Bill Foster, a basketball coach who specialized in reviving underperforming college teams and achieved success at a handful of programs, most notably Duke, whose team he guided to the national final in 1978, died on Thursday in Chicago. He was 86.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Debbie.
Mike Krzyzewski, Duke’s coach since 1980, who has won five national championships and more than 900 games with the Blue Devils, is the name usually associated with the rise of that university as a basketball power. But it was Krzyzewski’s predecessor, Foster, who re-energized the program after it had languished in mediocrity.