GREENVILLE, S.C. — Mike Krzyzewski could not remember on Saturday the first time he coached against Tom Izzo — or if Krzyzewski did recall, he said he didn’t. A little more than 23 years had passed since the start of one of college basketball’s enduring coaching rivalries, one that quickly developed into a lasting friendship.
“I don’t remember a lot of things,” Krzyzewski said, and he maintained that Duke’s 73-67 victory against Michigan State on Dec. 2, 1998, was among those moments that had faded from memory. Back then, Krzyzewski was near the peak of Duke’s late-1990s resurgence and Izzo was in his fourth season at Michigan State. They’d meet again later that same season in the Final Four.
Krzyzewski had established himself as one of the sport’s most accomplished coaches, with the consecutive national championships he’d won earlier in the decade. Izzo then was trying to build something. A story the Detroit Free Press published the day they first coached against each other led with a detail about one of Izzo’s “prized possessions:” a magazine profile of Krzyzewski in which Izzo found reason to believe he could one day follow a similar path.
“We got started in the same way,” Izzo said then, according to the story. “We busted our humps to get the tiniest opportunity in coaching and we took it from there. … And then you dream that maybe you’ll wind up in the same position that he’s in after 19 years.”
Almost a quarter century has passed. Krzyzewski has now been at Duke for 42 years, after the anniversary of his hiring arrived earlier this week. Izzo is in his 27th season at Michigan State. Their teams have played each other six times in the NCAA Tournament, and no two coaches in its history have faced each other more often than Krzyzewski and Izzo.
Now comes one final meeting, with Duke and Michigan State playing here on Sunday in the tournament’s second round. The stakes are high, as they always are this time of a year. The winner will advance to the West Regional in San Francisco. The loser will go back home, a season complete. For Krzyzewski, coaching his final season, every game could be his last.
“There’s going to be weird emotions on both sides of the scorers table,” Izzo said Saturday. “I can’t even imagine what it’s been like for Mike. I saw (Krzyzewski’s wife) Mickie the other day, yesterday ... I can’t imagine when you’ve done something that long at the same place, the emotions of that.”
If he looked back in time far enough, Izzo could remember his first game as a head coach against Duke, even if Krzyzewski couldn’t. Asked about it Saturday, Izzo paused and looked into the past, the details becoming clearer.
“Was it in Chicago?” he asked, and it was indeed, at a long discontinued early-season event known as the Great Eight. “We didn’t get beat that bad. We were a good team, but that’s when we were just growing our program. ...
“And it was kind of like we have an opportunity to play Duke and measure up.”
They’ve faced each other 15 times overall, and as Izzo noted after his team’s victory against Davidson on Friday night, Krzyzewski has more often than not “beaten us like a drum.” But not necessarily in more recent years. Two of Izzo’s three coaching victories against Duke have come in the past three seasons — one in December 2020, and the other in the 2019 NCAA tournament.
That year, the Spartans prevailed by a point in a victory that stopped the Blue Devils, then led by Zion Williamson and R.J. Barrett, one game short of the Final Four. Wendell Moore, Duke’s junior forward and one of its captains, was a high school senior then, watching on television.
“I thought we should have won for sure, but Michigan State made some tough plays,” he said. “I remember Cassius Winston. ... He willed his team to victory. Hopefully we can change that.”
It is fitting, perhaps, that after all the pain Krzyzewski has dealt Izzo and Michigan State over the years, that Izzo now has a chance to give Krzyzewski an eternal one-game losing streak to end his career. Under Krzyzewski, the Blue Devils have beaten Michigan State 13 times (12 of them with Izzo as the Spartans’ head coach) and Duke ended the Spartans’ season in 2015 and 2013 and 1999.
The prospect of delivering Krzyzewski his final defeat is “definitely part of what goes into our head,” Michigan State sophomore A.J. Hoggard said on Saturday, just as keeping Krzyzewski’s career alive is part of the equation for the Blue Devils. This has been a season of “lasts” for Krzyzewski — his last appearance in this venue, or that; his last game at Cameron Indoor Stadium and now his last March..
Now comes his last game against a foe he’s faced more than any other in the tournament, and all the pressure inherent with that moment.
“For us it’s been like that all year,” Moore said. “Every game we play has been Coach’s last something, so we’ve kind of been able to adapt to it. We view it as kind of motivation for us because we say we always want to go out and do it for Coach, send him out on a high note.
“But at the same time, this is our season as well, too.”
When Krzyzewski and Izzo first coached against each other, they were either approaching or in the prime of their lives. Izzo, now 67, was only 43, and his work during that 1998-99 season established him as one of the rising stars in his profession. Krzyzewski, now 75, was 51 and had yet to win three of his five national championships.
Now they wear the cost of their success in the wrinkles that crease their faces, or in the subtle marks of gray in their hair. Their first meeting gave way to one later that season in the Final Four, and soon enough Duke and Michigan State were meeting more and more often, either through the planned scheduling of the regular season or the fate of March.
In a way, their final meeting on Sunday speaks to the broader end of an era in college basketball. Krzyzewski is retiring whenever Duke’s season ends. Roy Williams, the former North Carolina coach, retired almost a year ago. Izzo acknowledged that the changes surrounding him have made him think of his own ending, whenever it might come, but that he plans on remaining the Spartans’ coach “for a while.”
He and Krzyzewski became close, in time, the way that people at the top of their professions often do. More recently, Krzyzewski said, he and Izzo have served together on what he described as an ad hoc committee that has met on Thursdays over Zoom during these pandemic times. The committee included other coaches, Krzyzewski said, and Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s Senior Vice President of Basketball.
“We didn’t really accomplish anything,” Krzyzewski said dryly on Saturday. “We had good ideas, we just didn’t know where to send them. And who wanted to hear them.”
But no, he said, turning his attention back to Izzo: “He’s been a great, great friend, and I admire the heck out of him.”
At times over the past couple of days in Greenville, it has sounded as though Krzyzewski and Izzo are part of a mutual admiration society. They’ve gushed about what the other has accomplished and meant to their sport; Krzyzewski offering praise to Izzo for “the loyalty of his players,” and how “that’s a beautiful thing to see;” with Izzo arguing Friday night that Krzyzewski is “the GOAT,” which in sports parlance has become shorthand for greatest of all time.
“I’m glad he didn’t call me another animal,” Krzyzewski said with a laugh Saturday.
Izzo, meanwhile, broke into a long soliloquy Friday night about what Krzyzewski had come to mean to him over the years. Their games in the NCAA Tournament might have been unscripted — or as much as they could be, given the attractiveness of the match-up to CBS and the curious (or not so) habit of placing Duke and Michigan State on paths that’d likely intersect — but their regular-season meetings have been no accident.
“I found a way to schedule Duke probably more than a lot of people in non-conference,” Izzo said, “because to someday be the best, you’ve got to beat the best.”
He repeated the phrase Saturday, when he shared his recollections of that first game against Krzyzewski and Duke, 24 years ago. A lot has happened since then. Krzyzewski entered the Naismith Hall of Fame in 2001, the same year he won the third of his five national championships, and Izzo followed him there in 2016.
Both men became elder statesmen of their sport, the sort of leaders they once both aspired to be. Now their paths intersect yet again. Krzyzewski, walking with a slight limp, encountered Izzo in a back hallway here on Saturday in the depths of the Bon Secours Wellness Arena. It was between their teams’ practices — a small, quiet moment, and “we talked briefly,” Krzyzewski said.
Then, they went their separate ways, almost 24 hours before they’d share a March stage for the final time.
