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Not sure where to put this, but if you were in school in the mid 80's like me, you'll spit out your drink.

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What if Duke hadn’t hired Coach K? Meet the finalist who walked away from consideration 42 years ago

Dana O'Neil 3h ago 10 
Idealistic and maybe a little stubborn, Duke athletic director Tom Butters steadfastly refused to play games when South Carolina came sniffing around for his head basketball coach, Bill Foster, in 1980. Asked if the school would pony up more money to ensure Foster remained in Durham, Butters practically sneered. “I just don’t think that’s where intercollegiate athletics should be,’’ he told the Herald-Sun in February 1980.

In six years, Foster had done what few thought possible — restored Duke basketball into relevance. The Blue Devils enjoyed success in the 1950s and 1960s, Vic Bubas leading them to national semifinal appearances and a national title game in a magical four-year span from 1963 to 1966. But until Foster arrived, Duke spent eight long years without an NCAA Tournament bid as the business of intercollegiate athletics did, in fact, change. Few thought Duke, a small, private school with a rigorous academic reputation, could rise again.

Yet there came Foster, blessed with a sunny outlook, an appreciation for an up-tempo game, and a knack for turning around programs. He methodically put Duke back together, slowly luring the sort of players he needed to compete, and eventually getting the results Duke craved. By 1978, the Blue Devils were back in the national title game (though they lost to Kentucky), beginning a three-year run in which they won two ACC titles, earned three NCAA bids and put together a 73-24 record, highlighted with several weeks ranked at No. 1.

That made Foster rather popular among athletic directors looking to fix their ailing programs. South Carolina, in an ugly mess after forcing out Frank McGuire following years of underwhelming results, checked all of the boxes for Foster. Butters, though, remained convinced his coach wouldn’t budge — even refusing to consider a list of replacements when Gamecock administrators requested formal permission to speak with Foster. “I won’t seek coaches under any circumstances when we’ve got a coach,’’ he said at the time.

So naturally Foster left, and there stood Butters in March 1980, three years on the job and already staring at the most critical hire of his Duke career. “We all believed that Duke had a great future, and that it was one of the best jobs in the country,’’ says former assistant athletic director Steve Vacendak. “But … this was a challenging time for us.’’

Fairhope, Ala., sits on a bluff overlooking Mobile Bay. It’s a quaint town, lined with towering oak trees and homegrown shops, the sort of place where a person moseys. It’s not exactly a destination, more the pit stop or day-trip footnote to a more popular Alabama beach vacation.

Bob Weltlich ended up here 20 years ago, when he decided to retire. He likes the pace and the community feel. His wife, Nancy, is a real estate agent in town, and he’s something of a volunteer civil servant. The Eagle Has Landed, a statue in the middle of town, is his doing. Having endured the pandemic, he thought it would be nice to find a permanent way to thank all of the people who serve Fairhope — the first responders, teachers, medical professionals — and spearheaded an effort to fundraise for the statue. The town came out for a big unveiling in September, on the 20th anniversary of 9/11. “I never understood why you can only memorialize a person after they die,’’ he says. “It’s meant to be something that people see. Not a memorial, but a reminder.’’

It’s funny that Weltlich of all people would spend his retirement working ensuring folks aren’t forgotten. People could use a reminder where Weltlich is concerned, too. Some may recall his coaching career — a successful run at Ole Miss, a memorable one at Texas, and then the career fade-to-black stops at Florida International and South Alabama — but fewer are aware of his footnote to history.

This week, Mike Krzyzewski will coach his final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, on a court that bears his name.

The job almost went, or at least, could have gone, to Weltlich. Now he will insist that Krzyzewski was always the first pick. “I want to stress, I think Mike was always going to be their choice,’’ Weltlich says. “I’m not going to say I didn’t want it and that’s why Mike got the job. Not at all. He had the ability to do what I’m not sure I could have. It didn’t suit me nearly as well. But I need to be clear: Mike did not get the job because I didn’t want the job.’’ But the semantics of a coaching search are always tricky, and even before search firms gave athletic directors plausible deniability, there was a way to assert a truth without revealing all of it. “He has been my No. 1 choice, and will be my No. 1 choice,’’ Butters said on March 18, 1980, the day he introduced Krzyzewski as Duke’s next boss. He added that, “for the sake of accuracy,” no one else had been offered the job.

