Coach K and Dr. White on Duke, improving Cameron, the Duke experience & more
On this week’s Coach K Show, the Duke Head Coach chatted with Duke’s VP and Director of Athletics Kevin White. Dr. White, previously the AD at Notre Dame, Arizona State, Tulane, and Maine, is in his second year leading the athletics department at Duke…
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Coach K: What was your vision coming in of Duke Basketball and football?
KW: I was never as excited professionally as I was when I was invited to come to Duke. I have been doing this a long time, three decades. The opportunity to come to this program at this particular time in history for Duke and its athletic program was really special. It wasn’t lost on me. To be frank, I had the opportunity to work with the very best coach who has ever coached in any sport. That for me, if you do what I do for a living, is very exciting. I’ve learned a ton from you in the last 19 months and I’ve learned a ton from everybody at this amazing place. This is a very special place here at Duke. There are a lot of people who are the very best in their field and I am talking to one right now. Whether it’s Tallman Trask, the deans on campus, my dean at the Fuqua School of Business where I teach in Blair Sheppard… It’s an opportunity to come to a place and be surrounded by superstars.
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Coach K: Kevin, when you first came, there had to be a vision you had based on limited knowledge of Duke University. Now that you have been here 19 months, is that vision the same, better? Where are we at with your vision for Duke Athletics and how do you integrate it with what our university is doing?
KW: You know Mike I would say there is some of both probably. I did have a pretty good sense of Duke in that I was at a similar institution in South Bend (Notre Dame) in a lot of ways. But Duke is top 10 in the U.S. News & World Report, Top 13 best school in the world. Duke is an incredible institution, a powerful place. I guess I knew all of that. I would say the collegiality with the senior administration and the folks on campus — That has really surprised me.
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Coach K: Yeah, it’s a good team.
KW: It’ s a great team. People work here in earnest on this campus.
Coach K: They love being here.
KW: They love being here, and they work in earnest and they want to make Duke bigger, faster, and stronger. That’s exciting if you do what I endeavor to do for a living.
Coach K: You were hired not just to be our director of athletics, you were hired to be the Vice President of this university. What does that mean and how does that help you with your job?
KW: First and foremost that was an honor to be extended that opportunity particularly at a place like Duke. With President Brodhead, it has been really great. He has invited me to sit at the table where a lot of the big decisions are made.
Coach K: That helps us so much to have our boss sitting with the other bosses to integrate what we are doing with everyone else.
KW: It puts me in a position to interpret athletics to the rest of the academy, to the university and maybe interpret the rest of the university back to athletics — Not just all our coaches and support staff but our whole fan base and alumni and everyone else that has an insatiable interest in the Blue Devil program. It just gives me that opportunity to be that conduit and I love that role.
Coach K: Over the course of your first 19 months, you have reached out to every sport and tried to meet personally not just with the coaches of the teams but also the captains to get to know the players.
KW: I must have been here four or five months and I wasn’t learning enough about Duke fast enough. I thought I needed to create a mechanism so I invited the 67 captains in over the course of last year, and I am in the process of doing the same thing this year. I am going to do this every year from this point on, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier in my career. To have a 30-40 minute conversation about all things Duke, I’ve learned an awful lot. I’ve learned where we’ve been a little weak, where we have a chance to do things a little better, where we’ve been pretty good and I can underscore and support some of those. The young people we have in this program, as you know, are the best and the brightest.
Coach K: They are the reason we are here.
KW: And when you sit down and ask them, they are going to respond in a way that is really profoundly important and meaningful. These young people are bionic. They are the best academically, they are the best athletically. They compete at the highest level, they are involved in service work, they are doing everything. So when they come in to download to you their Duke experience, it’s worth it’s weight in gold.
Coach K: You have always been involved on a national stage with committees. You were the president of the national athletic directors association. You touch other people and learn about best practices and you know what’s going on. You keep us current in that regard.
KW: I hope I do, Mike. It’s been fun. You and I have had, in own way, a great relationship with the late Myles Brand. I miss Myles. Myles was not only a really good colleague and a terrific NCAA president, perhaps the very best NCAA president we’ve ever had, but a guy that was really bright and innovative. He was a great listener. I would get invited down the street from South Bend to Indianapolis to spend time in conversation with Myles when no one was around. I learned more from Myles than I could ever share with anybody.
Coach K: He was a great leader. He knew you weren’t going to get all the information at a committee meeting when people are around the table. Sometimes you have to go around a different table where it is just the two of you… In going forward, there’s a great initiative going on here with the Bostock group. We have a really developing football program with a great guy, a great coach. And we have a men’s basketball program where we’ve been able to compete at the highest level for the past couple decades. Both need work. Would you just explain what you want to get done through the Bostock group.
KW: Sure, I guess just to define the Bostock group really quickly, it is nine or 10 individuals who have come together and subscribed to a vision to not only protect but also enhance Cameron Indoor and Wallace Wade. Those are our revenue-generating venues so to speak. Men’s basketball has been really good to Duke and I should underscore that, for three decades by the way. And has been really good financially to Duke Athletics. It has been the financial driver of Duke Athletics. So we not only have to sustain that, but hopefully enhance that. On the other side of the ledger, football has been a non-producer financially for us for a long, long time. For many, many decades. We’ve got to put together a football business that is vibrant and puts us in a competitive position with ACC programs and the national programs that we compete against. We are not going to be able to do that unless we continue to find ways to build our football business. You can tie both of those levels of effort back to facility work. We are talking about raising a sizable amount of resource in a rather challenging economic time to protect if not enhance Cameron Indoor, and also resuscitate and/or re-invent Wallace Wade. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Before we do a lot of other initiatives around all of our other sports, and they are all important, we’ve really got to do some things with our revenue generators. So, the Bostock group exists to help us protect and enhance revenue generation that will help everything across Duke Athletics.
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Coach K: You arrived here at a tough economic time. I thought what you did — making sure there were no sports cut, making sure there wasn’t a blanket number of people let go — you stayed true to the team that was here and to the sports that were here. Now money-wise, how does the university look at us and where are we?
KW: Having an opportunity to sit at the table like we talked about earlier, I think President Brodhead and Provost Peter Lange and others see intercollegiate athletics as a vital part of the institution. I think we are viewed as being really good stewards of our resources and participating in the downturn not unlike the rest of the institution. We’ve done some things around the margins while trying not to negatively impact the experience of the student-athlete. We’ve been able to avoid wholesale changes at this point and all that’s good. I’ll tell you, a lot of that is because of the benefactions we enjoy from the Duke faithful, the Iron Dukes have been terrific. All the funding that has come through there which is in excess of $12 million a year has stayed strong. Men’s basketball income has been really good to us for a long time and continues to be strong. Football income is continuing to bubble up and become a little bit better. The philanthropic support around this program historically, all the way back to my good friend Tom Butters, has been the key to this thing. I think we are in a really good position. To some degree, we are in an enviable position in regard to our peers.
Coach K: I think we are too.
KW: We are hanging in there, but we are fighting and punching and scratching every day and there’s a lot of work to be done. But we’ve got a lot of people who are up to the challenge.
Coach K: One of my dreams for Duke Athletics is to at some time have every scholarship endowed. That’s one of my goals for my basketball program, I think we have 11 scholarships endowed now. What a good thing that would be.
KW: That would be a great thing Mike and that’s an ideal we need to work towards to. There are so many people that love Duke.
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Coach K: I think what happens is if I endowed a scholarship and I played here and I could see that young man or that young women, it would rejuvenate me to bring back the memories. There’s a great expression. Coach Knight had a great impact on me. I can never pay him back, but I can pay forward — So, teaching Wojo and Chris Collins and Johnny Dawkins. I would like to see us have people who have played sports here say, “let’s pay forward.” Let’s make sure whatever I had that gave me a pretty darn good life could be given to somebody else. I’d love to always be a part of trying to do that here at Duke for all the sports. It would be a heck of a thing.
KW: I would say this Mike. In my short time here it is abundantly clear to me and everybody else here. You’ve put us on the map, you’ve done so many wonderful things. You’re oftentimes uncomfortable hearing when I refer to you as the iconic coach but you are the iconic coach in my mind.
Coach K: You should have told that to the officials last week at a few of our games!
KW: I think it was reverse discrimination, that’s what you told me last night and I think you are right. But anyway, you are not only the basketball coach and you’ve been such a wonderful ambassador of Duke, but boy you’re involved and you’ve been involved all these years in keeping all the other sports growing. You’ve got a huge interest in the entire athletics department and I can tell you from first-hand experience that isn’t the case at a lot of places. That’s really refreshing and also inspirational. You see things beyond your immediate domain and that’s great for Duke and it’s great for Duke Athletics.
Coach K: Well, I appreciate it. I’ve really enjoyed it. This is how we talk all the time, except his language was a lot better and he was much more courteous today than he usually is. No, I am only kidding. Thanks and I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
Coach K and Dr. White at last year’s basketball banquet
An interview with Mason Plumlee after the Wake Forest win
You had that reverse dunk – It was a big momentum play and got the crowd excited. Do you have eyes in the back of your head to see the rim on a play like that?
No, Jon was telling me I kept missing layups so I decided to just dunk it. When you turn around they are more ready to block your shot so I figured I could sneak around them for the reverse.
I’ve come in for some pretty late-night workouts including last night and spotted you working out and getting shots up. Some of the guys in interviews say you are the team’s biggest gym rat. It’s rare to see a freshman come in from day one with such a great work ethic. Where does that come from?
I think spending time in the gym especially before games helps me stay focused. So the night before, I am thinking only about the game. I figure if I am in the gym, I can only be making progress. It helps and it is just where I want to be.
You seem to be playing your best basketball just as the season is getting tougher. Is that part of your natural progression as a freshman or are you stepping up your game for the tough ACC opponents?
The margin for error is slimmer when you play better teams so you almost have to step it up or else you won’t win. Everything just feels better when it’s a more competitive environment and you aren’t beating teams by 30 or 40.
In the first half, Kyle, Jon and Nolan weren’t scoring at their usual rate but the Plumlee brothers were dominating the paint, dunking, rebounding and making big plays (and you continued the strong play for 40 minutes). What’s that like sharing the big stage with Miles in a big win over Wake Forest?
When he does something well, I feel just as good. I feel even better for him than when I do something. It’s crazy for us. Also, there’s so much attention on Nolan, Kyle and Jon, it opens up rebounds and dunks for us off of passes and penetration. Even when their shots aren’t falling like usual, their presence always plays a big role.
What has been the biggest surprise for you about ACC games?
I didn’t realize how different the ACC was than every other game we played so far. Gonzaga, UConn and Iowa State were big games but the ACC is just different. There are more athletes, it’s faster, more physical. It’s a great conference obviously but I just didn’t expect it to be this much more competitive.
Coach Wojo and Coach Collins discuss what it takes to win in our league
1. YOU HAVE TO PLAY ALL 40 MINUTES
To win a game in the ACC, you have to play hard and together for all 40 minutes. If you don’t, you have a chance to lose.
2. YOU REMEMBER THE LOSSES
We take losing hard. There have been times after a road loss when we get back to school and have to practice. You get off the bus after the game and Coach says, “Get your practice gear on. We’re not going to wait until tomorrow. We’re going to get this right, now.” That opens your eyes as a young player and you realize this is a big deal. In general, the practices and atmosphere around the program after a loss set a tone that losing is not going to become a habit.
3. IT STARTS WITH OUR CULTURE
Coach K does an amazing job creating that culture where we are going to do the things needed to win. That sense of urgency is there. Coach K’s will, passion, and competitiveness really set the tone. When you have Duke across your chest, it means you are going to be a winning team and program. That culture creates winning habits.
4. DEFENSE IS THE CALLING CARD…
Defense is our calling card when we play our best. Shots aren’t always going to fall so it’s critical we have consistent defensive effort every game. We’ve had six-minute stretches this year where we held our opponent scoreless, or to two or four points. That obviously helps you win and also produces scoring runs…
5. …AND LEADS TO GAME-CHANGING SCORING RUNS
When your defense keeps your opponent off the board, you get a chance to go on a run where you might score 16 or 18 points. There’s not a lot of separation in our league so those scoring runs can make the difference between not only winning and losing a game, but also winning the conference title and finishing .500 in the league. The runs start on the defensive end with getting stops. Some of the live-ball turnovers can turn into fastbreaks and easy buckets as well.
6. YOU HATE TO LOSE MORE THAN YOU LIKE WIN
If you asked our guys, they would tell you they hate to lose more than they like to win. If you talk to any great competitor in any sport, I think they would say the same thing. As a result, when we don’t play our best and lose, which is going to happen in a great conference like the ACC, guys have responded really well.
7. EMBRACE THE INTENSITY
There’s no doubt that when the calendar hits January, the intensity of the season takes on a whole new level with ACC play starting. The passion for college basketball, especially in this area with Duke, North Carolina, NC State, and Wake, makes this the best time of year around here. For our team and players, that intensity and excitement should be energizing. As players, you love the big-time atmospheres and the spotlight, especially in Cameron. The Crazies give us great support and that passion can help us take care of business at home.
8. CONSISTENT, THOROUGH PREPARATION IS KEY
Just like winning is a habit, losing is a habit. You have to understand how fragile a season can be. You can lose focus and not play well and lose a game. Then you play well next game and you still can lose in this conference. So, you have to punch your own ticket to win in the ACC and get in the NCAA Tournament. You can’t take any game for granted or have a sustained lack of effort or focus, or you will really regret it. There needs to be intense preparation for every single game that makes you even more aggressive than you normally would be.
Miles met with the media before the ACC/Big 10 Challenge…
There has been talk in the media about the team’s athleticism. What are your thoughts?
If playing the game hard and playing smart makes us non-athletic, then I guess we are. We have guys that can jump and run. Nolan’s athletic, Kyle and Jon have athleticism that people don’t talk about. They have great body control. There’s a reason why every day they are going out on the court and killing people who are considered more athletic by those standards. Our team is definitely very athletic.
How about you in particular. You had the highest vertical jump on the team?
My standing vertical was 36 inches and my running jump we couldn’t measure any higher than 45 inches. We put the thing up as high as it could go (and I exceeded it). I am a few inches from the top of the backboard. That’s my goal!
What has been the key to your improved shot blocking this year?
One thing is realizing I have the tools to shot block. Being aggressive and aware of when I can do it is really paying off. I can still definitely get a lot better. I have the potential to block a lot of shots if I keep working at it.
You guys have been playing great D blocking shots and making it hard for the other team to score. What are your thoughts on the team’s D?
The biggest thing I’ve noticed is we stay connected and we really talk. It’s not like you are playing your man individually. When I am out there I feel like all five of us are together. That starts with the guys in the back – Zoubs, LT – We are all talking to the guards. It’s a machine on defense.
The team doesn’t seem to have one single guy it relies on for the key bucket down the stretch but has several guys who can score. Does that make the team more dangerous?
We definitely have guys that can step up and do that – Jon, Kyle, Nolan. We have a lot of guys who can be go-to guys. But if we all hold up our own end of the bargain, we shouldn’t have to have a go-to guy. We should be a go-to team.
How valuable is Jon’s leadership to the team in tough games and tough environments like the UConn game or at Wisconsin?
We look to Jon a lot for leadership. I think it comes from a lot of different guys at different times, but you can always look to Jon. He always has his cool and it helps the team stay calm under pressure. That’s huge for us.
Duke is 10-0 in the ACC/Big 10 Challenge. Have you noticed an extra focus on these games from Coach K?
Something a lot of people may not know is that Coach K is really good and getting us all focused. We don’t treat games differently. We do put this game up on a pedestal, but we put all our games on a pedestal.
Cheerleader Maren Hardin shares the inside scoop on our Cheerleading Team
1. White Squad and Blue Squad
There are two cheerleading teams, White squad and Blue squad. Both teams cheer at all home football games, and Blue squad travels to away football games. White squad cheers at women’s home basketball games, as well as all tournaments the women’s team plays in. Additionally, Blue squad cheers at all men’s basketball home matchups and tournament games. Blue squad will also be traveling this season to the Duke versus Gonzaga game played in New York City at Madison Square Garden!
2. Duke Cheerleading Requires a Tryout Every Year
The members of the squad are not recruited to cheer at Duke, and are not provided with academic scholarships. Each year, tryouts are held for both teams; Blue squad tryouts are in April, and White squad tryouts are in August in order to accommodate incoming freshman. At tryouts, judges with cheer, dance, and tumbling backgrounds evaluate each girl based on their skills in those three areas.
3. Our Season is Two in One
Cheerleading is a year-round commitment, and starts with our summer camp in mid-August. During camp, the Blue squad learns our routines and prepares for football season. Beginning in November, football and basketball seasons overlap, and we are responsible for being at both sports’ games. We have even cheered a football game and basketball game in one day!
4. Our Weeks are Busy!
As a team, we spend four hours per week practicing our routines in Wilson gym. We also have mandatory cardio and strength training workouts designed by our coach (who is also a strength coach for numerous other Duke sports teams.) Once a week, we go to a nearby gymnastics facility to work specifically on tumbling.
5. We Have Numerous Uniforms
Most teams have home and away jerseys, and sometimes a neutral jersey. Since Duke Cheerleading normally gets a different uniform every year, Blue squad has a grand total of 6 uniforms, and White squad has 3. Having so many different uniform pieces can get a little confusing, so we name each uniform we get. Names range from the conventional (Iron Duke D white and halter) to a little strange (marshmallow and tarzan.) The two necessary uniform items that remain consistent every game are the Blue Devil face tattoo and pearl earrings.
6. We are in the Know
Technically, the cheerleaders are the only people who know the true identity of the Blue Devil. We are sworn to secrecy, and if you ask one of us, we will not tell you who that talented person is. Also, how many Duke students and alumni know all of the words to the alma mater? The answer is at least 20, because both squads sing it after every single football and basketball game!
7. Routines
Since we are not a team that performs stunts, all of our routines are comprised of elements of dance, cheer, and tumbling. We perform routines based on what the band learns to play, mixing both traditional and contemporary music. The fight songs, “Hey Baby,” and “Rock Lobster” have been performed for quite a few years, while new songs like Cascada’s “Everytime” have quickly become crowd favorites (and even Coach K’s, as rumor has it.)
8. We Perform at Other Events, Too
One of our favorite things to do as promoters of Duke athletic support is to take pictures with Blue Devil fans. While fans of all ages are welcome to ask for photographs, one rule most people are unaware of is that cheerleaders are not allowed to physically hold children for pictures due to liability issues. Otherwise, Duke cheerleaders are kid-friendly! The cheerleading team and the Blue Devil can be hired to perform at various events. We regularly attend birthday parties and teach dance and cheer clinics.
Secret Bonus Fact – Ladies of Gamma-O
All members of Blue squad, past and present, have been initiated into a secret society called Gamma Omega. Though not a sanctioned sorority, Gamma-O is similar in that we have official colors (pink and black,) we have Gamma-O gear, and we adhere to traditional rituals. We pay dues in order to hold secret and non-secret events, and we even have our own theme songs. If you have ever been at a public, non-Duke affiliated event and heard Kanye West’s “Stronger” while members of Gamma-O are in attendance, you have probably seen one example of our theme song routines!
