Before Duke

By BRYAN STRICKLAND : The Herald-Sun
rbs@herald-sun.com
Sep 30, 2001 : 3:42 pm ET

DURHAM -- As Mike Krzyzewski’s five years of post-graduate military service drew to a close in 1974, he joined fellow West Point graduate Mike McGovern to attend a hiring conference for military officers.

To no one’s surprise, careers in college coaching weren’t on the agenda.

"When it was over, he said, ‘I’m never going to one of those again. I’m going to coach,’ " McGovern said. "It’s like he always knew what he was going to do."

McGovern, who now works for the same company that conducted that hiring conference more than a quarter-century ago, already knew Krzyzewski wanted to coach.

McGovern also knew that coaching wasn’t exactly the easiest profession to break into.

But within months, before the college friends had finished their tours of duty at West Point Prepatory School on Fort Belvoir, Va., Krzyzewski was hired by Bobby Knight as a graduate assistant at Indiana.

The rest is hoops history.

"One of the neatest things about what he is doing is that he loves what he’s doing," McGovern said. "I place people with companies, and I can tell you that most people don’t love what they do.

"I can probably count on both my hands the people that I really know that love what they’re doing and wouldn’t do anything else."

When Krzyzewski, at age 27, took the Indiana job, he already had been coaching in some form or fashion for nearly 15 years.

His first coaching "job" came as a seventh-grader in his native Chicago at St. Helen’s, a Catholic school that didn’t exactly value athletics. The school didn’t have a basketball team, so Krzyzewski started his own.

Krzyzewski went to the nun who was the school principal in hopes of getting the team aligned with the Catholic Youth Organization. The request was denied, but the team played on, with Krzyzewski scheduling matchups against other CYO teams.

"We were good," Krzyzewski said. "I coached it, I was the best player, and we played other teams.

"People cannot believe that these things happened. No parents involved; you just call up the guys and go to the park — walk to it a mile and a half or take a bus — and you played. We knew what our record was, and that was about it."

As player/coach, Krzyzewski never took himself out the game.

"We would have had a better chance to lose then," Krzyzewski said. "Plus I organized the damn team, so I was going to play.

"I was very volatile — real quick-tempered and wanted to win. I hated to lose, and I wanted to make sure that all the guys on my team felt the same way."

Those organization skills even-tually helped mold Krzyzewski into a college-caliber point guard. He earned a scholarship to play basketball at Army, where he was coached by a young Bobby Knight.

Krzyzewski was a coach on the floor; he certainly wasn’t a scorer.

"He was very dedicated on defense — probably because he couldn’t shoot," said Jimmy Oxley, an Army teammate who often roomed with Krzyzewski for road games. "He was actually a very good defensive player and always drew the best offensive player on the other team."

After his senior season in 1969, when he served as team captain, Krzyzewski began his five years of required military service.

Even while serving overseas, Krzyzewski maintained his connection to basketball. He played a part on inter-service teams that played in Italy, Greece and Iran. Sometimes he played; sometimes he coached.

"On some of those teams, Mike was not picked to be a player, but he was always taken as an assistant coach and as a scout," said Oxley, who served along with Krzyzewski in Korea. "It didn’t bother him at all to just coach."

Krzyzewski served his final two years at the Army’s prep school at Fort Belvoir. In addition to his role as training officer, Krzyzewski coached a boys’ basketball team comprised of 17- and 18-year-olds.

The team won only one game in his first season but turned it around the next year.

McGovern remembers many late-night trips to the Hot Shoppe restaurant with Krzyzewski and his wife, Mickie, for strategy sessions.

After his service time ended, with nothing but coaching on his radar, Knight gave Krzyzewski his first college job, hiring him before the 1974-75 season.

Following that season, during which the Hoosiers went 31-1, Krzyzewski’s alma mater began looking for a new head coach. Col. Tom Rogers, who had been the officer representative at Army since Krzyzewski’s playing days, sought Knight’s advice.

"I called Coach Knight and asked him of all the coaches he had been involved with, who would be the best to bring in?" said Rogers, now a special assistant to the Duke basketball program. "Knight told me he’d call back the next day.

"He called back and gave me the name of Coach K."

On the eve of the biggest interview of his life, Krzyzewski stayed with Rogers and his wife. Rogers had been sort of a den father to Army athletes through the years, sometimes allowing their visiting girlfriends to stay at his house.

"When he came to West Point to interview for the job, he stayed with us," Rogers said. "When my wife went to make his bed the next morning, she said he must have tossed and turned all night.

"What a mess — the sheets were undone."

Krzyzewski got the job, leading his alma mater to modest but still substantial success in five seasons. His teams went 73-59, twice earning NIT bids.

Following the 1980 season, Krzyzewski caught the eye of Iowa State. The Cyclones offered him the job, but before he had a chance to accept, Duke came calling.

On the advice of Rogers, Krzyzewski leveled with Iowa State and asked for a little extra time to make his decision.

"After Iowa State offered him the job, the Duke thing came up," Rogers said. "He asked me what I thought of Duke. I said I had never been there, but I know it’s a great institution."

Shortly after Krzyzewski interviewed with Duke athletics director Tom Butters, the Blue Devils pulled a surprise. Instead of going with a big-name coach, Duke hired Krzyzewski, a new (and hard to pronounce) name to most Duke fans.

Two decades later, that name is being squeezed onto a plaque for the Basketball Hall of Fame.

"You couldn’t picture this coming way back when," said Oxley, now a doctor in Godlen, N.Y. "But by the same token, it didn’t shock me, either.

"This was an amazing year for him — winning the championship, his daughter having a baby and another daughter getting married.

"You can hardly dream about all those things happening at one time."