This campus lives and breathes Duke basketball. Over the course of the last decade, virtually every member of this community (the so-called sixth man) has enjoyed being a part of the unbelievably-winning ways of the men's program. I even know juniors who actually ruled out spending time abroad because spring semester is for basketball.
But something really unusual has happened over the course of the last few weeks. The men's team has lost a few games. Actually, if my pentium processor is adding correctly, Duke has lost its first six Atlantic Coast Conference contests. Identifying with the team no longer means being associated with a perennial winner. So what is every fan looking to do? You guessed it, blame the coach.
Acting head coach Pete Gaudet graciously stepped in for Mike Krzyzewski, who is gone for the rest of the season while he fully recuperates from back surgery. But after stepping in and accumulating five straight ACC losses, Gaudet has started to become a scapegoat.
Fans are pissed. They miss the charismatic Krzyzewski. They're wondering why Gaudet was chosen over younger assistants Tommy Amaker and Mike Brey. And I've even overheard some whiners asking for Gaudet's resignation.
People -- this is ridiculous.
Let's take a step back (waaaay back for some of you nuts who started camping out for UNC two weeks ago), and try to understand the big picture. First, Gaudet inherited an atrocious situation. With Krzyzewski still leading from the bench, the team lost its ACC opener, at home, to what was supposed to be the league's 1995 doormat -- Clemson. Then all of a sudden, Krzyzewski is out of the picture with back problems.
Poof. Gaudet has to immediately change roles from an assistant to the head honcho. He has to help the team, including some very young players, deal with a "knife-in-the-back" opening loss to a huge underdog. And he has just two days to help the Blue Devils rebound before they head to Atlanta to take on a Georgia Tech team jam-packed with talent.
Even John Wooden -- coach of nine straight NCAA basketball championship teams at UCLA -- would have had a tough time trying to fill the shoes Gaudet is now standing in. I won't argue with you -- Gaudet doesn't have quite the presence of Krzyzewski, and he might not appear to be the stabilizing figurehead that has been fixed on the sideline of Cameron Indoor Stadium for the last 14 seasons. But after just a handful of games (that's just one finger per loss), let's not jump to any premature conclusions.
You also have to look at what Gaudet is dealing with. The coaching staff, normally four strong, has been reduced to three. Ask miracle-worker Fred Goldsmith how he thinks the Duke football team would have done if he had to cut 25 percent of his coaching staff. I can't imagine he'd respond with something like, "Who needs defensive coordinators? All they do is blitz anyway."
So the situation stinks. But is Gaudet doing the best he can given the circumstances? There's no question that he knows what he's doing. In fact, after spending 17 years as Krzyzewski's assistant, he probably knows what Coach K would be doing if he was still in charge. Gaudet has been coaching for a total of 27 years. He was Krzyzewski's right-hand man on the back-to-back national championship teams of 1991-92. How can any fan (especially those of the fair-weather variety) second-guess that much experience? Stop tracing every single mistake back to the coach.
For example, fans have witnessed Duke's propensity to foul this season and have complained that if the intimidating Coach K were on the sideline, the referees wouldn't be making all those "bad" calls. Do you really think that experienced ACC refs like Lenny Wirtz, probably 20 years Krzyzewski's elder, or Dick Paparo, who got almost as much TV time as Calvin Hill did last year, really care who's sitting on the bench? No way.
Face it, this Duke team is struggling both offensively and defensively. At least part of the reason is with the Detroit Pistons this season. The Blue Devils are still adjusting to life without superstar Grant Hill. Coach K announced on day one that this would be a learning season.
Finally, let's look at the bottom line -- is the team getting better? Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom -- perhaps that was the team's lackluster effort against N.C. State -- before things start to improve. You can look at FSU as just another loss, or you can consider things like the improved ball movement and shot selection.
So stop whining. Stop blaming the coach. Duke's "$16,000 man" has what it takes -- the know-how, the staff and the players -- to help his team through what appears on this campus to be a second-coming of the Great Depression.
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