SAN FRANCISCO — There was, nearing the end but not at the end of this final season, finally a net for Mike Krzyzewski to cut down. He ascended the ladder a little more cautiously than he did six years ago, one rung at a time, but he swung the detached net around in front of him with practiced nonchalance.
Duke had, finally, lived up to the expectations placed upon it by these circumstances. The farewell tour has new dates, in New Orleans.
“The joy, you can’t explain,” Krzyzewski said, on the floor, while the celebration erupted around him.
The remarkable turnaround since the ACC tournament continues to push Duke farther down their coach’s final road. The Blue Devils are headed back to the Final Four for the first time since 2015, and they may see a very familiar face when they get there.
But if it is indeed North Carolina that awaits, the Tar Heels will find a very Duke opponent, one that has developed an identity of its own while embracing the traits and tactics that made its predecessors so successful over Krzyzewski’s four decades.
Saturday’s 78-69 win over overmatched Arkansas was a clinical performance, free of the drama that had accompanied Duke’s previous two wins or, quite frankly, most of the second half of the season, when the Blue Devils seemed to be awash in self-doubt. There was none of that Saturday, just a vintage Duke performance, of any era, to deliver Krzyzewski to his 13th and final Final Four, chasing a sixth NCAA title at this last gasp.
So this traveling basketball circus moves on to the biggest tent of all, a national semifinal in the Superdome against either North Carolina or Saint Peter’s, the significance of either opponent almost too gargantuan to contemplate in very different ways.
Almost lost amid all the hoopla, there’s a curious coda to this coda, with Krzyzewski now avoiding the longest Final Four drought of his career. Not since his first five seasons has Duke failed to make the Final Four in five straight NCAA Tournaments. Who knows what might have happened in 2020, but this is the sixth season since 2015. Amid the cavalcade of acclaim, it would have been a quietly ignominious way to go out.
Of course, that narrative would be completely different if either or both of the Elite Eight games in 2018 or 2019, both decided by a single possession, had gone the other way. But that’s not how this works, and the drought was the drought was the drought.
Krzyzewski talks about making the Final Four as “crossing the bridge,” and until Saturday night there was still that nagging doubt whether this group could make it to the other side, a team that proved itself capable of beating the best teams in the country before struggling and, finally, collapsing at the end in Krzyzewski’s final home game at Cameron and the ACC tournament.
But there was also a gift buried in that mess, one final throwback to the early days of Krzyzewski’s career, when his teams were tempered into shape over a period of years like hardened steel. This group, with three one-and-done freshmen, grew as much in less than two weeks as Krzyzewski’s older teams would in the space of two seasons or more.
That growth ushered in a series of games that, in their searing intensity and his team’s newfound heart, amounted to an inadvertent tribute to Krzyzewski. The way Duke closed things out against Michigan State, in a game Tom Izzo thought the Spartans had won, hearkened back to the players a generation ago that made Duke — and Krzyzewski — great.
Then they made that lineage tangible, slapping the floor like days of yore as they crushed Texas Tech’s spirit, turning the tables on the best defensive team in the country by going zone, and then telling Krzyzewski when it was time to go back to man, the players calling their own shot.
And against Arkansas, more classic Duke. The Blue Devils more or less ended the game at halftime with a classic Krzyzewski gambit, the use-it-or-lose-it timeout with 56.8 to go to set up a two-for-one. Mark Williams scored at one end, the Blue Devils forced a miss at the other and Trevor Keels buried a 3 at the buzzer to turn a seven-point lead into 12, just like that.
All that was missing was the possession arrow for Krzyzewski’s beloved silent run, getting the ball to start the second half. Somehow these kids have figured out how to play all the hits. It’s a two-way street. Krzyzewski has pulled all the strings. His players have hit all the right notes.
Duke’s path to this point has been anything but easy, but getting to the Final Four creates a completely different series of challenges given the two potential opponents awaiting in the neighboring quarter of the bracket.
Saint Peter’s, the upstart of upstarts, has John Wooden’s alma mater, the home of John Wooden’s dynasty and, with a win over North Carolina to go with its first-round win over Kentucky, two of the bluest bloods. If the Peacocks do eliminate the Tar Heels, they could potentially face Duke and then Kansas or Villanova. That’s … everyone.
So college basketball’s greatest giant would put his career on the line against the greatest giant-killer in college basketball history. And it’s not like Krzyzewski has never lost to a No. 15 seed before.
More likely, a rematch with North Carolina awaits, the basketball Armageddon everyone has feared for decades and came narrowly close in 1991, a sort of Carolinian Hoops Crisis safely averted by a Roy Williams-led blockade. Even under normal circumstances, the winner of a Final Four game between the two would have ultimate bragging rights forever and ever, amen, but the stakes in this particular season would be catastrophically high.
A Duke win would avenge March 5 when it truly matters and bring Krzyzewski to the brink of a farewell title, the worst nightmare of Tar Heels fans entering this season. And North Carolina being the one to apply the coup de grace to Krzyzewski’s career, after ruining his Durham goodbye, would make Tyler Hansbrough’s undefeated record in Cameron feel as insignificant as a Champions Classic champion banner.
Paolo Banchero, famously, said in Brooklyn he wanted North Carolina again. Virginia Tech interfered. CBS’ Tracy Wolfson hit him with the same question Saturday night.
“You’re not going to get me this time,” Banchero said.
All of that will depend on what happens Sunday in Philadelphia. On the other coast, across the country, Duke has taken care of its business. Krzyzewski’s career lives on. The Blue Devils move on, across the bridge, no matter what awaits on the other side.
