Coach K

2022 - 3 - 6

Post cover — Image courtesy of "WesternSlopeNow"

Duke's Coach K turns focus to next steps after UNC loss (WesternSlopeNow)

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — Mike Krzyzewski's final home game at Duke had just ended in an unexpected defeat to the Blue Devils' fiercest rival.

Coach K's Staggering Send-Off Strengthens the Best Rivalry in Sports (CalBearsMaven)

Duke couldn't compartmentalize the pomp and circumstance of Mike Krzyzewski's final home game, a thrilling farewell to this era of the Tobacco Road rivalry.

“We’ve got a chance next week and we’ll have a chance the following week. While Nhan and the Duke students prepared for a celebration, the Tar Heels were preparing for a basketball game. This is Carolina’s biggest of their 141 victories in the history of this rivalry—and the fact that a team that has looked very bad for much of this season could do this is the ultimate stamp of the rivalry as the best in all of sport. One of the grad student line monitors was 62-year-old Nhan Vo, who works as an IT consultant at Duke. He was a Vietnamese refugee who left his home country in 1979. “I know who is going to screen, who is going to cut, who is going to dunk,” Nhan said. The other team might rise up in a sweltering cauldron of emotion and show no reverence for the legend who is coaching his last game in one of the cathedrals of the sport. “It was a celebration of me,” he said. That’s the beauty of it, and that’s the wreckage of it, too. The number of all-time greats in attendance was staggering, a human wall of Duke tradition. It is absolutely a validating victory for first-year coach Hubert Davis, whose team vaulted from the NCAA tournament bubble to safely in the bracket in 40 stunning minutes. The other team might remind everyone that they represent a pretty good program, too, with decades of tradition, and might let it be known that they didn’t come to town to serve as ceremonial cannon fodder. DURHAM, N.C. — Mike Krzyzewski said it himself on Thursday: “In sport, you never know what’s going to happen—so the spontaneity of emotion and performance, it’s one of the great things about sport.

Mike Krzyzewski shows the fire that sent him into John Wooden's orbit (Los Angeles Times)

Mike Krzyzewski's final home game at Duke was a loss, but that won't tarnish his place among John Wooden and college basketball's all-time greats.

We need to fight for Duke, we need to fight for the brotherhood, and we need to fight with all our might the rest of this season. After his apology ad-lib to kick off the postgame ceremony, Coach K got back on script for the rest of the night. I think you have to reach this generation a little different and be very creative in how you coach. Bobby Hurley, who along with Laettner was one of the faces of Duke’s back-to-back national title run, followed Coach K into coaching as many of his players have. It started with a conversation he and Mickie had in Las Vegas. Then they convened with their three daughters who make up the family’s “starting five,” as they call it. Saturday, the students would have to be willing to share their space too. This time, dozens of the 96 former players who are in town are there, too, soaking up as much of their coach as they can in his final hours. He wanted to stay “in character,” he said, but, “just the music, you start crying.” Coach K said earlier this week that sports is the best reality TV, that he was going to just let Saturday happen and see where it would lead him. He was suddenly gone, and the next generation of hungry younger coaches like North Carolina’s Dean Smith and Indiana’s Bob Knight were eager to take over. Coach K and his players went back to the locker room, leaving the faithful with their sad tears. Outside in Cameron, “We Are Family” was blaring from the speakers, but nobody was singing along.

29 lessons I learned from Coach K that served me as a tech founder (Business Insider)

Ryan Caldbeck is the founder of CircleUp, a software tech company. He was a walk-on for Duke men's basketball under Mike Krzyzewski, aka Coach K, ...

The next play I did it and I intercepted the ball. He also moved the team during practice so that they weren't always sitting in the same chairs during a rest period to listen to him. He uses his outbursts — in practice and in games — for a very specific reason: to send a message. In a pre-season scrimmage, a player held the ball by palming it away from his body while he directed traffic, similar to how an NBA player might. He has different coaches deliver the message, and sometimes even some of the players. Coach would say the mark of a great journey is one that ends in tears regardless of outcome. The first time I heard him say "bumps and bruises" I thought, "No one has bumps and bruises. Once when my dad came to watch a practice, Coach stopped in the middle of a play and pointed out something that I did well, using my name. While I played my sophomore to senior years, as a freshman I was a manager. The night before the 2001 Championship Game, Coach gathered our entire team in his hotel room at 9 p.m. It was a short meeting to remind everyone what they were responsible for. It was one the greatest feelings I had in my basketball career In honor of Mike Krzyzewski's — aka Coach K's — last game at Cameron, I want to share some of the things I learned from him.

Coach K's final home game: UNC turns Mike Krzyzewski's Cameron ... (CBSSports.com)

It's the Tar Heels who played the spoiler on what was supposed to be a scripted send-off of a night for Coach K.

Given the buildup and presumptive nature of a Duke win by plenty, it's easily arguable this is the most gratifying — if not amusing — win for UNC fans over Duke ever. This has kind of been a surreal few days, and a big part of it occurred, I think, because we had already won (the ACC regular-season title). You don't feel the pressure of we have to win that game." Perhaps that will bring Duke the same kind of urgency and focus that North Carolina deployed in Saturday night, when the best rivalry in American sports twisted the plot yet again. It was reduced to a bit player in the buildup to Saturday, the game itself feeling secondary to the Krzyzewski farewell. The player Krzyzewski said was the best in the ACC this season went 10 for 11 from the floor. It turned out to be the first time this season North Carolina would win a game despite losing at the half. Even Davis was obliged to pop his head out and acknowledge the crowd. UNC — which never led in its Feb. 5 loss to Duke — opened the game with a 9-2 lead. "I was worried about a few things going into the game," Krzyzewski said. "And so then you go on the court and then you feel it. Syracuse. Davis walked into the locker room and told the team there was no time to celebrate. He wanted everyone to see that's the guy who they needed to see in that moment.

A Thunderous Farewell at Duke for Coach K, Even in Defeat (The New York Times)

Mike Krzyzewski walked Cameron Indoor Stadium's sideline for the last time as Duke's maestro. There was also a basketball game, which Duke lost.

“I’m glad this is over,” Krzyzewski, who capped his first regular season at Cameron by upsetting North Carolina in overtime, mused after the night’s ceremony. This weekend, at least, proved again that noise and pageantry will take any team and any coach only so far, especially when a Tobacco Road rival is in town. One young man, who was impossible to see through the thicket of signs and outstretched arms and stuffed animals, passed behind press row and apologetically choked out a question as basic as it was daunting: “My God, how am I going to get through here?” No Duke eyes — and the ones in attendance included people with surnames you will remember, like Brand, Hill, Laettner and Redick — ever seemed terribly far from him, though. We use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences. Saturday was the appointed time for the faithful to holler or croak whatever they could through the din. Everyone knew the outcome, though. And quiet sometimes started to encroach late. What came was an expulsion of emotions in surround sound, passions built up over 42 seasons that yielded some of the finest college basketball ever seen. The fans were already officiating. That is the only way to appreciate what happened. To celebrate each national championship cited in a pregame video.