The Kentucky basketball team and the Duke basketball team are two of college basketball's ‘blue bloods'. They are almost always a contender for the national championship, and they are two of the best college basketball programs of all time. A big reason for their success throughout the past couple of decades is due to head coaching. Duke had legendary head coach Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K) who retired a couple years ago, and Kentucky still has John Calipari who has brought the program a lot of success. Both coaches will go down as two of the best to ever do it.

Kentucky basketball and Duke basketball dominate the college basketball world because of their elite recruiting. However, in college basketball, players can leave after just one season, and that created the the ‘one-and-done' term. The Blue Devils and Wildcats get some of the best recruits in the country, so they are familiar with the one-and-dones. Here is what Coach K had to say about his recruiting strategy back in 2018.

“As far as recruiting, I think you’re always adjusting,” Coach K said, according to an article from Zags Blog . “In four decades of recruiting, there are a lot of things that change and you have to adapt to along the way. Obviously the biggest thing in the last decade is the one-and-done but also the number of transfers and especially the graduate transfer. So guys are recruiting now not just high school players, they’re recruiting college players. Or trying to find out if kids are available and that will go to an even much higher level if they bring about the thing with immediate transfer, which will create another amazing level of change for our sport.”

Kentucky and Duke have a similar philosophy. Coach K continued to share what he looked for back when he was still out on the recruiting trail.

“We’re looking for kids who can really play and are good academically and are going to be good kids,” Coach K continued. “That profile for the guys in our program hasn’t changed since the early ’80s. But how long you have them and what you try to do during the year, especially if they’ve committed to you, to establish even a stronger relationship before they get here and then work at it while they’re here because you’re condensing a four-year relationship into about a 10-month relationship once you get the youngster on campus. I’m not saying we’re the only ones who have a great product. But one of the great schools in the world, Duke University and we have a global student body. It’s a great student body. And then we’ve been good. We’ve produced really good players. Guys who’ve come in here with talent have gotten better and we’ve had a lot of pros and we’ve had a lot of success. So we have quite a bit to talk about with a youngster and pretty much a proven track record. I’m not saying we’re the only ones who do that, but we’re one of them so we should be able to recruit good players.”

Now fast forward back to present day. Kentucky basketball is still led by John Calipari, but Coach K is no longer at Duke. Calipari recently appeared on Coach K's podcast, and he made a hilarious remark about Coach K copying his style.

“He said something about playing young players,” Calipari said. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve always done it. You copied us, and then you started playing young players.'”

Now these two don't have to worry about facing each other on the court when Kentucky and Duke square off, we get to see great moments like this. Two college basketball greats.