Mark Steven Alarie was born December 11, 1963, in Phoenix, Arizona, and grew up in Scottsdale. He attended Brophy College Preparatory — a Jesuit all-boys school on Central Avenue in midtown Phoenix founded in 1928. Brophy was a place of academic rigor and old-school discipline, not a basketball factory. Its basketball cheering section, known as the 6th Man, would later be compared by Arizona sportswriters to the Cameron Crazies at Duke. Alarie got there first.
At Brophy, Alarie developed into a dominant force unlike anything the Arizona high school scene had seen. As a senior, he averaged 29.9 points and 17.3 rebounds per game and was named the Arizona Player of the Year in 1982. His Brophy teammate Rich Zacher remembered guarding him in practice drills as a physical ordeal. Tom Leander, another teammate who went on to become the Phoenix Suns’ broadcaster, recalled that despite his dominance, Alarie never acted like the star of the team. The Arizona Republic would later name him to its All-Century Team in 2000.
But here is what separates Alarie from the typical blue-chip recruit: he wasn’t thinking about the NBA. He was thinking about a diploma. His first choice was Stanford University. He wanted the best education available for a basketball player, and Stanford — academically elite, in a power conference — seemed like the perfect fit. Then Stanford’s coach Dick DiBiaso resigned at the end of the 1981–82 season. The coaching instability made Alarie reconsider.
Mike Krzyzewski had just gone 10–17 at Duke. His job was in jeopardy. But he flew to Arizona, sat with Alarie, and made a pitch that would define his entire coaching philosophy going forward: come play in the ACC, the most competitive conference in basketball. The competition will make you better. The degree will be world-class. And we are building something together. Alarie listened. He committed. He became one-fourth of the recruiting class that saved Coach K’s career.
“I chose those schools because I didn’t think I was going to play in the NBA. I wanted to go somewhere to get the best education I could for being a basketball player.” The rest of that 1982 class: Johnny Dawkins, a point guard from Washington, D.C.; Jay Bilas, a center from California; David Henderson, a wing from rural North Carolina; and Weldon Williams, a guard from Illinois. They didn’t know each other by face — this was before the internet, before AAU tournaments made top recruits accessible. Bilas later said he didn’t even know what his classmates looked like until they arrived on campus. They would become the most important recruiting class in Duke history.