The past two years have been very good for Mike Krzyzewski. In addition to taking Duke back to the top of the college basketball world last April, he also led Team USA back to the top of the international basketball world (not that there was any doubt as long as we brought the “A team”) in Beijing. An inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001, he has won almost every title (four NCAA championships, 12 ACC championships in both the regular season and conference tournament, and an Olympic gold medal) and received almost every award (three Naismith College Cach of the Year Awards, two Basketball Times National Coach of the Year Awards, a NABC National Coach of the Year Award, and five ACC Coach of the Year Awards) that he could be expected to win.

K: Best in the Business

To add to that, earlier today the city of Chicago announced that it would make this September 15th into “Mike Krzyzewski Day” (over/under on misspelled signs and posters: 130) on the same day that he will be inducted into the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame and receive the Ray Meyer College Coach of the Year Award. [Ed. Note: We aren’t expecting Chicago great and Duke-hater Michael Jordan to be in attendance.] Coach K, a native of Chicago, graduated from Archbishop Weber High School before matriculating to the Army where he played under a fairly decent coach named Bob Knight. A solid but unspectacular guard at Army, he served in the Army for three years and coached at a prep school for two years before joining Knight as an assistant at Indiana where he left just before the 1975-76 season (the last undefeated Division I team) to take over as the head coach at Army. Although he compiled a 73-59 record at Army, he went 9-17 in his last season before getting an offer from Duke to become their head coach (a classic case of failing upwards). His first three years at Duke were not much more successful as after a merely mediocre rookie campaign he went a combined 21-34 over his second and third seasons. At that point many critics suspected Krzyzewski’s days in Durham were numbered, but little did they know that the freshman class that season (Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alarie, David Henderson, and Jay Bilas) would wind up being one of the greatest classes in the school’s history. After that group made it to the 2nd round of the NCAA Tournament in their sophomore and junior campaigns they took off as seniors in what is widely considered one of the finest seasons in college basketball history. That group entered the championship game with a 37-2 record against a Denny Crum-led Louisville team before falling by three points to freshman sensation “Never Nervous” Pervis Ellison and the Cardinals.

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We’ve known about John Wooden’s famous golf round from 1939 for a long time, the one at Erskine Park Golf Course in South Bend, Indiana in which he nailed both a hole-in-one and a double-eagle (or albatross) on the way to shooting a 75 (+4).  Well, the scorecard from that day on the course has been found.

Wooden's Daughter Holds The Proof. As If We Needed It. (David Crane/LADN Staff)

According to an article from the online edition of the Los Angeles Daily News, Wooden’s daughter, Nan Muehlhausen, recently found the scorecard while cleaning out her father’s condominium in Encino.  As you can see, the card clearly shows Wooden’s name signed as “John W.” as the first player on the card along several others who would have had to vouch for the feat.

We understand that these things need to be vetted and proven, that witnesses of such accomplishments on a golf course are necessary. But we’re with Wooden’s son Jim.  When Jim was told that Golf Digest wanted to see the scorecard, he responded, “If daddy said he did it, he did it.”

Wooden was a keen golfer and even got down to a six handicap. When Corey Pavin (the captain of the USA’s Ryder Cup team this year, by the way) won the U.S. Open in 1995, Wooden called long time friend Eddie Merrins, Pavin’s golf coach at UCLA, and congratulated him on Pavin’s win — a respectful acknowledgment of the relationship between player and coach.

According to Golf Digest, the making of a hole-in-one and a double-eagle in the same round is something that’s been done just four times, one of them by Coach Wooden.  We ask you — is there anything the man couldn’t do?

