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[QUOTE="jncuse, post: 4996516, member: 1969"]
Trying to piece things from the link below, but it's hard to do as context is missing.

[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/schools/duke/men/[/URL]

Seems like the 1980 Elite 8 Team that went 24-9, which Coach K inherited in 1981, returned a fair bit of its rotation players (6 of 8) and 3 of 5 starters.    Although they did lose their best player in Mike Gminski who was probably an All American.     Nowadays that level of return would be considered very good - but back then more players stayed around so it may have been seen as nothing great.   That being said I could see people who thought that his 17-13 record in 1981 was underwhelming.

The freshman class was not good in 1981, but Coach K can't really be responsible for that - assume it was on the prior coach?

Coach K's very first freshman class in 1982, was also not very good it appears.   He went 11-17.
At this point a coach "today" might be on the hot seat.

While the 1983 team only went 10-17, Coach K hammered the recruiting class - 4 of the 5 leading scorers on the 1983 Duke team were freshman (Dawkins, Alarie, Bilas, Henderson)  And the program rose with those 4 players, ultimately getting to 37-3 in their senior season

I assume by 1983 people saw the potential of that team and were probably generally happy.
1982 (after his second season), might have been the toughest time.

All speculation based on records of course.
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