Another odd step forward toward farewell, with Coach K ill and a narrow Duke escape
On a day when discussion around Duke basketball was dominated not by an important game against Wake Forest but the coach-in-waiting the Blue Devils didn’t hire, the one they did was once again pressed into early service.
Jon Scheyer got more on-the-job training, all of it against the Demon Deacons this season, when Mike Krzyzewski didn’t come out for the second half Tuesday night. “Not feeling well,” was the official word, although he met with the team afterward. Krzyzewski missed a hell of a finish.
It took Mark Williams’ tip to himself with 0.4 seconds to go to give Duke the lead and the rim to deny Damari Monsanto’s three-quarter court prayer, very nearly Duke’s fifth loss by a total of 10 points but instead one step closer to the ACC regular-season title in a season when that unofficial honor really matters.
Krzyzewski’s sudden absence was a reminder of just how fragile this final lap is, how much can go wrong in this season predicated upon everything going right before Krzyzewski retires. Just as Krzyzewski missed the game at Wake Forest last month due to illness, he missed the second half of this 74-72 win, what may be a natural and inevitable hazard for a 75-year-old coach trying to make one last run in the midst of what’s still a pandemic.
It was also the latest in an increasingly long list of odd occurrences in this final farewell, from his grandson’s drunk-driving arrest with star Paolo Banchero in the back seat, to the words (and apologies) exchanged with players and coaches from Army and Georgia Tech and Virginia, to the David Collins air-to-air takedown of Wendell Moore at Clemson, to Krzyzewski’s absences against Wake Forest.
“It’s definitely been kind of an odd year,” Moore said. “But I love the way we’ve fought through adversity as a team.”
It wasn’t even the first distraction of the day.
Tuesday began with a minor kerfuffle over a passage in a new book about Krzyzewski by New York Post columnist Ian O’Connor, who wrote that Duke’s administration wanted to hire Harvard coach Tommy Amaker but Krzyzewski intervened to ensure Scheyer would get the job instead.
Sensing any controversy in that would require the suspension of disbelief that Krzyzewski had not obtained the right to exercise veto power over his successor, or that Krzyzewski would risk disturbing Duke’s recruiting pipeline by bringing in a relative outsider, even a famous alum like Amaker (or Jeff Capel). The results since Scheyer was nominated speak for themselves in that respect.
Still, just as when other coaches from John Calipari to Nate Oats take their shots at Krzyzewski, anything with his name attached is news, tepid as it may actually be. Heavy is the head and so on. (O’Connor’s book includes far more interesting and compelling stuff on Krzyzewski’s relationship, or lack thereof, with Bobby Knight, but that’s not quite as flashy.)
It was almost enough to distract from just how vitally important this game was for Duke in the here and now. Wake Forest went into Tuesday only a game and a half behind the Blue Devils in the ACC standings and one of four teams with a realistic chance to deny Duke its first regular-season title since 2010. In the intervening 12 years, the Blue Devils often consoled themselves with an ACC title or No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament – even a national title in 2015 – but that won’t do it this year.
Just as Krzyzewski has consistently downplayed any sense of sentimentality surrounding this season, there’s an undercurrent of expectations even he cannot deny.
“I’m not doing this year to get another paycheck,” Krzyzewski said on his radio show last week. “I’m doing this year to try to do something special. I want to win.”
Which really isn’t any different from the expectations around a program like Duke – or Kentucky or Villanova or Gonzaga and so on – in any given season, but the finality of this, the two-strike swing of it, leaves Duke no margin for error. The pressure builds and it has nowhere to go. Perhaps that’s why this season has felt like one long string of strange. With or without Krzyzewski present.
“We’ve had some unique situations this year already,” Scheyer said afterward, an epic understatement delivered from Krzyzewski’s leather media-room chair that will soon be his.
Duke struggled to close out a win without Krzyzewski in the second half Tuesday, just as they have at times with him, going from up 19 to tied with 20 seconds to go. There was an eerie echo of Gordon Hayward’s heave in the 2010 national-title game in Monsanto’s spinning sling, from the way it looked good to the way it caromed in and out after the buzzer.
“Would it have counted?” Wake coach Steve Forbes mused. “Probably not here. You know how it goes.”
(It would not have counted, here or anywhere.)
There are only two home games left in Krzyzewski’s Duke career, against Florida State on Saturday and that game on March 5. Who knows what weirdness yet lies ahead.
This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 10:23 PM with the headline "Another odd step forward toward farewell, with Coach K ill and a narrow Duke escape."
