Coach K, Duke take aim at UNC
When North Carolina ruined his big goodbye to Cameron Indoor Stadium, Mike Krzyzewski stomped to the microphone and told the crowd it was “unacceptable.”
That was three weeks ago, when Krzyzewski losing his final home game in college basketball’s most storied rivalry was going to be a big part of the story of his final season, no matter how it ultimately ended.
When the NCAA Tournament brackets came out on Selection Sunday, the notion of Duke and North Carolina playing one more time was never even mentioned. Given the seeds and the opponents and the distance to get there, it seemed so far off as to be an alternate galaxy.
But maybe we should have had more faith in this sport, which somehow figures out how to deliver the most ridiculous drama. Because on Saturday night in New Orleans, the 98th and most definitely final Duke-North Carolina meeting in the Krzyzewski era will happen with a berth in the national championship game on the line.
Let’s call that acceptable, Coach K. Very, very acceptable.
If Krzyzewski is indeed going to walk off with his sixth national championship, of course he was going to have to get through the Tar Heels one last time – or suffer the ignominy of finishing his 42year career at Duke with the kind of loss that will sting forever.
Had Duke lost to Arkansas, Texas Tech or Michigan State, it would have been noteworthy, but not in the way that an epic, once-in-a-lifetime event gets remembered. But remarkably, this will be the first time North Carolina and Duke have ever played in the NCAA Tournament.
For it to finally happen in Krzyzewski’s last season, as his team surges to the finish line and celebrates a return to
the Final Four after a seven-year drought, is the kind of plotline that Hollywood would reject for being too corny and unrealistic.
But it’s really going to happen next weekend. And even for people who don’t completely get the magnitude of the rivalry or what it means in the state of North Carolina, the stakes are so obviously enormous that it’s hard to properly characterize them.
Even as North Carolina fans braced for a short NCAA Tournament run as a No. 8 seed after a relatively mediocre season, they were comforted by the idea of always having that last win over Krzyzewski. Over the duration of the Coach K era, the rivalry has been relatively even: Duke has more head-to-head wins (5047), North Carolina has more Final Four appearances (14-13) and they’ve each won five national championships.
When it’s that close, having the last
word means something.
But, of course, a lot has happened since March 5.
North Carolina is no longer an underachieving No. 8 seed but rather a team brimming with confidence and togetherness that might very well have been born on that night in Cameron.
Duke seemed like a very young team fading to the finish line, perhaps overwhelmed by the pressure of delivering a special ending for their coach. But in the NCAA Tournament, the Blue Devils have grown up and toughened up round by round, finally playing the kind of basketball Krzyzewski would have envisioned with four likely first-round NBA draft picks.
In theory, based on how they’ve blossomed in the tournament, Duke should be the favorite to win it all next weekend. But karma has thrown them an undeniable curveball here.
You can imagine from the players’ standpoint that Duke would very much relish the opportunity to rectify its worst night of the season. But in this moment, North Carolina’s presence only makes the stakes go up. If Duke loses again and has to watch the Tar Heels play for a national title, it puts an exclamation point on the rivalry that Duke can never erase.
Krzyzewski probably will do everything he can this week to dial down the attention on those possibilities, but it will be futile. Had North Carolina not made this run, Duke going to the Final Four in Krzyzewski’s last tournament would be a celebration all by itself because it is a great achievement.
With his 13th appearance, Krzyzewski has surpassed John Wooden, notching one more key data point in his argument as the greatest college coach of all time.
But Duke and North Carolina playing in the Final Four is so massive for the sport that it’s perhaps the only thing in this season that could transcend the Coach K retirement tour.
In 2012, fate gave us Kentucky-Louisville in the Final Four, a game whose juice was derived not just from the neighbor vs. neighbor nature of the rivalry but the personal antipathy between John Calipari and Rick Pitino. When Kentucky won 69-61, it was almost a necessary rubicon for Calipari to cross before winning his first national title.
But outside the state of Kentucky, the memory of that game has largely faded. We don’t really think of it as one of the most important moments in the history of college basketball.
No matter how it turns out between the Blue Devils and Tar Heels, that’s what we’re going to get Saturday. Either Krzyzewki’s career will end at the hands of the team he’s faced in huge games for more than four decades, or he will have more than avenged the “unacceptable” ending in Cameron that might have tormented him until his last days.
There’s no in between now. And however it goes, the ending of Krzyzewski’s story will be the most dramatic chapter he’s ever written.