Finding a way back: The Last Dance of Coach K / News - Basketnews.com
Credit AFP-Scanpix Imagine this movie ending: A Legendary college coach, who announced that it is going to be his final season after nearly a half-decade of coaching, reaches the final four in March Madness.
The opponent in the semi-final is no other than their eternal foes, getting ready for the meeting in a rivalry that goes back almost 100 years.
As if those are not enough to make it an epic collision of low probability events, here is the really surprising part of it: each of these two "enemy neighbors," who are located within 15 minutes drive with each other, share many titles and Final Fours among them, this would be the first time that they meet in the Last Dance.
Way too generic? Way to Hollywood style? Is it way too good to be true?
Well, maybe Mark Twain was right: truth is stranger than fiction because, unlike fiction, truth is not obliged to stick with possibilities.
And yes, Duke's coaching legend Mike Krzyzewski knows that he needs to win yet another Tobacco Road derby to make it to the finals, his last one.
This article is not about what we might be about to see in this epic clash. But rather, it is more about how Coach K made this game happen. The odds were not high for both Duke and North Carolina to make it until this stage, but the stories go way deeper than that for both sides. We'll focus on the Krzyzewski part here.
A small reminder: Being the winningest coach in NCAA Division-I history (1170 currently) does not automatically guarantee you success every year. There are so many things that could go wrong to derail you from the path to the championship title, and the single-game elimination format of March Madness is a very slippery floor.
You might dominate the entire season in every way possible, but you can get caught on an off-day against an underdog ferociously trying to make it to the headlines as the next Cinderella story, you are done. It is cruel, but it is what it is.
Perhaps, long-term domination was possible back in the day, but not anymore. Legendary John Wooden led UCLA to 9 titles in 10 seasons from the mid-60s to the 70s, but that stands as an exception.
Perhaps the best story that could be likened to that winning cycle could be Coach K's Duke, where they almost completed a three-peat at the beginning of the 90s. For the last 30 years, the only school to win two years in succession was Billy Donovan's Florida. There is no such thing as winning every season anymore.
Why? Many reasons could be suggested, but one thing is for sure: the NCAA basketball universe is in transitionary form, like all the other things in the world nowadays.
Two rulings transformed the scene: the 'One-and-Done' players after NBA cut the direct entry from high school to the league and the transfer portal where players can change their schools without being required to sit out an entire season.
Regarding the former, you face the crude reality that if you want success, you need to let the best talent come and play for your college for a single season only; instead of the full four-year cycle.
Regarding the second one, you are no longer guaranteed to play with the same players for the next season in college because they can opt-out to play somewhere else immediately. Both situations caused potential shakers of roster stability.
Like many other coaches and programs, Coach K and Duke struggle at some point to adapt to this changing world.
From a broader perspective: Coach K earned his record amount of 13 Final Fours since he was hired as a head coach at Duke in 1980. Five of these belonged to the period between 1988 to 1993, in succession. In comparison with that, Duke reached the Final Four four times in the last 20 years.
Long story short: making it into the Last Dance was harder for Duke in the latter stages of Coach K'S career. Nevertheless, he did not let it go before repeating what he does the best: adaptation and improvisation. Somehow, he found a way to reach the top of March Madness after some underwhelming seasons.
Coach K and Duke won the 2015 championships by having four freshmen playing big roles: Grayson Allen, Jahill Okafor, Justice Winslow, and Tyus Jones, scoring 60 of their 68 points against Wisconsin in the final.
That was a very different picture from the previous title runs with more experienced and structurally more polished Coach K teams.
Starting with 2016, the temporary rosters began to struggle once March Madness started. With the exception of Grayson Allen, all these freshmen from the previous year became "one and done" pros. Among the six incoming recruitments, Brandon Ingram was the next obvious top NBA draft pick.
Indeed, Ingram became the no. 2 pick and was selected by the Lakers. Still, despite all his attempts, Duke lost five of their last 10 games, surrendering against Notre Dame in the ACC Tournament Quarterfinals and Oregon in the Sweet Sixteen.
Next season, they won a few more wins in the regular season and the ACC tournament but suffered quite a shock in March Madness.
