Whoops! When I saw the title of the thread I was going to buy tickets to the boxing match.

Oh, how quickly we forget. Do you not remember the ad nauseum references, by Dick Vitale, to one "Michelangelo," aka Dean E. Smith, from 1982-1997? Please.

Vitale's a front-runner. His perceived obsession has little, directly, to do with Duke, and almost everything to do with the fact that Duke's is a program that has been consistently great for a long time while remaining relatively clean. If your favorite school can reasonably lay claim to these attributes, he'll be your biggest booster, too.

Score more points.

Neither do you. If you don't like him, turn the ****ing TV off.

I tried this but I found that it's much more difficult to watch college basketball games with the TV off.

Seems like my comment about Vitale rubbed you the wrong way - which is kind of puzzling in a thread where people have proposed burning him at the stake.

I don't doubt he is a great motivational speaker and he does seem to be enjoying the hell out of life. My wife is like this . . . boundless energy, optimism and makes people around her smile. I love my wife more than life itself but if she were signed to do NCAA games, I would start the petition myself to get her off.

They're making derogatory comments about him. You saw the need to include my reply when you made your derogatory comment. I didn't see the need for it. And since I haven't cared much for your posts since you got here, it seemed like an opportune time to shoot back. :)

Your response is less puzzling now. More disturbing, but less puzzling. :)

In fairness I quoted 3 lines from your original post instead of a little snip because I wanted my snarky comment to contrast the man with his work. He does seem like a nice guy I just find his work like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Like you, I'm sure, I'm not here to be loved or hated and, as a coach, I sure haven't found the Welcome mat. But I like being here, I love the game and like getting a different perspective than I get from just talking with other coaches. I hope eventually all the personal stuff goes away and it can be regular agreements, disagreements and snarky comments that happen thread to thread and don't get stored up over time.

Ah, you're disturbed. I thought as much. :)

You haven't found the Welcome mat because of the tone of your initial posts. I think we have a pretty good bunch here but you'll find two things to be true about us: 1, we're passionate about what we do, and 2, respect has to be earned. There are coaches who post here that are respected but they didn't dig themselves a hole in their very first thread.

Go Heels!

[Edited by BktBallRef on Mar 10th, 2006 at 11:53 PM]

I thought it was going to be an episode of MTV's "Celebrity Death Match". Every once in a while, that was a pretty funny show.

And Vitale admits this freely. If you mention the fact that he's a "Duke lover", he says, "What's not to love? Great players, great coach, they win games, and they run a clean program."

I heard somebody call him Dukie V last week. :)

This is something I always get blasted for; the great coach comment makes me cringe. Great recruiter, yes. Great coach, it depends on how many other coaches would be considered great coaches. To me, it doesn't take a great coach to win with great talent. Plus, great coaches win (it all) with great talent. I just have not seen anything from Duke that could make him any more great than Calhoun, Tubby Smith or Nolan Richardson. I mean, they both won it all when they had the talent.

So, it doesn't take a great coach to win with great talent. Okay. Here's a little fact-finding mission for you: Check out how often the most talented team wins the NCAA tournament. Almost never happens. Why? Because it's just damn hard, and statistically incredibly unlikely, to win six games in a row, five of which are going to be against decent-to-outstanding teams. No matter how good your coach is, the odds are stacked heavily against you.

Is Calhoun as good as Dean because each won two national championships? Does Dean's extended era of excellence not outweigh Calhoun's spotty greatness at UConn? There's a reason you get blasted when you make this argument. It's because your argument is garbage.

So, to recap, it doesn't matter that you haven't been consistently great. It doesn't matter that you can only make it to the promised land when you have all the horses. The only thing that matters is that when you've had them, you've won. Got it.

Mike Krzyzewski: 31 seasons, 10 Final Fours. 3 titles
Jim Calhoun: 34 seasons, 2 Final Fours. 2 titles

Beyond absurd.

If there was a Whiners Hall of Fame, Coach K and Jimmie Boeheim would be charter members.

Whine, whine, whine......

Whine.

If you want to talk purely about basketball coaching ability, I'm sorry but I have never looked too long at the top programs for my ideas. Mike Krzyzewski, Dean Smith and Jim Calhoun all run (or have run) top programs but I'm not going to spend a lot of time watching their tapes for x's and o's.

Most coaches don't have the luxury of dominant athletes so I want role models who can lurk around year after year with 1 gym rat, one walk-one, 2 football players and one folding chair. Guys like Pete Caril, Bud Pressley, David Arsenault and Dick Bennett.

Wow. Dean Smith didn't impress you with tactics and strategy. Just...wow.

Seriously. That may be more ridiculous than putting Calhoun on the same plane as Dean and K.

A lot of Calhoun's time was spent at Northeastern, which actually won some upset games in the tournament. Put Coach K at Northeastern for a few years and see what happens.