Although Johnny Orr had a very successful 13-year tenure at Iowa State, there were a handful of other candidates who were given the opportunity to become Cyclones in 1980.

Max Urick, associate athletic director in 1980, said there were a lot of candidates up for the position of the new Cyclone coach.

“During the search we narrowed the search down to two: Bob Weltlich and Mike Krzyzewski,” Urick said.

“Those two guys were also the candidates for the vacant spot at Duke.”

Urick said he talked to his friend and athletic director at Duke, Tom Butters, and told him Iowa State was talking to the same two guys.

“I said whichever one you offer the job to; because whichever one you don’t, we would want to offer him the job at Iowa State,” Urick said.

While Iowa State and Urick were waiting for Duke’s decision, they received a message from one of the candidates.

“We got a phone call from Bobby Weltlich that he was withdrawing from the Iowa State search,” Urick said.

“So we thought that he was offered the job [at Duke]. So we said, let’s get ready to hire Mike Krzyzewski.”

Urick said he and athletic director Lou McCullough were somewhat satisfied with the prospect of Krzyzewski as the new Cyclone basketball coach.

“Mike, at the time, was not a well-known name. He did not dominate anybody at Army (his previous coaching job) but was a good coach, was an uprising person, but kind of a question mark about how his future fell for him,” Urick said.

“So we weren’t really excited at the time, but felt we had a good solid young coach that we would have at Iowa State.

“He was someone who had a good work ethic, would instill discipline and had a regional connection with Chicago, since he was from there. We thought that was important for recruiting purposes.”

Iowa State could have had its hands on a future Hall of Fame coach, but Krzyzewski chose to take on head coaching duties at Duke instead. Krzyzewski went on to have an outstanding career at Duke.

He has a 590-175 record at Duke, and his squads have made the NCAA Tournament in all but four of his 22 years in Durham, N.C.

While in the tournament under Krzyzewski, Duke has made the Final Four in nine different seasons and won the championship in 1991, 1992 and 2001.