Coach K

2022 - 3 - 5

Duke basketball

Post cover — Image courtesy of "CalBearsMaven"

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.

'It's hard for me to believe this is over': Coach K reflects on career ... (The Athletic)

Longtime Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is focused on the postseason after the Blue Devils lost to rival UNC in his final home game at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

The Blue Devils finish the regular season at 26-5 ahead of the ACC Tournament, which starts on March 8. His 1,196 career wins are the most of any coach in college basketball history, men's or women's. "And when you combine the coaching and the place in the city of Durham altogether, you can't be any luckier than me." Unranked UNC bid farewell to "Coach K" by beating the fourth-ranked Blue Devils 94-81. I'm just going to say the regular season is over." "It's hard for me to believe this is over.

Look: Old Coach K Handshake Line Video Is Going Viral (The Spun)

Following the game, Duke's assistant coaches appeared to snub North Carolina head coach Hubert Davis in the postgame handshake line.

Krzyzewski: “Too good of a player.” Krzyzewski: “You’re too good of a player to do that.” An old video of Coach K lecturing a college basketball player in the postgame handshake line is trending following Saturday night’s game.

Rival UNC upsets No. 4 Duke in Coach K's home farewell (Sportsnet.ca)

North Carolina spoiled the emotional home finale of retiring Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski at Cameron Indoor Stadium, beating fourth-ranked rival Duke 94-81 ...

“We know how good of a team we are,” Bacot said. That began to change more in recent days as the moment drew near for a coach who has long taken a live-in-the-moment approach. “I felt like we kind of got lost in everything.” ... I just felt like, as the game went on, we started to just gain more and more confidence.” But Krzyzewski was particularly frustrated by his team's play at the other end. “We know at times we've had lapses. “I didn’t think I’d cry,” Krzyzewski said. There were also celebrities like comedian Jerry Seinfeld and NBA commissioner Adam Silver in attendance at a game where tickets rocketed into four- and five-figure costs. Duke: The Blue Devils had already secured the program’s first outright ACC regular-season title since 2006 and had lost just once since mid-January, falling at home on a last-second 3-pointer to Virginia. But this time, they couldn’t corral UNC’s backcourt of Love and Davis — who struggled mightily against Duke’s pressure defence in the first meeting — and couldn’t manage a response as the Tar Heels made their move in the final 6 minutes. Krzyzewski had tried all season to deflect questions about his looming retirement — even eschewing the use of the word “last” — and trying to avoid being a distraction or creating additional pressure on his team. “But I did. “All week, we just talked about our competitive fight,” Davis said, “that we had to do three things: We had to plant our feet, we had to stand our ground and we had to fight.

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.