NEW ORLEANS — It was late Saturday night now, almost midnight local time, when Mike Krzyzewski emerged from the Duke locker room for the final time as the Blue Devils' head coach. He'd held that job for 42 years and 16 days and until recently, and the start of his last NCAA tournament, he could always take comfort that there'd be another walk like this, another game.
Now it was over. His players had cleared out and their tears had told Krzyzewski that he'd done his job with this team, no matter the 81-77 defeat Duke suffered against North Carolina in an unforgettable national semifinal at the Superdome. Most of his assistants had left, too, by the time Krzyzewski walked out, slowly and painfully, just a few steps behind his wife, Mickie.
For weeks now they'd endured this final March, and early April, it turned out, together. It became a familiar scene: the Duke bus pulling up hours before tipoff in Brooklyn or Greenville, S.C. or San Francisco and the Krzyzewskis stepping off together, Mike and Mickie, and walking hand-in-hand into another arena before another game.