Which could indeed be accurate … even if the other finalist walked away. “Let me tell you how dumb I was,’’ Weltlich laughs. “I didn’t think you could recruit enough good players to Duke, what with the academics and it being such a research school. Bill Foster had done an amazing job, but I just wasn’t sure about Duke going forward.”

So what if? That’s the inevitable question, isn’t it? What if Weltlich had gotten the job? The George Bailey-like impacts are endless. Does no one hate Christian Laettner because “The Shot” doesn’t happen? Is there a Bilastrator, or does Jay Bilas have an undistinguished playing career and become a lawyer? Is Cameron still filled with Crazies, or just another gym? Or does it all play out exactly the same and the basketball world is feting Weltlich today, and Krzyzewski is just some scrapper trying to make his way? Or does Krzyzewski wind up elsewhere, with the exact same career but at another school, and that program now has an overstuffed trophy case and Krzyzewski is coaching his last game there? Weltich laughs. “Well, I know this much,’’ he says. “They hired the right coach.’’

Of course they did. That’s easy to see now, what with 42 years and five national titles worth of hindsight. It is the smartest hire maybe in college basketball history. But in 1980? In 1980, it would have made a lot more sense to pick Weltlich. And he certainly would have been an easier choice to float to the hungry masses. On the day Krzyzewski was hired, newspapers ran a parenthetical pronunciation guide for his last name. “Duke dipped deep into the well of obscure college basketball coaches to find its new coach,’’ the Chapel Hill News wrote of its rival’s decision.

By comparison, Weltlich was a proven product. Like Krzyzewski, he was a Bob Knight disciple. A native of Knight’s Orrville, Ohio, Weltlich grew up shagging rebounds for his high school hero. He planned to go into teaching after graduating from Ohio State. Instead Knight hired him as an assistant at Army. When Knight moved on to Indiana in 1974, he brought Weltlich along with him. Weltlich was still on staff when Krzyzewski, Knight’s former point guard, came on board as a graduate assistant. Krzyzewski bounced after just one season, returning to West Point as head coach, but Weltlich stuck around through the Hoosiers’ undefeated 1976 season.

Sprinkled with the pixie dust of that title run and endorsed by Knight, Weltlich jumped a few rungs on the ladder, taking the head coaching job at Ole Miss that year. It wasn’t a glamorous gig — Ole Miss had never enjoyed the madness of March — but it was a job in the competitive SEC. When Weltlich put his stamp on it, righting the Rebels to 17-13 in his fourth season, it not only earned him league coach of the year honors, it put his name on the radar of plenty of ADs.

Weltlich flew to Ames to check in with Iowa State. He also met with Butters in Lexington, Ky., site of the NCAA Regional where, in an awkward tap dance, Foster coached the Blue Devils despite accepting the South Carolina job two weeks earlier. Butters had other candidates — Old Dominion’s Paul Webb, Boston College’s Tom Davis and Duke assistant Bob Wenzel also were reportedly on the list.

Krzyzewski’s name didn’t surface in a single news report. By comparison to everyone save Wetzel, he was a lightweight. At Army, he set a high-water mark of 20-8 in his second season, which receded to 9-17 in 1979-80. He’d been in the coaching business for all of six years, after a playing career at a school that doesn’t exactly move the basketball needle. No one knew much about Krzyzewski — not even Butters, until Knight suggested him.

