Duke Football And Basketball Odds And Ends
A bit of news and trivia to hold you over until Brown comes to town.
Odds and ends.
Duke football won’t take the field again until spring practice, tentatively set for early March.
Duke did add a couple of recruits after the December 18 signing date, Michigan grad-student transfer J’Marick Woods--he’s a safety with two years of eligibility --and center Addison Penn, a Boston College de-commit from Texas.
Duke is maxed out on scholarships. Unless there are some changes in the assistant-coaching universe-and there are strong opinions on that subject--football will be off the radar screen for some time.
Men’s basketball is in the midst of an exam and holiday-based down period which has been the Blue Devils take the court one time since December 6.
So, a good time to tie up some loose ends.
Let’s start with the number 10.
An important number in the hoops universe. Does any other sport have an analog to the double-double or its very rare cousin, the triple-double? How else to explain the fact that 10 points and 10 rebounds is more remarkable than 20 points and 9 rebounds?
But we’re talking about 10 wins here, not 10 points or 10 rebounds.
Duke’s win over Wofford moved their record to 10-1.
So, what’s the big deal? No one seriously expected Duke to not win 10 games this year.
But there was a time when winning 10 games was a big deal for Duke.
Some history. Duke went 9-5 in 1928, George Buckheit’s last season as head coach. Eddie Cameron came in the next year, Duke joined the Southern Conference and beefed up their schedule, leaving the days of the 14-game season far behind.
Duke went 12-8 in 1929, then 18-2 and settled into a generation of winning seasons.
Well, not all winning. Duke went 10-12 in 1939, 13-13 in 1944 and 15-15 in 1950. But Duke always hit the 10-win threshold.
About the 1939 season. It was Duke’s last losing season for a long time. There were those two .500 seasons but no losing seasons. As the years passed this became a source of pride. Only Kentucky had a longer streak of consecutive non-losing seasons; their last losing season was in 1927. They also had a 13-13 season in 1967.
But there’s a huge asterisk. Kentucky didn’t play at all in 1952-’53, as a result of being caught breaking pretty much every NCAA rule on the books.
So, if we count that as a non-winning season, Duke had the NCAA’s longest streak of consecutive seasons of .500 or better.
That streak came to an end in 1973, when Bucky Waters’ last team went 12-14. Nine of those losses were by six or fewer points, so it’s not hard to see how the streak could have continued.
But end it did.
And suddenly Duke was promoting a new superlative; the nation’s longest streak of consecutive 10-win seasons. Ten wins was a good thing.
Richard Giannini was Duke’s sports information director at the time. But Ted Mann was still on the scene as a consultant, so I suspect he had something to do with it.
Trust me, this was actually promoted as a real thing.
Duke had to defend the streak the next season. Waters had a five-year contract. Going into his fifth season he went to Duke AD Carl James to ask for an extension, arguing that he couldn’t recruit players who didn’t know if he was going to be around when they showed up.
James declined and Waters quit, right before the beginning of the 1973-’74 season.
Duke promoted top assistant Neil McGeachy, giving him one season to prove he was the man for the job.
He wasn’t. Duke went 10-16, Duke’s worst record since 1927.
But the 10-win streak was never in serious peril. Duke started 5-2 and didn’t drop below .500 for good until February 4, when a 92-78 loss to David Thompson and NC State dropped Duke to 8-9. Duke beat Virginia and Georgia Tech later that month to go 10-11, before losing their last five. Three of those five losses went down to the wire, including that infamous 8-points-in-17-seconds loss at Chapel Hill.
Bill Foster took over for McGeachy and never won fewer than 13 games at Duke.
Mike Krzyzewski replaced Foster and went 17-13 in 1981, his first season at Duke.
But the wheels came off in his second season and Duke came perilously close to ending the streak. Despite the brilliance of senior guard Vince Taylor, Duke went into its final regular-season home game with a record of 9-15. Second-ranked North Carolina was the finale, on the road and this Duke team wasn’t going to beat James Worthy, Sam Perkins and Michael Jordan in Chapel Hill or anywhere else to be honest.
Taylor pulled it out, putting together arguably the best senior-day game in Duke history. He had 35 points and some big defensive plays down the stretch as Duke defeated the Tigers 73-72 in three overtimes.
Duke ended 10-17.
Krzyzewski got an infusion of talent with next season’s freshman class led by Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson and Jay Bilas. But this was an era when freshmen went up against upperclassmen like Perkins, Ralph Sampson and Thurl Bailey and Duke took its lumps.
Duke didn’t get its 10th win until February 16, an 89-80 win over Stetson. That was cutting it close but not 1982-level close. A later win against Georgia Tech and Duke ended at 11-17.
That kind of thing is unimaginable these days, at least at Duke. Even that ill-fated 1994-’95 team started 9-2 and got its 10th win in January. Duke has hit the 10-win threshold in December every season since the 2003-’04 team ended the month at 9-1. Two seasons ago Duke won its 10th game on December 2.
So, nobody talks about consecutive 10-win seasons anymore and I suspect there aren’t more than a handful of people currently employed at Duke who even remember when the brain trust was touting this as a source of pride.