2003 Top 50 List: Yes
Dan Collins List: Yes
It’s hard to remember that there was a time when Mike Krzyzewski was not the coach at Duke, but Mike Gminski remembers. He played in the last four years of the Bill Foster era. Foster was hired in 1974, inheriting a mess from Neill McGeachy and Bucky Waters. His first three years, no improvement was evident. But over a three-year period between 1976 and 1978, Foster added Jim Spanarkel, Gminski, Gene Banks, and Kenny Dennard, and in 1978 everything suddenly came together. After going 2-10 in the ACC the previous year, the Devils got national attention by beating second-ranked UNC in January, went on to finish second in the ACC regular season, and ran through the ACC Tournament to claim the title. Suddenly the Devils were a Top 10 team, and they rode that momentum all the way to the national championship game, where they lost to top-ranked Kentucky.
The next year, with everyone back, plus heralded recruit Vince Taylor, the Blue Devils were preseason #1. But as so often happens in sports, the next step was never taken. Duke stumbled out of the gate, ripped off 11 out of 12 to get to 17-3, then dropped 3 more games down the stretch. Still ranked #6 going into the NCAA Tournament, they were matched up with a St. John’s team that had already beaten them in the regular season. This time, the Blue Devils were without the injured Bob Bender and Kenny Dennard, and the Redmen pulled out a two-point win. Just like that, the Devils were done.
Despite the loss of Spanarkel, the Devils were preseason #3 going into Gminski’s senior season. They got to #1 after wins over #2 Kentucky and #6 UNC, but again stumbled in ACC play, culminating in a 4-game losing streak in February that saw their ranking dip to #17. But they pulled it together for an incredible 3-game run during the ACC Tournament. However, before the NCAA Tournament began, Foster announced that he was leaving Duke to go to South Carolina. He continued coaching through the NCAA Tournament, and the team responded well, winning their first game, then beating Kentucky at Rupp Arena in the Sweet 16. But in the regional final, they lost to Joe Barry Carroll and the Purdue Boilermakers, and that’s how it ended for the G-Man.
Gminski had a great career. Turned around a program, went to the national championship game, won 2 ACC Tournaments, ACC Player of the Year as a junior. As a senior, Gminski statistically was even better, but Duke as a team was viewed as a disappointment, and POY went to Albert King of regular season champion Maryland. He was a walking double-double and, with Tyler Hansbrough, is one of two players in the Top 10 in ACC career scoring and rebounding. He was Consensus First Team All-American as a junior, and second team as a senior (which was bogus, as I wrote about here). Gminski was a rare recruiting misjudgment by Dean Smith, who thought he was too slow to be successful.
A lesser known skill of Gminski’s was not fouling. In his ACC career, he committed only 240 fouls, a remarkably low number for a big man who played pretty much every minute of every game for 4 years. In his NBA career, he played 938 games and fouled out exactly once.