Duzan embraces his role
‘Bigger than basketball’ for leader who guided Kouts to Class A final
Kouts coach Kevin Duzan welled up after his team lost 64-48 to Barr-Reeve in the Class A state championship game on April 3.
The finality of an emotional, once-in-a-lifetime journey with a group of players in a community that adored its basketball team caught up to him.
Duzan, who can turn one question into a five-minute dissertation, suddenly was searching for words.
“Sorry, I’m an emotional wreck, but it is what it is,” he said.
Indiana High School Athletic Association sports information director Jason Wille had the right words when he said, “No apologies necessary.”
Duzan, the 2020-21 Post-Tribune Boys Basketball Coach of the Year, was the perfect coach to lead the Mustangs (29-3) to their first state final.
He is outgoing, he is committed to the community and to smalltown basketball, and he knows the game.
And he is universally beloved. “Kevin is a great coach,” Kouts assistant Jeff Overholt said. “Not only from an X’s and O’s standpoint. He’s just really good with the kids. He loves the boys. It’s bigger than basketball with him.”
From a coaching standpoint, Duzan knew enough to stay out of the way of this talented group of players, which had been together since middle school.
Duzan’s path to the job wasn’t linear. He had applied for the job after Marty Gaff retired in 2013 after 30 years. Duzan was the junior varsity coach for nine years under Gaff.
The administration opted to hire Matt Crawford instead of Duzan, who stayed on for a year as the JV coach under Crawford. It didn’t work “philosophically,” he said. He resigned as the JV coach to work as an assistant for Kouts girls coach Ron Kobza.
Duzan was thinking about coaching somewhere else with Overholt when the Kouts boys job opened in the middle of the 2014-15 season, when Crawford was fired.
Gaff returned to finish the season, and then the school hired Duzan.
Duzan wasn’t bitter about being passed over.
“My mom taught me when I was young that God has a plan, and maybe it’s not your plan,” he said. “Maybe I just needed that time to understand some things, and then the door opened, and I was given an opportunity to coach. I never lost faith.”
Duzan brought a small-school background to Kouts. He played at Newton, a high school in Illinois that had about 600 students, he said.
From there, he went to Greenville College, where he played for four years. After getting his degree in education, Duzan landed his first job at Washington Township.
He arrived in Indiana only because he needed a job, and Washington Township offered him one. He was there for 15 years, working as an assistant principal near the end of his tenure.
Duzan had to make a choice between coaching and being an administrator. He opted to coach. He teaches sixth grade now.
At Kouts, the students start kindergarten and graduate from high school in the same building. The school and the community fit him like a glove. He gets to know his players when they are in elementary school.
“I’m not a mover,” he said. “I would have taught at Washington 40 years if they would’ve let me. I plan to finish my career here and coach as long as they’ll have me. I love the conference, I love the coaches and families I get to interact with and I love the community. This place has been great to my family.”