It’s been almost a week since Coach K retired, and it feels like he hasn’t even left. For example: We’re about to talk about his quest for one last shot at the NIT.
For some history: Coach K is an historically unsuccessful coach (has never made an NIT Final Four) who won’t play nonconference road games anymore because they remind him of how the NIT defeated him early in his career at Duke (Duke lost in a quarterfinal to Purdue in West Lafayette). Since then, he’s dodged college basketball’s premier postseason tournament, famously quitting in the middle of that 1994-95 season because the NIT was a possibility and then straight-up declining the invitation last year because, while the tournament was mostly on a neutral court, he was scared SMU might have a hometown advantage with the games in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
Now, he enters his last year as a college basketball coach, and the world is watching to see if he faces his nemesis or takes the coward’s way out.
It would be easy to take the coward’s way out. That’s kind of the definition of the coward’s way out .Looking at Duke’s roster, I think the ghost of Neville Chamberlain (yes, the dude who gave the Sudetenland to Hitler, he’s the guy I’m picking as the worst men’s college basketball coach imaginable) could coach this team to NIT avoidance on the high side. Also, if Duke’s bad, Coach K can fake his own death, or retire early, or tell the NIT no again (teams continuing to say no to the NIT is an existential fear of this blog’s).
But it would be respectable, and might salvage Coach K’s legacy, if he’d at least try.
So Coach: Give it a shot. If you do, we’ll give you a shot.
Good luck out there.