1. It was unsettling kind of day, as two lawsuits involving high-major coaches were settled yesterday.  Perhaps they saw Louisville coach Rick Pitino’s fifteen seconds of infamy and decided to hedge their bets, but former Seton Hall head coach Bobby Gonzalez and current Ole Miss head coach Andy Kennedy both settled their ongoing lawsuits yesterday.  Gonzalez was embroiled in a wrongful termination suit with Seton Hall after getting the axe in March on the heels of a  public blowup with the law school dean, claiming he was owed two more years of salary.  Kennedy settled his defamation suit against a cab driver and valet over a dust-up in 2008 where the pair accused the coach of using racial slurs because the cabbie wouldn’t allow the five people in Kennedy’s group into his vehicle (the max is four).  Details of both settlements were not released, which is just as well for everyone involved.
2. While on the topic of lawsuits, the Pitino/Sypher saga won’t die in Louisville.  Defense attorney James Earhart now claims that he has new information that specifically leads him to believe that some of the prosecution’s witnesses perjured themselves while under oath.  He’s asking for a 45-day extension to further research these allegations and believes that it will ultimately lead to a mistrial on appeal.  Maybe this is Earhart’s way of saying that it might have been a good idea to call some witnesses who could have impeached their testimony during the trial?
3. The legacy of John Wooden will live on in the form of the contents of his den — all the hundreds of pieces of memorabilia that the Wizard held onto over the years — which will be moved en masse over to the UCLA campus for fans to enjoy as a virtual Wooden terrarium.  We’ve already got plans to visit UCLA’s JD Morgan Center later this year to see this.
4. We had the privilege of seeing all six of Butler’s NCAA Tournament games live last year, and in each game more than the last, we came away impressed with the poise and abilities of the Bulldogs’ Shelvin Mack.  Luke Winn writes that Mack, more than any other player on the summer circuit of camps and USA Basketball, has elevated himself to the point where he’s getting rave reviews from veteran guards in the League.  Case in point: Mack was chosen over quite a few big names for his spot on the USA Select team, players such as Scoop Jardine, Scotty Hopson, Jacob Pullen and Jimmer Fredette.  Could Mack, Ronald Nored and Matt Howard propel Butler toward another Final Four next year?  They may be closer than conventional wisdom says even after losing star forward Gordon Hayward.
5. Fanhouse put together a cool idea — figuring out who should make up the College-Forever team.  Using the general criteria of great collegiate players who barely earned a cup of coffee in the NBA (or none at all), who would populate your top three teams of the modern era (1985 to present)?  We only saw one major omission, and that was Arkansas’ Scotty Thurman, who despite a brilliant college career never logged a single second in the NBA.  Nevertheless, he was an absolute assassin for Nolan Richardson’s “40 Minutes of Hell” Razorbacks, winning multiple games with his smooth stroke in late-game situations, most notably from the wing over Duke in 1994.  He should have been on the first-team over Ed Cota, and at worst second-team.  Cool concept, though.

1. The annual ESPYs were held last night in Los Angeles, and there were a few college basketball-relevant winners in the mix.  The most notable was in the Best Upset category, with Northern Iowa’s elephant-sized win over top-ranked Kansas in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.  Duke’s men’s athletic program was named the best collegiate sports program, undoubtedly in no small part due to the hoops Devils’ fourth national title in Indy, while the best Male College Athlete was Kentucky’s John Wall.
2. A brilliant idea from our friends over at College Chalktalk.  To honor John Wooden’s lifetime of humanitarianism and excellence, CCT has had the UCLA coaching staff in addition to several other notable teachers (such as Rick Barnes, Roy Williams, Tom Izzo, and Tubby Smith) give their thoughts on a particular block of the Pyramid of Success.  Our favorite so far: Bobby Hurley’s piece on Alertness.
3. Speaking of Wooden, the family of the exalted coach has decided to continue with the Wooden Classic in 2010, the seventeenth edition of the event.  Rebuilding UCLA will play Pac-10 pass-over BYU, while St. Mary’s and local Big West favorite Long Beach State will tip the other matchup.
4. Jason Jeffries, the former assistant director of ticket operations at Kansas, has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with federal authorities to identify if any other principals were involved and what, if any, crimes may have occurred.  But the most interesting part of this story is that the federal judge assigned to his case  (Wesley E. Brown) got the job when all three Topeka federal judges recused themselves for no reason.  Even odder, Brown, at 103 years young, is the oldest sitting judge in the entire federal system.  During the hearing, he even made mention of “the Twitter,” a creation that was barely a year old when Brown hit triple digits.  Amazing stuff.
5. In Robert Tuchman’s list of his favorite ten Sporting Events You Must See Live, there are two relating to college sports.  One is fairly obvious — Michigan vs. Ohio State football in the Big House; but the other one isn’t Duke-UNC in Cameron or even the Final Four.  It’s Kentucky’s Big Blue Madness event, taking place on the first Friday after October 15 every year.  Bold choice.

