College Basketball

"The unfortunate part was that I believed them," says Pye, "at least in terms of the odds being against our rekindling what Bubas once had going. Our average freshman has a College Board score of 1,200, although we have always made exceptions for special people who fall into the category of, say, poets, violinists or athletes."

This news must have been music to Foster's ears when he was interviewed for the Duke job in March '74. And Foster, an Elizabethtown (Pa.) College alumnus who had resurrected basketball programs at Rutgers and Utah, impressed the now more realistic search committee with some sound talk of his own.

Most coaches are workaholics, but few combine this trait with a master's in business education, as Foster does. A genius at organizing a staff and allocating time, Foster had no sooner taken the Duke job than he began speaking three times a day all over North Carolina. He huddled with the promotion-conscious Dallas Cowboys and conceived the idea of toting mobile baskets and his players to high school assemblies so that students could come up on stage and "Shoot It Out With The Blue Devils!" Foster also instituted something called Management by Objectives, a system borrowed from the head of the Utah business school wherein a player's weekly performance in everything from grades to free-throw shooting to brushing his teeth is monitored. As word of Foster's approach to basketball spread, he began getting requests to speak before IBM executives on how to get more out of less, a situation he was still having to deal with on the basketball floor.

What is often forgotten in the wake of Duke's magnificent run to the NCAA finals last season is that the Blue Devils came from nowhere. Foster began 1977-78 with a three-year record of 40-40. His ACC record was a horrid 7-29. "When I came to Duke, Jack Marin and Jeff Mullins were ending their pro careers, and our other names didn't exactly move mountains," says Foster. "But I've always remembered what Pat Williams, the 76er general manager, once said, 'When you don't promote, a terrible thing happens. Nothing.' So I tried everything I could think of to start people talking about Duke basketball again."

Among Foster's other pressing problems were getting antiquated Cameron Indoor Stadium spruced up from floor to ceiling and finding a shiny new team to play there. All Cameron needed was paint everywhere, a brand-new floor and some bleachers to replace those that caved in one night in 1976 while Duke was upsetting Maryland.

Foster's energetic recruiting—he was on the road 200 days last year—and ability to discern talent laid the groundwork for last year's 27-7 season. Unable to attract a surefire star, he beat the bushes during his first year at Duke until he had come up with the best unheralded guard prospect in the country, Jersey City's Jim Spanarkel, whom Foster judged to be like one of the Van Arsdale twins. Foster was wrong; Spanarkel, as it turns out, is more like both Van Arsdales playing at once.

Shut out on several hotshots and unwilling to take a chance on players who might not fit into his grand design, Foster gave out only one scholarship the next year. It went to 6'11" Mike Gminski, a Connecticut lad of 16 who was smart enough to go through high school in three years and then conduct his own private recruiting campaign while most coaches were waiting to see how he would do in his senior year. Gminski spent it in the ACC, winning Rookie of the Year honors as Spanarkel had the season before.

Getting last year's freshman star Gene Banks, the most impressive forward to hit the college game since Wicks and the first highly sought recruit signed by Foster, gave Duke a potential NCAA champ built along classic NBA lines: an intimidating center, a power forward and a whirling dervish (Kenny Dennard) across the front line, and a big shooter (Spanarkel) who does everything and a choice of two sound point men (John Harrell and Bob Bender) in the backcourt. What's more, Foster has never given out all his grants-in-aid. At the moment he has only 12 players on scholarship, and next season, when five members of this year's team will have graduated, there will probably be just 10.

"I know a lot of coaches think I'm crazy shaving the odds this close," says Foster, "but we have players on our bench who are good enough to come in and do the job if we have injuries or sickness. I just don't believe in keeping a lot of potential starters bottled up there who don't play much. It's bad for morale and distracts you from your purpose, which is winning."

Duke is about to do a lot of that, to the delight—and frustration—of its fans. Over the summer Duke received 23,000 new requests for the 4,307 tickets available to non-students.-And then there is the matter of what to do about the 74 donors of $25,000 to the university and the 39 donors of $100,000 who still can't-get in the door to see a game.