He led Duke to the NCAA Final Four three times (1963, 64 and 66). As his program progressed, Duke would finish in the AP Top-10 basketball poll in seven of his ten seasons. It was a very surprising first season for the young coach. Duke received the automatic bid in the NCAA tournament, where the Blue Devils won two games before losing to 12th-ranked NYU. But in the ACC Tournament, Bubas got revenge, stunning 16th-ranked North Carolina and 18th-ranked Wake Forest in the title game for Duke's first ACC championship. In that first season, Duke was blown out twice each by Wake Forest and North Carolina. What began during that 1959–60 season grew rapidly over the course of the decade. Performance Īt the time, freshmen were not allowed to play on the varsity and only the winner of the ACC Tournament could go to the NCAA Tournament. In 1965 Bubas recruited Claudius Claiborne, the first black athlete to play a varsity sport at Duke University. Paired together, Heyman and Mullins formed a devastating duo, reaching the Final Four in 19. Heyman was originally set to attend North Carolina but a near fight between Heyman's stepfather and UNC head coach Frank McGuire (McGuire took it personally when Heyman's stepfather referred to his program as "a factory") sent Heyman on a different path and Bubas stepped in and was able to convince Heyman to attend Duke.Īnother big coup was getting Lexington, Kentucky native and eventual two-time All-American Jeff Mullins from the University of Kentucky and legendary Adolph Rupp. His first big coup was getting eventual National Player Of The Year Art Heyman to go to Duke. For a while, all of us were trying to catch up with him."īubas's tireless efforts paid off as he brought in future All-Americans from all over the country.
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"Vic taught us all how to recruit, we had been starting on prospects in the fall of their senior years while Vic was working on them their junior year. As North Carolina legendary coach Dean Smith once stated, He took it from a successful regional program that won a lot of games to a national program.īubas is widely credited with pioneering the art of recruiting by targeting players very early and gathering information on them before other coaches had learned of them and would send newspaper clippings of Duke games to prospects.
After he graduated in 1951 he stayed on as a freshman coach until 1955 and as a varsity assistant coach until he was hired by Duke University in 1959.ĭuring the 1960s Bubas expanded Duke University's basketball program. Bubas was an All- Southern Conference selection twice. He then went on to North Carolina State University where he played for Everett Case. After finishing high school he enrolled at the University of Illinois, playing the 1944–45 season for the Fighting Illini. Bubas graduated from Gary Lew Wallace High School in 1944.
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