Even after writers reported that Butters had reduced his candidates to two (Davis, by then, had publicly removed his name), they speculated that it was down to Weltlich, Webb and Wenzel. One went so far as to declare the name of Duke’s next head coach would begin with a W. Except the finalists were Weltlich and the man we now know as Coach K. The pair were invited to Durham for second interviews — by then Weltlich had removed himself from consideration at Iowa State — at Butters’ house. The small search committee consisted of Butters, Charles Huestis, Duke vice president for business and finance; and English professor and faculty athletics representative, Dr. Edwin Cady. Vacendak was privy to the conversations but not a formal committee member, and really the committee was mostly for feedback. This was Butters’ decision to make.

Weltlich brought along his wife, Nancy. “I always brought her when it got serious,’’ Weltlich says. “She had a good feel for things.’’ Only 29 at the time, Nancy was, in fact, a pretty savvy coach’s wife. She grew up playing basketball in St. Louis, such a fan of the sport that one prescient classmate wrote in her yearbook that she would one day marry a coach. She went to Memphis (known then as Memphis State) as a physical education major, and counted Tigers players Larry Finch and Ronnie Robinson among her good friends and coach Gene Bartow as a mentor. Set up on a blind date with Weltlich just after he took over at Ole Miss, she planned the family calendar around games. “Games went in first, then birthdays and anniversaries,’’ she says.

She remembers visiting Duke and being squired around for a campus tour. She liked Butters and the campus but jokes that “Cameron wasn’t what it is today. It was just a gym.’’ Her husband, she says, was the decision-maker, and she was more than willing to go along with whatever he decided. But she remembers thinking that Duke would be a hard job, what with recruiting against North Carolina and NC State, and Weltlich already had put in the effort to get Ole Miss going. “We were in the driver’s seat there,’’ she says. “They never had any basketball there, and Bob got it going. People wanted to go to basketball games for the first time. He was practically iconic.’’

Weltlich was making $33,000 a year at Ole Miss, his deal set to expire in two years. He vowed not to pit one program against the other, but athletic director Warner Alford planned to sweeten his deal with a TV show, hoping to close the gap on the reported $100,000 deal, which included both TV and a camp, Duke had to offer. Money, though, wasn’t everything to Weltlich. He took a good long look at the Blue Devils, a program Foster had elevated to a national title and Sweet 16 appearance, and compared to his own station at Ole Miss, where he’d welcome back essentially his entire roster.

After just one night in Durham, Weltlich and Nancy went home, where Ole Miss did, in fact, sweeten the pot. The school gave Weltlich that TV program and a big raise — $10,000. “I don’t think I would have survived there,’’ Weltlich says. “Mike had the ability to do what they needed, and I’m not sure that I could have. It didn’t suit me well, and I think we saw that.’’

This is where it becomes a bit of a chicken-or-egg question: Did Krzyzewski get the job because Weltlich wasn’t interested, or was Krzyzewski always going to get the job? Weltlich insists it was the latter, but in 1980, he told the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger, “I may or may not have gotten it.’’ In that same story, an unnamed source insisted, ‘I think this guy (Krzyzewski) is a last resort. I, along with a lot of other people over here, believe Weltlich was offered the job.’’

Butters, Huestis and Cady have all since passed, and Vacendak says he’s not sure exactly what happened. “I know he was sincerely interested at one point,’’ he says. “I don’t know if he withdrew or what. Only Tom would know that.’’ In ensuing years, long after his place among the greats was cemented, Krzyzewski and others admitted that the athletic director at least had a case of cold feet. Convinced he couldn’t sell the Army coach as Foster’s replacement, Butters had Vacendak drive Krzyzewski to the airport, but then had a change of heart. He instructed his assistant to go back and page Krzyzewski before he boarded his plane but told him not to tell the young coach he planned to hire him. Instead, he asked Vacendak to take Krzyzewski out to dinner at the Angus Barn. “We sat there for like an hour and a half, and I couldn’t say a word,’’ Vacendak says. “Finally I took him to Tom’s house and he signed the contract.”


