Excited for wednesday Tarheel huddlers. I wish you hadn't lost to C of C because it scares me that you now have a lot to prove. Time to go set up the tent though!

Duke's numbers over UNC are heavily skewed when you look in terms of Carolina's debacle of a transition from Guthridge to Doherty to eventually Roy Williams. Coack K and duke got fat over the dominance they enjoyed over UNC during about a 5-6 year span. Not only did duke routinely defeat UNC on the court, they also cleaned up in recruiting too. Heck Jason Williams wasn't even offered a scholarship by then UNC coach Bill Guthridge! Duke had no such crisis. Coach K has brought success and stability to their program when UNC was in upheaval. I'm not suggesting the rivalry numbers from this brief time period shouldn't count, but they should be looked at in the proper perspective. Duke was dominating a program that was a shell of its former self. But things have definitely changed...

Facts are facts...since Roy Williams has been at the helm Coach K and the duke program have still enjoyed moderate success. But in many ways they have taken a step backwards in terms of NCAA tournament success and recruiting success. Recent case in point...they missed on Harrison Barnes (a widely believed duke lean and consensus #1 recruit in the class of 2010), then they shifted to Roscoe Smith (plan b) but they whiffed when he recently chose UCONN. Now they are scrambling and Coach K is now believed to be recruiting multiple players that are already committed to other schools (Austin Rivers & Terrance Ross). This screams of desperation and would have never occurred 10 years ago! These recruiting losses will rear its ugly head in the next few years.
Oh the dukies can talk about their dominance in the 3 day ACC tournament, but face it, most don't put a great deal of stock in the conference tournament anymore due to the expansion of NCAA field. In fact, rumor has it that Coach Roy Williams received a 2009 ACC championship ring and thank-you note from Coach K and the duke staff for deciding to rest a gimpy Ty Lawson in last year's ACC tournament. Remember that back in the 1970's, you had to win the ACC tournament just to get into the NCAA tournament! Now that was a pressure packed tournament!

Bottom line...let the dukies have their 3 day tournament crowns, we'll take the NCAA crowns and compare the sizes of our rings later

GO HEELS!!!

Another observation...02 if they are making you that upset....turn em off, do something else and come back 1/2 hour later.

You are getting all torn up...you're right...but it's getting you a little much.

Let's not act like Coach K couldn't go head-to-head with Dean in recruiting and ACC and national success, and that he just "gathered up" all his success during the Guthridge and Doherty years. That's a significant slight toward K.

Over Dean's last 12 seasons at the helm in Chapel Hill, he did have a 15 to 11 advantage over Coach K in Duke-Carolina meetings, but Coach K led Dean in just about every other major ACC and NCAA category during that span. I am using this stretch of years because it is only fair, as it took Coach K a few seasons to rebuild and bring the Duke program back into the thick of things in the ACC. So this is kind of like sidepiece omitting the Doherty years.

K vs. Dean 1986-1997

National titles: K 2, Dean 1
Final Fours: K 7, Dean 4
ACC Championships: Dean 4, K 3
ACC regular season cloth banners (which most Tar Heel fans here seem to deem more important): K 5, Dean 4
Program wins: Dean 328, K 315
30-win seasons: K 3, Dean 2

In the ACC Tournament, K had a 3-2 record against the man who invented not scoring the basketball (Dean), including a 2-1 record against him in ACC championship games during this time frame.

Note: Keep in mind that all of these records are counting the 1994-95 season, despite Coach K only coaching Duke that season for 12 games due to health issues that not only almost cost him his wife, who threatened to leave him if he didn't quit coaching and check himself into a hospital, but also his life. He was deathly ill, folks, no matter how much you would like to believe otherwise. With that said, this means that Dean's advantage in Program Wins (which is only 13) and in ACC championships (which is only one) might easily have been reversed had K not been forced to sit out the '95 season.

People use the "antiquated records' excuse when it's convenient. You can bet that Duke fans would be counting all games if they led in the overall series. I see the point in talking about more recent history, but it doesn't erase what happened in the past and doesn't make it any less important.

It kind of reminds me of the Ohio State-Michigan football series. Michigan beat up on OSU early on in the series when football was still a club sport at OSU, rather than a varsity sport like it was at UM. Over the last 50 years or so, OSU holds a slight advantage in the series, and while I love that fact, it doesn't change the entire history of the rivalry. Those early wins count, no matter how much we Ohio State fans wish they didn't.

