I was going to post this last week, but decided it didn't really belong in this thread... but it pretty much echoes your sense of things:
Well, i'll admit it—i have more envy than hate. I've always said that Duke (the entire university, not just the hoops team) has a culture of 'superiority.' I don't know if my experiences with Duke alums is different from everyone else's, but they just straight up tell you "Duke is a great school." Pretty much in those same words, almost as if Stepford-programmed. It's obnoxious, but interesting in its bizarreness. You meet people from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, etc., and they're almost hesitant/embarrassed to tell you where they went to school. As if modesty was bred into them. But, Dukies? Nope.
With Coach K—he established a thing, a culture, and aura. And that's a self-perpetuating positive feedback machine. I'm both surprised and not surprised that it's continuing under Scheyer. It's institutionalized. The kids fall for it because it's a solid pitch and because—even though it's simplistic and a bit insipid—it's still on a higher level than other schools operate on. It takes the right kid to buy into it, but when they do, they're in. I remember years ago seeing a profile on one of K's players, and he was telling the interviewer about some occasion when he didn't perform well, and K calmly and sternly said to him something like, "I'm embarrassed for you" or "i've never been less proud of you" or something to that effect, and the kid took it as some deep, parental thing and he construed it as some magnificent, genius, caring, teaching moment... K is very skilled at manipulating the mindsets and curating an atmosphere where he is perceived as operating on a different plane. I mean, it takes something to convince people that a cruddy little gym is the end-all-be-all of sports environments, but it's kinda like NLP—you tell people something, and they manifest it.
I don't think we do any of that. I have no (none, zero) actual intel on what our coaches do or say in private—but just based on our branding and image and pressers and coach comments about players entering drafts too early and presence on draft nights and tv appearances, etc.—the same stuff the potential recruits see... we operate in such a basic manner. The positive aspect to that is that it's unpretentious, and possibly more honest. But the negative aspect is that that probably isn't the most effective course in the real world.
but other than that is it a NCAA violation?
