Duke basketball has a storied history. There are a lot of people who have found joy while watching Duke basketball over the years. We have seen a number of former Duke stars and competitors for the Player of the Year Award end up having extremely successful NBA careers. Chris Duhon and Grant Hill are just two examples of people who end up having great careers both on and off the basketball court. The four NCAA Championships that Coach K has won during his time period as the head coach of Duke is not dealing with the complete history of Duke basketball, but it is the most celebrated portion of that history.

Dick Groat for example became a national player of the year in the nineteen fifties. The team was also quite successful in the 1960’s. The team made it to a Final Four and a National Championship Game during those years under Vic Bubas. They lost the title game to UCLA, but that is certainly nothing to be ashamed of.

Duke basketball has had some huge success during their on court battles with the University of North Carolina. The legendary University of North Carolina coach Dean Smith has spoken glowingly about how the Duke basketball team has advanced under Coach K. There have been a lot of fierce recruitment battles that made a huge difference in whether or not Duke basketball would be able to make the climb to national prominence that they have been through.

Coach K in particular cites the fact that they were able to recruit a guy like Tommy Amaker into the program. Duke basketball has always had good floor generals as a part of their program, whether it is Steve Wojciechowski or Sean Dockery that you are talking about. Some of the lean years for the Duke program probably would not have been as lean if point guards such as William Avery had not left the program early. You have not see a lot of off the floor scandals with the Duke basketball program and you have seen several players like Christian Laettner move on to extremely successful business careers following his take at Duke winning championships with Thomas Hill and others.

Cherokee Parks was another dominant big man who came into Duke University. Parks did not have a very successful professional career, but he did play a big role in the history of Duke basketball. The 2009 team was able to win a national title with some players who probably did not get as much positive press as parks did during his tenure there, so you happen to know that the future is going to be quite bright. Coach K continues to get McDonald’s All Americans into the program.

Duke basketball has been to eleven final fours over the last thirty years. This is why the floor at Cameron Indoor Stadium is now known as Coach K Court. Any other program in the country would likely give similar honors to a coach who had anything close to that amount of success.

Author Bio: Jason Forthofer is the owner of Duke Basketball Tickets, a website where Blue Devil fans can score tickets to all Duke college basketball games.

Category: Sports
Keywords: duke, duke basketball, college basketball, duke basketball tickets, duke history, north carolina