Coach K was right. It was just a blip.

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski tried to walk back his comments the last 24 hours after many (myself included) were critical of him downplaying the current court case involving college basketball.

But there was no need, because few besides their families truly cared about the three men that sat in front of the dozen jurors in the courtroom in Lower Manhattan for the past month or so.

This wasn’t really about them. It’s about them.

The coaches.

“Let’s face it, all any of us gave a shit about was whether our names came up, or whether someone’s name came up that we dealt with,” said one high-major coach after hearing the verdict. “Now is when it’s gonna get interesting. What is the NCAA gonna do?” 

There’s a reason there wasn’t much media attention given to the first of three college basketball corruption cases, the one in which Jim Gatto, Merl Code and Christian Dawkins were all found guilty of defrauding universities on Wednesday afternoon.

Gatto was a mid-level adidas executive, Code an ex-adidas consultant and Dawkins a street runner for a once-prominent NBA agent. A trio of basically anonymous men who now face prison time.

If Rick Pitino’s freedom – or that of a current high-major coach – had been hanging in the balance, this would have been different.

Much different. It would have been standing-room only in the courtroom each day, TV cameras lined up and incessant reports on national television outlets.

Now the question begs what exactly this means – for the next two rounds of trials, and also for those who were brought up over the last few weeks within countless allegations.

There was Kansas – which has already suspended Silvio de Sousa since it came out that his mentor/guardian was given money by adidas. How about the baffling situation with Oregon, the program which Brian Bowen Sr. appeared to have suffered amnesia about, unable to recall his previous claim that the Ducks paid him $3,000 during an unofficial visit in 2017.

There was plenty more, courtesy of the elder Bowen – offers via Dawkins from Creighton, Arizona, Oklahoma State and Texas. Some involved money, some other benefits.

There was a call between LSU coach Will Wade and Dawkins about Balsa Koprivica in which Wade appeared to be discussing benefits in order to secure a commitment from the 2019 recruit. Former N.C. State coach Mark Gottfried, now the head coach at Cal State Northridge, was said to be involved – or at least aware of payments to former Wolfpack point guard Dennis Smith Jr.’s family. Maryland was also brought up.

Now we’ll see what the NCAA does, whether the often-maligned organization with questionable leadership (and that’s putting it mildly) digs in and conducts its own investigation based upon some of the allegations that came out throughout the trial.

“I’m not sure they can do what they’ve done in the past – turn a blind eye to all of it,” one high-major coach told Stadium.

Will the government play nice and hand over any additional info to the NCAA in an effort to help clean up college hoops? Or will the NCAA be asked to stand down until the third and final trial – slated for April 22 and involving ex-assistants Book Richardson (Arizona), Tony Bland (USC), and Lamont Evans (Oklahoma State) – is history.

“I think the NCAA will keep its eyes and ears up and when the trial is over, they will look at each situation individually,” North Carolina coach Roy Williams said an hour or so before Wednesday’s verdict came down.

“I think they are going to,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said about the NCAA investigating many of the claims brought forth during the trial. “But what point in time do they do that? No one knows the answer to that.”

“And Just because someone says something in the trial doesn’t mean it’s true,” Boeheim added.

Coach K said on Wednesday that Zion Williamson, the subject of texts between Kansas assistant Kurtis Townsend and Code, has been vetted – along with his other heralded freshmen – by the NCAA. He maintains Williamson and his family were honest when questioned by both Duke and the NCAA.

“We feel very confident,” K said.

But let’s face it: How can anyone truly be confident when it comes to the NCAA?

If the NCAA wanted to clean up college basketball, it would have been doling out stiffer punishments and hiring qualified people (i.e. former FBI agents) to lead investigations all along. The NCAA is all about being reactionary, and NCAA prez Mark Emmert went in ultra-reax mode when he formed a fairly uninformed commission led by Condoleezza Rice that took more than six months to come up with a bunch of recommendations that a few of us could have figured out over an extended lunch.

“They never even addressed amateurism,” was an oft-uttered criticism from the coaching ranks.

Now, with the blowout beginning of college basketball less than two weeks away, we sit and wait to see what the NCAA does.

“I would think this means something good for our sport,” Coach K said minutes after being informed that Gatto, Code and Dawkins were found guilty.

It just depends on the coach you are asking.