Vic Bubas helped set the stage. Not just for Duke, which he conceded was a “good” program before he arrived at Durham, but for the ACC, which he and two other fledgling head coaches lifted to elite basketball status.
Like Bones McKinney, his rival at Wake Forest, Bubas, who died last week at age 91, was a graduate of a Triangle-area school before anyone applied geometry to naming the region. Like Dean Smith, his rival at North Carolina, Bubas went directly from assisting a Hall of Famer to establishing a rare level of consistent excellence in his first job directing a program.