Duke had just won in Charlotte, but Mike Cragg was thinking about Shanghai.
At midnight on March 20, Cragg - a Duke senior associate athletic director - returned home from the Blue Devils' NCAA tournament win over Michigan to answer email regarding logistics for the Blue Devils' August exhibition games in China.
It was a small step toward a much larger initiative for the Duke basketball program in its support of the campus community. Duke's Fuqua School of Business is expanding to establish a network of campuses in six overseas countries.
It's no coincidence that Duke's basketball team is playing exhibition games this summer in two of those countries, China and the United Arab Emirates. It's a way for the renown of Duke's basketball program to benefit another area of the university.
"Athletics has to support the initiatives of the institution," Duke athletic director Kevin White said. "I think for a long time, athletics has been well integrated at Duke and is part of all things within Duke University. I don't know that this is so out of character or novel. It's kind of in the DNA at Duke."
College administrators (and TV and advertising executives) have long advanced the idea that the exposure big-time athletics provides can raise the profile of an entire school.
In the year after George Mason's unexpected 2006 run to the Final Four captivated the nation, the school's freshman applications increased 20 percent, new gifts to the school increased from $19.6 million to $23.2 million, and general scholarship support nearly tripled.
Duke is in an unusual situation, though, because of the stature of its basketball program, the reputation of coach Mike Krzyzewski and the global initiatives of the university. Three summers after coaching the United States to an Olympic gold medal in China, Krzyzewski is taking his Duke team there as Fuqua establishes a satellite campus there.
Ambassadors
Duke will depart Aug. 14, and players will get to see the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. They also will conduct youth basketball clinics in China and the United Arab Emirates.
Kyle Singler, who was a senior forward on Duke's 2010-11 team, said players appreciate the chance to make a difference off the court.
"If you're just focusing on basketball and not really trying to improve someone else's life or using your status to help something, I think it's kind of a waste," Singler said, "and Coach does a great job making sure we're doing stuff around that."
The team's appearances in China and Dubai could help Fuqua, too. Basketball is extremely popular in China, thanks to the success of Yao Ming with the NBA's Houston Rockets. According to a 2009 China Daily newspaper report, China is the NBA's largest overseas market.
This summer's overseas trip came about largely because of a fortunate break in Krzyzewski's schedule.
The U.S. men's senior national team coached by Krzyzewski earned an automatic bid to the 2012 Olympics by winning the FIBA world championship last summer.
Had the U.S. not won, it would have had to qualify for the Olympics by earning a gold or silver medal in this summer's FIBA Americas tournament. With the NBA lockout in force, Krzyzewski might have had problems getting NBA players to participate.
Instead, he has the summer relatively free of obligations to USA Basketball and is taking advantage of the opportunity to take Duke overseas.
Coach K popular
Sim Sitkin, a professor of management at Fuqua, said Krzyzewski is well known in China, and the team's visit will allow Duke to call attention to Fuqua's new ventures there.
"The trip really does exemplify the kind of synergy that's valuable at Duke," Sitkin said. " ... Both sides not only want to take from the partnership, but give to the partnership, and as each side gets better, we all get better."
It's one of many ways the basketball program works with the business school. A business leadership conference started in 2002 demonstrated the need for a leadership training curriculum, Cragg said, that led to the establishment of the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics at Fuqua in 2004.
Later, Fuqua approached the basketball program about doing an experiential program for corporate groups. That evolved into a yearly half-day, hands-on event using drills and Krzyzewski's coaching principles and applying them to a business setting.
"On a campus you have a lot of theory, which is great," Krzyzewski said, "but when you incorporate it at the same time that they're learning theory with action, learning trust, teamwork, reliability, failure, success, you're a star, you're a role player, you're part of a team, when you're smart enough as the university to incorporate all that together, then I think it helps you become a greater university. And I think Duke has done that."
Sitkin, who founded the Center on Leadership and Ethics, said Krzyzewski has star power that gets executives' attention. Many business leaders who attend Duke's programs are stars in their own right, and they quickly find that Krzyzewski's principles mirror theirs.
A partnership
They value excellence, responsibility, individual achievement that contributes to the greater success of a team, and to the greater good of society, Sitkin said. Krzyzewski coaches them on applying those ideals to a business infrastructure.
"What they discover when they're around him," Sitkin said, "is that he doesn't just tell sports war stories."
The partnership between Fuqua and athletics has been so successful, Sitkin said, that it has led to more collaboration between Fuqua and other branches of the university.
Duke isn't the only school where partnerships with athletics aid other university entities.
At rival North Carolina, for example, the football team has participated in cutting-edge concussion research conducted by renowned expert Kevin Gusiewicz of the department of exercise and sport science.
Tar Heels coach Roy Williams and wife Wanda serve as honorary chairs of a $10 million campaign to endow the Carolina Covenant - an initiative that helps low-income students to attend UNC debt-free. The Williams family has contributed more than $400,000 to the initiative.
In addition, Williams plays host to an annual Coaches vs. Cancer breakfast, which has raised more than $1 million. There is also an autographed basketball program that has contributed more than $650,000 to local charities.
Opportunities
The star power of coaches such as Williams and Krzyzewski gives them larger opportunities to contribute to the campus mission. Coaches at many other schools are under significant pressure to win games and possess minimal job security.
The University of Tennessee, for example, wouldn't have generated much interest with a Bruce Pearl Center for Leadership and Ethics.
In 31 seasons with Duke, though, Krzyzewski has built a brand, and his basketball team has, too.
Krzyzewski makes significant contributions to many of other branches of Duke, including the Children's Hospital and neuro-oncologist Dr. Henry Friedman's work against brain tumors.
But the China trip and the business training at Fuqua may be the best examples of how a coach's reputation and skills can be leveraged by a school.
"Our mission as our university goes, we're just in a unique spot that very few schools are in," Cragg said. "And it goes back to the leadership. His always creative, always big picture thinking about things, it's so way, far beyond winning and losing basketball games. I think that's pretty cool, and it's fairly unique as well."
Staff writer Robbi Pickeral also contributed to this report.
