In today's new era of college basketball, being a head coach at a mid-major level is tough. With the transformation of the Transfer Portal, high school athletes are no longer at mid-major programs with the idea of spending their entire college careers there. It's now used as a stepping stone for athletes to get to the high-major level after solid play, and with this new NIL era and portal chaos, several thousand of those players jump ship from their lower programs in hopes of making it to a Power Five team each year.
And, for better or worse, the Duke basketball program is a prime example of this. As one of the most storied programs in the history of the sport, Duke is the program so many young basketball players dream of playing for. The most recent example of this is Sion James, who spent four years at Tulane before transferring to Jon Scheyer and the Blue Devils, where he was a critical part of the Final Four squad from 2024.
Tulane's head coach, Ron Hunter, spoke about how his job, and those of coaches at the same level, are viewed as the first part of lots of players' careers before they make it to the power conferences. At Peach Jam back in July, Hunter had an interesting interaction with a high-major coach that cemented this belief.
"He came over to me and he said, 'Ron, you're doing a hell of a job ... getting kids ready for our level,'" Hunter told ESPN. "And I didn't know whether to be mad or to say thank you."
It's a somewhat cruel reality for coaches outside of the Power Five, as it's true. These not-so-highly-touted prospects out of high school are essentially using the mid-major programs that recruit them right away as a tool to prepare for the next level. It's rarely the end goal to stay there for four years.
Now, a former Duke basketball great will experience this first-hand. Nolan Smith, who played at Duke from 2007-2011, winning a national title as a player in 2010, accepted the head coaching vacancy at Tennessee State earlier this year. Smith had previously served as an assistant at Duke, Louisville, and Memphis.
After playing college hoops at the pinnacle level, he'll now get to experience the constant mid-major turmoil as a coach.
"I do not mind it at all," Smith said. "As long as they buy into the [Tennessee State] culture and what we're trying to build in the one year, two years that they're here, I'm going to love 'em. And then when that time comes and [they] say, 'Hey, Coach, I'd really love to go play in the ACC or SEC and I have an opportunity to go to one of those leagues and really see what it's all about' ... I'm going to help them if that time comes."
Being a head coach at a mid-major program certainly has its struggles that come with the instability of its players, and the Duke program is a prime example of this year-in-and-year-out struggle.