We’re back with another a Friday edition of The Morning 5. The end of the (work) week means that we are one week closer to Midnight Madness. We hope you all enjoy your Fourth of July celebrations and be safe with whatever you are doing.

1. As an example of what not to do on your holiday weekend (or any time for that matter) we turn to Atlanta, where Georgia athletic director Damon Evans was arrested for a DUI late Wednesday night. We’re expecting quite a bit of talk about this over the next week, but one Atlanta columnist is already taking him to task for the incident (rather lightly we might add) and we don’t expect that to be the last column on the issue. To compound matters (at least in terms of PR) Evans had previously participated in a video advising fans to not drink and drive.
2. Former UConn star Donyell Marshall was named as an assistant coach at George Washington. The move will reunite Marshall with head coach Karl Hobbs, who was an assistant on the UConn teams of the early ’90s when Marshall starred in Storrs, including his 1993-94 campaign when he was named 1st Team All-American and Big East Player of the Year (and, ironically, knocked George Washington out of the NCAA Tournament in the 2nd round).
3. Dana O’Neil checks in with Fran McCaffery who, as the mid-major coach du jour, left Siena a few months ago to take over at Iowa for Todd Lickliter, who was mid-major coach du jour at Butler before coming to Iowa…and was fired three seasons later.
4. Jay Bilas, attorney-at-law (he actually is one) points out the “slippery slope” of the current NCAA charges against USC, UConn, and Memphis in relation to the UCLA dynasty and the recently departed John Wooden (ESPN Insider required; sorry, but it is an interesting article). Many people might take issue with the timing of this article so soon after Wooden’s death, but those people are missing the point of the article. It isn’t so much an attack on Wooden and his teams, but instead targets the NCAA and its antiquated by-laws. We have some issues with certain points of his argument, but we would love to hear your thoughts on the column (if you have ESPN Insider access).
5. Speaking of legendary coaches, Don Meyer of Northern State (D2) was selected to be the recipient of the John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award. Meyer ranks second all-time in wins by a men’s college basketball coach at any level with 923 wins trailing just Harry Statham of McKendree University (NAIA) who has a healthy lead with 1,022 wins. We have a feeling a certain coach out of Durham might be approaching those numbers in the next few years.

Former UCLA head coach and legend  John Wooden was honored at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday afternoon for nearly 100 years of life that impacted tens of thousands of people, both sports fans and otherwise.  Despite direct competition with the US-Ghana World Cup match and the Bruin baseball team’s victory to get to the championship of the College World Series, approximately 4,000 people including Jerry West,  Marques Johnson, Derek Jeter, Al Michaels, Bill Walton, Joe Torre, Antonio Villaraigosa, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and many others paid tribute to the man’s life and teachings during a 90-minute ceremony.  Wooden died nearly a month ago in Los Angeles at the age of 99.

The Current UCLA Coach Paying Homage to the Former One (LA Times/A.Schaben)

Former UCLA forward Jamaal Wilkes used his time at the podium to describe Coach Wooden as “one in a billion as a coach, mentor, and friend.”  The only beef we may have with that statement is that Wilkes may have sold the legendary Wooden short by a few billion.  Another UCLA forward, John Ecker, related a story about how Wooden needled him well into his 90s about whether he was loved, another valuable insight into the brilliance and cognitive abilities of the man.  Throughout the last month, we’ve learned an awful lot about Wooden as a man — we were already well aware of his records and accomplishments as a coach — but we hesitated to try to put into words our feelings for him because it felt awkward.  Nevertheless, we know enough to know that it’s very difficult to find people on this earth who nobody has anything negative to say about his character, and Wooden appears to be one of those few.  We’re only sorry that we didn’t get a chance to meet him while he was here.  RIP, Coach.

