Special K

The cleverly named CoachK.com points out that the Spawn of Knight passed Dean Smith for total career NCAA tournament victories (66) when Duke beat Mississippi State to get into the Sweet 16. Where they lost.

Lets just take a second to note that Mr. Unspellable has coached almost all of his career in a tournament with 64 teams and six games. When Dean got started, there were 22 teams in the tournament, then 32 (1975), 40 (1979), 48 (1980), and 64 (1985). Making Dean's victory total much harder earned. There were fewer round of 64 gimmies back then. K's got no fewer than 15 of these fluff games on Dean. For now.

Like a good corporate shill, CoachK lards his site with inspirational witticisms like this: "Leaders have to give time for relationships. But more demands will be placed on their time as they become more successful. So if a person’s success is based on developing relationships, then they have to continually find new ways of getting it done.” Like delegating the relationship-building function.

This one also struck me as deep: “Visualize a wagon wheel as a complete team. A leader might be the hub of the wheel at the center. Now suppose the spokes are the connecting relationships the leader is building with people on the outer rim of the wheel. If the hub is removed, then the entire wheel collapses. In a situation like that, if a team loses the leader, the entire team collapses.” The man is smooth with his metaphors, for sure.

I'm really not sure how I made it this far in life without Coach K's quotes. I'm surprised he doesn't charge for access to them.