Winning seasons, superb graduation rates for his players, and a basketball team that is as close as family are all attributes that reflect on the man who has been the head coach of the Duke Blue Devils for almost 3 decades: Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski.

Mike Krzyzewski was born on February 13, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois and raised on the city’s Northwest side. From an early age, Mike Krzyzewski showed enthusiasm for all sports, but by high school his true love became basketball. A stellar high school athlete, Mike Krzyzewski was recruited by Coach Bobby Knight to play college basketball for the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he later became captain of the team. After graduation, Mike Krzyzewski served in the United States Army from 1969 to 1974.

During his years of military service, Mike Krzyzewski coached various service teams and served for two years as Head Coach of the basketball team at the United States Military Academy Prep School at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. After resigning from the service with the rank of Captain in 1974, Mike Krzyzewski worked as a graduate assistant to his former Army coach, Bobby Knight, who now coached basketball at Indiana University. The following year, Mike Krzyzewski returned to West Point to fill the position of Head Coach  a position he would hold for the next five years.

In 1980, Mike Krzyzewski accepted an invitation to become the Head Coach of the Duke University Blue Devils. It is at Duke University that Mike Krzyzewski would make an indelible mark on NCAA basketball, and be renamed by basketball fans, players and the sports world at large as “Coach K.”

Under Coach K’s leadership, Duke reached the Final Four and came within one game of winning the NCAA Championship by the end of the 1986 season  a year in which the Blue Devils had played more games than any other team in the history of college basketball. With the departure of the five seniors from the 1986 team, many observers expected a sharp decline in Duke’s basketball performance, but Coach K’s 1987 Blue Devils proved them wrong by winning 24 games and advancing through the NCAA tournament to appear in the Sweet 16. From 1988 to 1992, Coach K led his team to the Final Four for an impressive five consecutive seasons. The Blue Devils dynasty was born.
In 1991, Coach K led the Duke Blue Devils to its first NCAA National Championship. In the banner year of 1992, Duke maintained a #1 national ranking throughout the entire season, and again won the NCAA National Championship. That year, Coach K became  and remains today  the only college basketball coach since John Wooden to win two consecutive NCAA championships. In 1992, The Sporting News named him Sportsman of the Year, make Coach K the first college coach to earn that honor. As was written by The Sporting News, “On the court and off, Krzyzewski is a family man first, a teacher second, a basketball coach third, and a winner at all three. He is what’s right about sports.”

In 1994, Duke advanced to the NCAA championship for the third consecutive year, but lost to Arkansas by only four points. After the NCAA tournament, Coach K underwent back surgery, which forced him to take a ten-month break from coaching. But Coach K returned to college basketball without losing a step, leading the Blue Devils back to the NCAA tournament in three of the following four seasons. On Nov. 17, 2000, Coach K earned his 500th win at Duke with a triumph over Villanova. That night, the fabled floor of Cameron Indoor Stadium was dedicated as Coach K Court.

With Duke’s victory over Arizona in the 2001 NCAA tournament, Coach K won his third NCAA championship, tying a record set by his former coach and mentor, Bobby Knight, and leaving him only one championship behind Kentucky’s legendary Adolph Rupp. Coach K received another prestigious honor in 2001 when he was selected from among the largest pool possible  all coaches, in any sport, at any level of play  and named “America’s Best Coach” by Time Magazine and CNN. “No college hoops coach has won more in the past two decades,” wrote Josh Tyrangiel of Time, “and Krzyzewski has accomplished all this with a program that turns out real-deal scholar athletes  kids who go to class, graduate and don’t mind telling everyone about it.”

From 1999-2002, Duke finished #1 in the nation in the final Associated Press poll for a record four consecutive seasons. Duke’s 133 victories over a four-year period from 1998-2001 established an NCAA record. In 2003-04, the Blue Devils reached the nation’s top spot in the AP poll, marking the seventh straight year they had been number one (only UCLA’s string of 12 consecutive years reaching No. 1 from 1964-75 was longer). The 2004-2005 season completed a nine-year run in which Duke compiled an incredible 199-25 ACC regular season record. On Dec. 12, 2004, Coach K became just one of 17 coaches in Division I history to reach 700 or more wins. Coach K added to his already impressive list of accomplishments on October 26, 2005 when he was named head coach of the USA Basketball Men’s Senior National Team program for 2006-2008, which will include the Team’s competition in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Coach K and the Blue Devils have been a fixture on the national basketball scene with 11 consecutive NCAA Tournament berths from 1984-94 and 22 in the last 23 years. Overall, he has taken his program to postseason play in 23 of his 26 years in Durham and is the most winning active coach in NCAA Tournament play with a stunning 68-19 record for a 78.2 winning percentage. His 68 tournament wins rank first in NCAA history.

Coach K’s record as Duke’s all time winning coach evinces the true breadth of his success: 702 total wins; 390 weeks ranked in the top 25; 331 weeks ranked in the top 10; 92 weeks ranked #1; 10 Final Four berths in the last 20 years, including five straight appearances from 1988-92; 22 seasons with at least 20 wins in the past 24 years; 21 upper-division finishes in the ACC in the past 22 years; nine 30-win seasons (the most by any coach in college basketball history); and 11 regular season ACC crowns and 10 Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament titles, including seven of the last eight years (a record five in succession from 1999-2003).

In all, Coach K has been named the National Coach of the Year 12 times in eight different seasons. He was named Coach of the Decade for the 1990’s by the NABC and was the second recipient of the John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching Award. On October 5, 2001, Coach K was presented by his college coach Bobby Knight as one of three members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2001.

Coach K and his wife Mickie live in Durham, North Carolina where they are active in community campaigns against drug abuse and drunk driving, and are co-chairs of the Duke Children’s Miracle Network Telethon.