The storied UCLA basketball program has had a tough academic year, and certainly fans and alumni of the program are looking forward to a brighter days ahead after a graduation weekend that saw their current head coach going under the knife for a torn Achilles tendon and their legendary former coach laid to rest after passing away last weekend.  Reports surfaced today that Ben Howland had surgery on Friday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center to repair his right Achilles and is now resting comfortably at home, but it isn’t clear whether the stoic Bruin hurt his foot after leaping with joy over news about the NCAA’s recent hammering of the USC athletic department.  Seriously, though, we wish the coach well on his recovery and we hope that for his program’s sake this injury represents the last in a long string of unfortunate ailments that his program suffered in 2009-10.

Wooden Was Honored at the 2010 UCLA Graduation on Friday (AP/R. Saxon)

As for the other piece of it, the titan of UCLA athletics known as John Robert Wooden was laid to rest on Friday in a private ceremony held in the Hollywood Hills at Old North Church.  Not too far away at last night’s UCLA graduation for the College of Letters and Science, each of the nearly 5,000 graduating students carried blue and gold flags to commemorate the coach’s influence on the university as photos cycled on the big screen behind the podium.  From the UCLA press release:

Among the student flag bearers was Mustafa Abdul-Hamid, a popular basketball player known for his sportsmanship and dedication to hard work in his studies and on the court.  “Carrying in this flag is the least of what we can do for Coach,” Abdul-Hamid said. “It’s our way of honoring someone who honored us with all that he did. He carried the whole weight of this university for many years. He is and always will be our role model.”  The spirit of the coach who won 10 NCAA basketball titles for UCLA and started a college basketball dynasty that remains unrivaled was pervasive as speakers alluded to Wooden’s life of grace and integrity.

A public ceremony will be held for Wooden on June 26 at Pauley Pavilion, but prior to that, local affiliate KTLA will be airing a one-hour tribute of the Top Bruin’s life on Sunday night at 9 pm PDT.   We’re going to try to get our paws on that to distribute to the world if we can.

RIP, Coach.

1. Might want to set your alarms for this one.  UCLA will be holding a public ceremony at Pauley Pavilion for the late, great John Wooden on June 26 at 11 am PDT, and it will be broadcast live on Prime Ticket and streamed live at www.ucla.edu (brief aside: a smaller tribute will also occur today at UCLA’s graduation ceremony).  We doubt that Wooden’s tribute will get 1% the attention of what another departed Angeleno of far lesser character got last summer, but we’ll do our part (and we hope you will too) to honor the man who helped make college basketball what it is today.
2. One day after Kansas AD Lew Perkins was cleared of any wrongdoing by the university on an equipment flap, he announced his retirement effective next summer.  Um, congratulations?  Under your watch, you certainly helped to grow the Kansas football program (Orange Bowl winners in 2008) and keep the basketball program on the top plateau (national title in 2008), but the last year has been ridiculously bad, beginning with the football/basketball team fights and ending with KU apparently getting thrown to the wolves by the rest of the Big 12.  Well, he does have another year to solve some of those problems.
3. Tom Izzo update: he spoke with Cleveland officials today while MSU faithful held a rally on his behalf back in East Lansing.  His quote on the matter: “It’s not going to be forever,” referring to his dalliance with this NBA job.  Stay tuned.
4. UConn was warned over ten years ago about the “appearance of impropriety” with agent Josh Nochimson, but that didn’t seem to matter when it came to recruiting Nate Miles in 2006 and 2007.
5. Where’s your glove, Dickie V!?!  The larger-than-life ESPN commentator found a way to get himself into the news during the offseason by throwing himself into the path of a foul ball at a Tampa Bay Devil Rays game last night.

In less than 48 hours, our televisions will be taken over by the biggest sporting event the world has to offer.  Your TweetDeck (or whatever Twitter application you use) will be lousy with friends, celebrities, and sportswriters tweeting about it.  Your Facebook friends will be centering their status updates about it.  And, for the next five weeks, when you walk into your favorite sports bars, as you peer at the flat-screens you’ll notice an increased presence of a game to which you might not be accustomed.