Bob Weltlich celebrates winning the 1981 SEC tournament. (Courtesy of Ole Miss)
We all know what happened to Krzyzewski next — after three lousy years, the student body wanted him fired, Butters stuck by him, and here we are. Five national titles, three Olympic gold medals and a Coach K Court later, he no longer needs a pronunciation guide. Everyone knows his name.

Weltlich is the footnote, the might-have-been who enjoyed the more common peripatetic career of a basketball coach. “I went where they would have me,’’ Weltlich says. “I was on what I called a five-year plan. After five years, either they’d get tired of me or I’d get tired of them.’’

He’s not kidding —he spent five years at Texas, five years at Florida International and five at South Alabama before retiring to Fairhope. In between, there were some moments. In his first year at Texas, for example, Weltlich fielded a roster so decimated by transfers and injuries, he had just eight players to choose from — one of whom was a cheerleader. Lance Watson, a one-time all-district high school baller, suited up all season for the Longhorns. “Let me tell you, that cheerleader was one of my better finds,’’ Weltlich says. “Any Joe Schmuck could have looked at our team and said, ‘Hey, I think I can play Division I basketball.’ It’s funny now. It wasn’t so funny then.’’

Another: He got the South Alabama job after the sudden resignation of Bill Musselman, recommended by, among others, one Mike Krzyzewski. And in between coaching gigs, a brief broadcasting career, and time on the NIT Selection Committee, he wrote a novel. “Crooked Zebra” is a fictional tale about a former basketball star turned official who winds up in financial trouble and, with the help of a phenom he rescued from a rough home, starts fixing games. Eventually the mafia gets involved, and they attempt to throw the national title game. “The old adage was that the premise was always, ‘I didn’t throw a game. I just affected the point spread,’’ Weltlich says. “That was the rationalization, but in my book it shows how that’s just the first step.’’

The kicker? The star player goes to Duke. “It’s fiction,’’ Weltlich stresses, though he does chuckle at both his prescience (three years after his book was released, Tim Donaghy was charged with fixing NBA games) and the irony. Forty-two years ago he walked away from Duke, unsure if the school could attract the sort of players needed to compete in college basketball. Yet when it came time to choose the best place for a fictitious stud player to go to college, the Blue Devils were the obvious choice.

Weltlich has no regrets. When he left Durham to return to Ole Miss, he never once looked back. On March 18, 1980, the day Krzyzewski was introduced as the next Duke coach, Weltlich told reporters back in Mississippi, “You do what’s best for you, that’s the name of the game.’’ Meanwhile back in Durham, Butters suggested to a skeptical media to give Krzyzewski a chance. “I think,” Butters said, “it’ll be a program you’ll like to to follow and write about.’’

Forty-two years and a lot of words later, you could say they were both right.

 

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Vegas64

Vegas64 679

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14 hours ago, LTtxfan said:

 

And that is just playoffs. Longhorn alumni in the NBA are doing numbers! It's outrageous how many more, per capita as a ratio, Longhorn basketball players who are pro versus Longhorn football or baseball players. 

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ztejas

ztejas 43752

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26 minutes ago, Braff Zacklin said:

Got dam, Kai is getting swole. Didn't even recognize him at first.

Yeah I intentionally didn't mention who it was haha. I think he has the chance to be really good. He has a freakish body. 

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LTtxfan

LTtxfan 49420

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12 hours ago, Braff Zacklin said:

Got dam, Kai is getting swole. Didn't even recognize him at first.

Saw this...

04/11/2022, 2:28 PM

Kai Jones: Double-double machine as rookie

Jones averaged 18.3 points, 10.8 rebounds, 1.3 steals and 2.2 blocks in 31.6 minutes across 24 appearances with the Greensboro Swarm during the 2021-22 season.

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shadow_operative

shadow_operative 15932

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i've been waiting for UT to post something about him. whenever he led SS to that 3-0 record, maybe a week ago or so, i went scouring twitter for more info, and searching "royal ivey south sudan" came up with almost nothing. hell, the news that the Nets re-upped his contract had more publicity. good for Royal, and his team as well. 

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