Jim Valvano stood out among NC State basketball coaches vs. Coach K

Barring an unlikely meeting in the postseason, NC State basketball saw the last of Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski following last week’s 88-73 loss at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Will the Wolfpack fare any better against future head coach Jon Scheyer and whoever might follow? Who knows?

It is for certain, however, that Krzyzewski, hired exactly one week before NC State hired Jim Valvano, has enjoyed unprecedented success against the Wolfpack throughout his 41-plus years with the Blue Devils (Krzyzewski is credited for coaching 12 of Duke’s games in 1994-95; Pete Gaudet was on the hook for the other 19 games, including three against the Wolfpack).

NC State basketball has had six coaches during Krzyzewski’s Duke career and only one of them — Coach K’s heated rival-turned-friend Valvano — had a winning record against the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame coach.

Only three ACC coaches — North Carolina’s Dean Smith (24) and Roy Williams (18) and Georgia Tech’s Bobby Cremins (15) — won more games against Krzyzewski than the 14 recorded by Valvano, who left NC State 32 seasons ago and died in 1993.

The rivalry between Valvano and Krzyzewski went all the way back to the late 1960s, when they faced each other as players in a 77-59 Army victory over Rutgers on Feb. 17, 1967. In their only game against each other, Army upset a high-powered Rutgers team led by an all-star backcourt of Valvano and Bob Lloyd.

Sophomore Krzyzewski scored 17 points for head coach Bobby Knight’s Army team in front of a sellout crowd of 2,400 spectators at Rutgers Gymnasium. Both teams were fiercely trying to make their case to qualify for the National Invitation Tournament.

Valvano scored 12 points against Army’s swarming defense in a game that he and teammates made just 17 of 61 shots (27.9 percent). Lloyd scored 30 points, but hit only nine of his 29 field goal attempts on the night.

The game turned early in the second half when Rutgers forward (and future NC State assistant coach) Dick Stewart fouled out just one minute and 13 seconds after halftime, scoring only one point in the contest. Rutgers eventually qualified for the NIT, advanced to the semifinals and won the consolation game to finish third overall.

As coaches, however, Valvano always had the upper hand against Krzyzewski, winning three of their five meetings while the head coach of Iona and compiling a 14-9 record with the Wolfpack.

It was always infuriating to Krzyzewski that his well-disciplined and talented teams fell short to Valvano’s ragtag collection of players, who often played junk defenses and utilized seat-of-the-pants offenses drawn up on the sidelines by their head coach.

Valvano won an ACC title and NCAA championship before Krzyzewski ever made an NCAA appearance with the Blue Devils. Famously, as North Carolina celebrated its 1982 national title and NC State celebrated its improbable 1983 championship, Krzyzewski was fighting off an insurrection by a faction of the Iron Dukes booster club, who wanted him fired after three seasons.

The on- and off-court competition in the Triangle was a beautiful thing to see in the mid-1980s, when State and North Carolina had 10 ACC titles and Duke had nine. Duke eventually supplanted the Wolfpack in the ACC’s hierarchy with Krzyzewski winning 14 tournament titles since NC State won its last in 1987. (Two of those titles came against the Herb Sendek-coached Wolfpacks of 2002 and ’03.)

The Pack has won several high-profile games against Krzyzewski-coached teams, including a quarterfinal win over No. 6 Blue Devils in the 2007 ACC tournament in Tampa under first-year head coach Sidney Lowe and wins by Sendek and Mark Gottfried in Raleigh when the Devils were ranked No. 1 in the nation. Les Robinson won both of his regular-games in 1994-95 and lost in the opening round of the ACC tournament, but all three of those games were against Gaudet.

Current coach Kevin Keatts won two of his first three games against Duke and was ready to challenge the Blue Devils again in the quarterfinals of the 2020 ACC tournament before it was canceled due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Few ACC coaches and no others at NC State had the same kind of success Valvano did against Krzyzewski, who will retire at the end of the current season.

NC State Basketball Coaches’ Record Vs. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski

Coach	Years	W-L Record	Percentage
Jim Valvano	1980-90	14-9	.607
Kevin Keatts	2017-present	2-4	.333
Mark Gottfried	2011-17	3-8	.272
Sidney Lowe	2005-11	2-6	.250
Herb Sendek	1996-05	3-21	.143
Les Robinson	1990-96	1-10	.100

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpacker and can be reached at [email protected].

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