It’s World Cup time.

Like the Olympics and the Fields Medal, this is an every-four-year event.  It pits nation against nation in the sport that still stirs up the most passion among its fans on a worldwide scale.  Imagine if we only got one NCAA Tournament every four years.  Well, this is the one summer in four that soccer (the word we’ll use for this article, though we’re aware that most of the world calls it football) lovers get to enjoy their chance to crown a champion.  If you follow RTC on Twitter (if you don’t, shame on you, and go click our logo at right), you’ve probably been impressed by our occasional tweet about other sports or even current events.  It’s not exactly a long limb we’d be going out on for us to assume that if you’re a college basketball fan, you’ve probably got an interest in other sports, too — though international soccer might not be one of them.

Want to talk to her? Know your World Cup. Yeah, we thought that'd keep you reading.

Worry not, our fellow college hoopheads.  We’ve got you covered.  We want you to be able to hang in those conversations at those sports pubs.  We want you to be able to approach that lovely blonde bespectacled German girl wearing her Deutschland jersey in the supermarket (this actually happened to us a week ago).  We want you to impress your friends with your world vision and increased overall sports knowledge.  You think those kids in the stands at Duke or Xavier or Utah State are both well-prepared and berserk?  Wait until you hear the crowd at a World Cup soccer match.  We want you to enjoy that vital aspect of it all, as well.  We’re by no means experts on the subject, but to those ends, we give you — trumpet flourish — Rush The Court’s College Basketball Fan’s Guide to Watching the World Cup.

If this England squad is like Kentucky, then Wayne Rooney is their John Wall.

THE TEAMS

First, let’s list some of the participating  teams and define those squads in terms familiar to college hoop fans.  As you’ll see, by the way, national soccer teams have some of the best nicknames you’ll ever hear.  The best?  Cameroon.  The Indomitable Lions.  I mean, COME ON…

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We’ve been wondering how RTC could pay tribute to John Wooden besides the photo we posted on the day he died along with one of our favorite quotes of his, a maxim we felt summed up the heart of the man…if a single quote can accomplish such a thing.  We’re a few guys in our late 20s and 30s, which means Mr. Wooden was done coaching by the time we were small children — and not even born, in one case.  None of us ever had the chance to meet him later on in life.  There’s no matching the tributes that have come from his players, friends, and professional writers who knew him.  Therefore, while we’re certainly in awe of who he was and what he meant to the game, and that he’s considered a hero even by people we consider heroes, for us to pontificate on his life would be more of an insult than a tribute.  The best that guys like us can do is to assist in his immortality by continuing to tell future generations of fans what he stood for, and to continue as fans of the sport knowing that a lot of what’s good about our game, even to this day, is because of him.  Considering all the tributes and anecdotes over the past few days, we also offer our respects by dedicating our day-starting feature to him this morning.  The regular Morning Five will return tomorrow, but for today, here’s the Wooden Five — a collection of five of our favorite links/stories about Coach Wooden.

1. Integrity, anyone?  In 1947, while at Indiana State, Coach Wooden refused to take his team to the NAIA tournament for which they had qualified.  When you read why, you’ll see what people have been talking about when they refer to him as a man of “timeless principles.”

2. Former player Bill Sweek (UCLA ’69) told The Sporting News about a time when he bucked his coach, immediately regretted it (and had to face a little fire from the man), and how Wooden’s forgiveness helped turn it into a teaching moment for the good of the entire team.

3. We’ve always loved that story — both versions of it —  about Bill Walton’s challenge of Coach Wooden’s team tonsorial policies.  One part of the story that’s not often mentioned is that after Walton rushed to comply, he made it back to the end of practice that very same day.

4. Can you imagine Wooden coaching anywhere else but UCLA (and Indiana State)?  It’s spooky to think about how a snowstorm and 30 minutes of Minnesota reticence changed so many lives.  Even though he preferred the position with the Gophers, he had already given UCLA his word.  We think it worked out.

5. No notes.  No nonsense.  No further introduction needed: