Most of DBR’s readership is focusing its attention on next week’s Maui Classic. But there’s another event going on with a strong Duke storyline. This Sunday in Kansas City, the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame will induct its second class. The class will include Dick Groat, Vic Bubas, and Lefty Driesell, names long linked with Duke Blue.

Don’t confuse this hall with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. The National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame was established last year by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. I spoke with Rick Eddy, the director of public relations for the new hall. Eddy says “the Naismith does a great job. But it has a much larger constituency than we do. They have to deal with the pro game, the international game, the women’s game. We felt there were people associated with the men’s college game who were deserving of recognition but who just weren’t going to get into the Naismith. This is a perfect vehicle for addressing that.”

The college hall has taken an interesting approach. Those members of the Naismith Hall of Fame who had a significant association with college hoops were grandfathered into the college hall. Future inductions will recognize some of these men, while honoring new inductees. Last year’s inaugural class consisted of James Naismith, John Wooden, Dean Smith, Oscar Robertson, and Bill Russell, all members of the Naismith.

The induction ceremonies are scheduled around the 16-team Collegiate Basketball Experience Classic, which ends in Kansas City. Duke participated last year, reaching the finals, where they lost to Marquette. Missouri, Michigan State, UCLA, and Maryland advanced to this year’s final four, which will be held in the new Sprint Center.

Speaking of the Sprint Center, the Collegiate Basketball Experience is located adjacent to the new facility. The Experience is a 41,000 square foot college-basketball-museum, heavy on interactives, and built around the college hall of fame. It opened last month. And yes, as an old museum curator, 41,000 square feet makes me jealous.

The second class is led by a group that Eddy calls our “Four Founding Fathers,” Phog Allen, Adolph Rupp, Henry Iba, and John McLendon. All have connections with the Missouri/Kansas region but no one familiar with the history of college basketball could question their inclusion in even the most selective group. All are members of the Naismith. McLendon coached for 13 seasons at what is now North Carolina Central University, giving Durham additional representation at this year’s ceremony.

Groat joins Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dick Barnett, and Austin Carr in the players’ wing, while Driesell, Norm Stewart, and Guy Lewis are the coaches. Bubas is going in as a contributor, recognition of his many contributions to the game. Only Abdul-Jabbar from the above group is a member of the Naismith.

Dick Groat and Vic Bubas were rivals as players. Groat played at Duke, Bubas was one year ahead of him at North Carolina State. Groat is best known today for his 14 years as a major league shortstop. He was the National League Most Valuable Player in 1960, the year he led the Pittsburgh Pirates to the World Series title and led the league in batting. Four years later Groat led St. Louis to a World Series title over the Yankees. He had 2,138 hits in the majors.

But Groat has always maintained that basketball was his favorite sport and that he was a better basketball player than baseball player. A six-foot guard, Groat was a heady, competitive player, who could shoot and pass at a high level. Groat averaged 25.2 points per game in 1951 and 26 the following season. Only Bob Verga in 1967 and J.J. Redick in 2006 have averaged more points per game in a Duke uniform than did Groat in 1952. Groat scored 48 points in his home finale in 1952, against UNC. Despite two decades of shot clocks and three-point shots, only Danny Ferry in 1988 has scored more points for Duke in a single game. UPI named Groat Player of the Year in 1952, the first of many Duke players to be honored as the nation’s top collegiate player.

Bubas was a pretty good player at State, not much of a scorer but a solid playmaker and defender. He started for State’s 1950 team, which advanced to the NCAA semifinals before losing to CCNY. Bubas keyed State to a win over Holy Cross earlier in the tournament by holding Bob Cousy to an 11-38 shooting performance. No, that’s not a typo. 11 for 38.

Bubas probably didn’t have the talent to play professionally but it wouldn’t have mattered if he did. He was born to be a basketball coach. Bubas was a sponge at State, soaking up knowledge from State’s head coach Everett Case. Bubas stayed at State following graduation, working his way up to the top assistant’s spot. State players referred to Case and Bubas as Pete and Repeat.

Harold Bradley left Duke for Texas in the spring of 1959. Athletic Director Eddie Cameron launched a nation-wide search but ended up going a mere 25 miles down Highway 70 for Bubas, who had never been a head coach at any level.

It was an inspired decision. Bubas was only head coach at Duke for a decade but what a decade. His first team captured the 1960 ACC Tournament. His second team featured Art Heyman, who would become Duke’s first consensus All-America since Groat. Duke made Final Fours under Bubas in 1963, 1964, and 1966 and finished every season but his last nationally ranked.

Duke’s 213-67 record under Bubas included a spectacular 22-6 mark in ACC Tournament play and 11-4 in the NCAA Tournament. Bubas’ teams advanced to the ACC Tournament finals eight times in ten years, winning four, and never lost in the first round. By contrast, Duke won only a single ACC-Tournament game in the first eight years after Bubas left coaching.

Bubas was widely-called college-basketball’s first CEO and his highly organized recruiting system helped transform the sport.

Bubas was only 43 when he left coaching. He was sick of recruiting and wanted new challenges. After seven years as an administrator at Duke, Bubas became the first commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference, a position he held for 14 years. He was influential in NCAA circles, advocating for expanding the NCAA Tournament, adding a shot clock, and a three-point shot.

Charles G. Driesell wasn’t a great college player. He scored 181 points in his Duke career. And in many respects, he was the antithesis of the calm, methodical Bubas. Mention the left-hander to anyone who saw him coach in his prime, and it won’t take long before someone conjures up an image of Driesell angrily ripping off his sport coat and stomping the floor with the petulance of a four-year-old.

But the man could coach. We all know that his Maryland tenure ended badly in the aftermath of Len Bias’ death in 1986 and he never lived up to his promise to make Maryland the “UCLA of the East.” But Driesell made Maryland a consistent national power for over a decade. His 1973 and 1975 teams advanced to regional finals before losing, while his 1974 squad–arguably his best–saw its season end in a memorable ACC Tournament title-game loss to North Carolina State. After leaving Maryland, Driesell successfully continued his career at James Madison and Georgia State, taking both to the NCAA Tournament.

I’ve always felt that Driesell’s crowning achievement was his tenure at Davidson, before he went to College Park. Maryland was widely regarded as a sleeping giant when Driesell went there in 1969. After all, it’s a large, state-supported school in a power conference, located in the middle of a hotbed of high-school hoops.

But no one argued that Davidson was a sleeping giant before Lefty Driesell showed up in 1960. Still in his 20s, with only a few years of coaching experience–and that at the high-school level–Driesell turned the tiny, academically-elite school into a national powerhouse. Davidson was coming off 11-consecutive losing seasons when Driesell agreed to take the job. He promptly challenged all-comers. Duke and Wake Forest accepted, North Carolina did not, beginning an antipathy between Driesell and Dean Smith that lasted for a generation.

Driesell brought in hotshots like Fred Hetzel, Dick Snyder, and Mike Maloy and started beating the big boys. Davidson handed Duke’s 1962-’63 team one of its three defeats and twice advanced to the Eastern Regional title game, where they twice lost heartbreakers to Smith’s North Carolina Tar Heels. Driesell never did make it to the Final Four, going zero for four in regional title games. Then again, how many coaches make it to the final eight four times or take four different schools to the NCAA Tournament?

Dick Groat, Vic Bubas, and Lefty Driesell. While you’re preparing yourself for the Maui marathon, give a tip of the hat in the general direction of Kansas City this Sunday. These three sons of Duke have earned the tribute.