Coach K Reflects On His First Great Class At Duke

People treat Duke basketball like it’s always been great and the truth is that since 1960, with a few bad years in the early ‘70s and early ‘80s it has been.

Duke has been to Final Fours in every decade since the ‘60s which is pretty good - that’s five straight decades. But it’s not like it’s been the powerhouse that we see today the entire time.

Coach K inherited a great program with minimal talent other than Kenny Dennard, Gene Banks and Vince Taylor. It took a few years to lay the foundation for what we see today and the class that’s primarily responsible for that is the class of ‘86 - Johnny Dawkins, Mark Alaria, David Henderson, Jay Bilas and Weldon Williams.

In this video he gets together with most of those guys and talks about how they laid the groundwork for today’s players, and how even the one-and-done guys are heavily influenced by K’s first great class.