You Tube Gold: Duke Upsets Maryland! In Cameron!

A lot of people can’t conceive of a Duke without Mike Krzyzewski and that’s understandable. At this point, he’s obviously the best coach not just in Duke basketball history but in the history of Duke sports and possibly the finest college basketball coach ever. He’s done incredible things at Duke.

As we like to point out from time to time though, there was basketball at Duke before he arrived and there will be basketball after Coach K’s incredible career ends.

Obviously there was the brief but brilliant Vic Bubas era in the 1960s. Duke fell off at the end of his run and more so in the ‘70s.

Ultimately Bill Foster was hired away from Utah to rebuild the program which he did - but not on Day One or anything.

Foster inherited a shattered program and had a lot of work to do. He brought in Jim Spanarkel in 1975-76 and Mike Gminski the following season. He inherited Tate Armstrong but would have to wait for Gene Banks and Kenny Dennard to really bring Duke back.

This game from February 1976 is a little different from what most fans would recognize as Duke Basketball. First, Maryland was a major power then and Duke was an also-ran. Cameron had only been Cameron for four years, since 1972 - prior to that it had been Duke Indoor Stadium.

And seeing the fans rush the floor when Duke pulled off a shocking upset of Maryland is a bit surreal by today’s standards.

Still, some things don’t really change. For one, the Crazies were in full bloom, although much more spontaneous and less housebroken than they are today.

We’d encourage younger Duke fans to watch this to get a sense of where Duke was in 1976, when a young Coach K was in his first season at Army and Johnny Dawkins was a skinny 13-year-old who was in the Maryland orbit, attending Lefty Driesell’s summer camps with future Duke teammate Tommy Amaker.