guys who know the system and their roles over younger, untested, undersized players.
That leaves about 20 minutes per game for everyone else on the team. Rising sophomore Josh Hairston should see an increase over his six minutes a game. Then, there are the other freshmen, Michael Gbinije and Marshall Plumlee, both of who should see some time on the floor because of their unique talents. Marshall as a true center and Gbinije as Duke’s only swing player.
I think Murphy would have done himself -and the Blue Devils- better by remaining part of the 2012-13 class, as, by then, the inside would be less crowded. Miles will graduate, Mason will probably leave after his junior season, that would leave Kelly and Marshall Plumlee inside. Murphy would have a better chance of getting bigger minutes next season, as opposed to this season.
With him entering Duke, its just going to clog things up in the rotation. Although the team could be 11 deep, Coach K has never played that many. By the end of the season he is usually down to 8 or 9. That will mean someone, maybe even two someones, will not see as much time as they expect, so don’t be surprised if someone transfers before the end of the season, say around mid-January after the first two weeks of ACC play.
As much as having another talented player on the team is a good thing, sometimes having too much talent can be a bad thing if it forces people onto the bench, or to another school.
