The early signs say Coach K is retiring after this coming season.

A few things have happened over the last six months that are beginning to point toward the end of 71-year-old Mike Krzyzewski’s Hall of Fame career at Duke. Let’s take them as they occurred.

A week after the 2018 season ended with the Blue Devils falling to Kansas in the Elite Eight game, associate head coach and one-and-done recruiting master Jeff Capel took the head job at woeful Pitt, which was coming off an 0-18 finish in ACC play. Can’t get any worse than that. 1 Rumors began swirling out of Durham that Capel had wanted to stay if he was guaranteed the job after Coach K retired.

When Capel did not get what he wanted, his departure for Pitt seemed to say Krzyzewski wasn’t ready to retire despite six surgeries in the prior 16 months. Capel was only 43 and had already had two previous head- coaching jobs. He was certainly young enough to get a third. So he and his family packed up for Pittsburgh, where he went right to work recruiting.

As Capel was signing Pitt’s best incoming class in five years with mostly 3-star and 4-star players – after all are any 5-stars going to an 0-18 team? – just the opposite was happening with his former employer and alma mater. After having the top recruiting class four out of the last five years, Duke was losing high school studs to whom they had offered scholarships.

When 6-6- combo guard Josiah James of Charleston, chose Tennessee to play for Rick Barnes, it was the fifth recruit Krzyzewski had missed and left him without a single player signed from the class of 2019. It was getting late, but Coach K and his staff were still chasing the No. 2, No. 3, No. 5 and No. 6 players in the country, some of whom might wait until after their senior seasons to see which Blue Devils enter the draft next April.

Besides having three of the top five recruits from the high school class of 2018, Duke also has two seniors, so it’s not like there won’t be room on the roster a year from now. Then the third thing happened when Mike Cragg, who has been Krzyzewski’s administrative right hand man for almost 20 years, took the AD’s job at St. John’s. Hmmm.

So is it three strikes, and Coach K is out at Duke? Read the tea leaves.

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