I like RiverRat13's posts though. Since Coach K IS Duke basketball, and Dean Smith (and now Roy) IS Carolina basketball, we can look at their head-to-head records since we're hand-picking samples from the rivalry. Looks good to me.

Looking at those numbers, there's one that sticks out above the rest. K with TWO national titles, and Dean ONE. There is NO doubt who was the better NCAA Tournament coach.

Coach K. And Coach K did his greatest NCAA damage during Dean's prime. And that must have ate the old chain smoking Dem up!

Ironman92 wrote: Another observation...02 if they are making you that upset....turn em off, do something else and come back 1/2 hour later.

You are getting all torn up...you're right...but it's getting you a little much.

I'm ok. I'm not quite as upset as my posts may seem to reflect.

[Just wanted to bring this to the new page, in case sidepiece couldn't see it]

Over Dean's last 12 seasons at the helm in Chapel Hill, he did have a 15 to 11 advantage over Coach K in Duke-Carolina meetings, but Coach K led Dean in just about every other major ACC and NCAA category during that span. I am using this stretch of years because it is only fair, as it took Coach K a few seasons to rebuild and bring the Duke program back into the thick of things in the ACC. So this is kind of like sidepiece omitting the Doherty years.

K vs. Dean 1986-1997

National titles: K 2, Dean 1
Final Fours: K 7, Dean 4
ACC Championships: Dean 4, K 3
ACC regular season cloth banners (which most Tar Heel fans here seem to deem more important): K 5, Dean 4
Program wins: Dean 328, K 315
30-win seasons: K 3, Dean 2

In the ACC Tournament, K had a 3-2 record against the man who invented not scoring the basketball (Dean), including a 2-1 record against him in ACC championship games during this time frame.

Your numbers are blatantly skewed. Wonder why you begin at 1986-87? Because that's when K and duke reached the Final 4 for the first time in his tenure. Are you saying it took K 5 years to re-establish a program like duke?

You've decided to take a brief sample of years in order to skew the numbers towards your "leader of men." That's fine. Dean Smith doesn't need statistics to tell me he is a more revered and respected basketball coach. In the end, I'm more inclined to look at the full body of work of both programs. More head to head wins, more Final 4's, more national championships, better looking women, etc. When doing that it's clear that duke, while a top notch program, will always be in Carolina's shadow

Based on Coach Williams versus Coach K in the last 4 years, I can't wait to see what their head to head numbers look like when they retire, probably around the same time in the next 8-12 years. Who knows...maybe Coach Willliams will let Coach K and the dukies win a rivalry game in Hansbrough Indoor Stadium

We can have this argument all night. Coach K does have advantages over Dean Smith in a few areas, such as NCAA tournament success. However, not only did Coach Smith become one of the all-time great college basketball coaches, even moreso there's very few that could ever approach Coach Smith in terms of being a man of great integrity & character, the least of which being K. If the worst you can say about a guy is that he used to have a bad habit of smoking cigarettes, then that's pretty pitiful.

By the way, what's up with duke recruiting lately rec? With the latest transfer (Olek Csdfkhsdfhgk) and the whiff on Roscoe Smith duke's recruiting seems to be pretty lame lately. What's the dukies back up plan this time? Are they finally going to go to the vaunted 5 guard lineup?

reclegend22 wrote: Looking at those numbers, there's one that sticks out above the rest. K with TWO national titles, and Dean ONE. There is NO doubt who was the better NCAA Tournament coach.

Coach K. And Coach K did his greatest NCAA damage during Dean's prime. And that must have ate the old chain smoking Dem up!

Dean's prime was his last 10 years? I doubt you'd get many Carolina fans to agree with that. In reality, Dean was pretty consistent over time and had his peaks and valleys like any coach who does it for 36 years goes through. Coach K is finding that out for himself. Dean's '86-'92 valley is very much like K's valley of '05 to the present.

It's hard to compare K and Dean with 100% accuracy. For one, in Dean's first 15+ years only the ACC champion advanced to the Final Four. If K had to coach under the same rules, he'd only have 2 titles as his '91 team lost to UNC in the ACC tournament (and Roy would have 0!). Second, 11 of Dean's years were during the Wooden/Gilbert era of UCLA, which made it extremely difficult to win a title during that time frame.

The Dean vs. K argument may eventually go away as I believe Roy will best the both of them if he chooses to coach as long as they have/had.

But to your greater point, K definitely had the advantage over Dean during the time period you highlighted. I just don't think you can call that Dean's "prime".

I remember reading this stuff in about 2004 from dukefan and ahdonis....same ol arguments...same ol rebuttals.