Perspective: With Coach K gone, Bill Self could be the new voice of college hoops
as who wins it, Self carries into the final a stature the sport needs. Roy Williams retired from North Carolina last spring and left his chair to former Tar Heel Hubert Davis, who has injected the Carolina faithful with a new level of, well, faith over the past month alone. Davis’s victory over Duke was the last game for Mike Krzyzewski, the sport’s most prominent figure.Those departures leave an opening for voices, for ideas, for authority. Self, 59, has to be in that next group.
On Friday, Krzyzewski acknowledged that his pre-Final Four news conference might be his last chance to speak, as an active coach, about the state of his sport. This isn’t just about name, image and likeness rights or the transfer portal, the hot-button issues that have dominated discourse over the past year. It’s about structure and leadership, two topics about which Krzyzewski can speak with clarity.“This is a transformational time for college athletics,” Krzyzewski said.
That’s not abdicating responsibility. It’s being realistic. The time to consider broad-brush issues comes from comfort, from confidence, from stability and familiarity. Davis and Scheyer must be laser focused on the enormous jobs they have inherited. It’s a lot. College basketball needs advocates who get the way the sport works from the inside but are self-aware enough to envision realistic ways to affect necessary changes. Self qualifies in both credentials and attitude. He has dealt with an NCAA infractions case that has hung over the program and, in generations past, might muddy his legacy. But in a world in which players can now be compensated for their market value, what once seemed seedy can become above board.
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