With Duke and Kansas playing on Tuesday there’s a lot to talk about. When it comes to coaching, Mike Krzyzewski and Bill Self are currently tied at 3-3.
As Self mentions here though, their first meeting came in 1999 when he was a first-year coach at Tulsa and Duke had a devastating team with Elton Brand, Trajan Langdon, Chris Carrawell, Shane Battier, Nate James and Corey Maggette, among others.
Duke won by 41, but it wasn’t too long before Self began to show that he knew what he was doing - Tulsa made the Elite Eight the very next year. He moved to Illinois not long after that and then of course to Kansas, where he’s been ever since.
Here’s Self on his relationship with Krzyzewski: “We’ve had some personal milestone moments. But I never looked at that (Duke-Tulsa matchup) one as one. Maybe if we had been more successful or played better. He’s always been very good to me, though, and supportive and has congratulated me on successes and things like that. So I’ve enjoyed our little bit of a connection.”