Despite the presence of future NBA No. 3 draft pick Jayson Tatum on the court, Duke failed to contain South Carolina, rallying from 10 points behind, and got knocked down in the 2nd round.
The Gamecocks made it all the way to the Final Four, and Duke showed the college basketball fans that the "one-and-done" future NBA all-stars might become a liability to achieve success in March Madness.
In 2018, Duke induced a new wave of young talent again. With the exception of senior-captain Grayson Allen, all the members of their starting five in the Elite Eight game against Kansas were all freshmen.
Gary Trent Jr., Trevon Duval, Wendell Carter Jr, and Vernon Carey. Allen's potential game-winner famously got in and out of the rim, and Kansas made their way to the Final Four.
All these five starters of Duke got pro, so Coach K had to start all over.
The next season was special as the new freshman class with Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett, and Cam Reddish were stealing all the highlights. After Duke won the season series against North Carolina and won the ACC title, the expectations rose to a higher point, perhaps a Final Four.
But the chemistry issue hit again when it mattered the most. In the Elite Eight, Tom Izzo's strict defending Michigan State team limited RJ Barrett to 9 points in the 2nd half, and Duke was restricted to 67 points overall. Once again, they could not make it to the last weekend of March Madness.
The next two seasons were tumultuous. In 2020, the tournament was canceled, and the last season, the unthinkable happened: Duke managed to win only 9 games out of their 18, lost the season series against North Carolina, and missed the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995.
Yes, if they could have avoided the Covid-19 outbreak in the team to take part in the ACC Tournament, they could have taken the last ticket for the Big Dance. But the stakes were not that high.
During the season, Jalen Johnson decided to finish his only college season prematurely. The leadership was lacking, which was not something that we were used to witnessing in a Mike Krzyzewski team.
Despite all these, we all knew that deep down, Coach K could find a way to celebrate his last season in coaching through his adaptive skills and survival instincts. All in all, his tenure in the USA national team did not start so well as they lost to Greece in the 2006 World Championships in the semi-finals.
But then he gathered the Redeem Team to take back the Olympic title in 2008 and never lost a game again in a major championship in the next 8 years.
How? Finding a way to manage star-caliber players by asking their opinion, letting them be engaged in the preparations, and giving them responsibility. Much ink has been spilled over his issue of dialogue with the star players as they set individual meetings with Dwayne Wade, Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, and Jason Kidd.
The elite college coaches are the real constants in the programs by having job security for decades. Still, in the age of one-and-dones and transfer portals, it is very hard to induce all the fundamental principles that are guaranteed to bring success in the long term.
Even the maestro coaches had to concede something from their "untouchables" and give some way to improvisation.
This season may be epitomized by how well Coach K embraced the one-and-done and the transfer era combined.
Potential Top 3 pick for the upcoming NBA Draft Paolo Banchero is the absolute star of the team, but he is not alone in this high-quality lineup. Trevor Keels was five-star guard recruitment, and AJ Griffin is also ranked in the Top 10 for the upcoming draft.
Combining these incoming freshmen with two sophomores, recently surging Jeremy Roach in the perimeter and double-double machine center Mark Williams, as well as shot blocker Theo John as a transfer, proved a good experiment.
Among them, Wendell Moore, as a junior, stands as the most experienced anchor of this team. This is almost like a perfect combination of skills sets, experience, and freshness. Sometimes it is impossible to stop all these weapons at once because they give a large spectrum of options in the offense.
But how about the defense? In this volatile nature of things in everyday life, you don't have much time to impose a meticulous one-on-one defensive structure to deal with pick and rolls. You have to bring makeshift solutions for everyday problems. So Coach K did the same thing with the introduction of the zone defense.
After refusing to use it for a very long time, Mike Krzyzewski saw how effective the zone defense could be from his experience with Jim Boeheim in the national team. He carried this to the college game.
He did not worship it like Boeheim did but did not hesitate to use it in very crucial moments of some games.
When Texas Tech imposed the famous no-middle defense against Duke's fluid offensive unit, Coach K fought fire with fire and instructed his team to deploy a 2-3 zone in the last 6 minutes.
A similar scenario was observed in the game against Arkansas. Duke is not in the Top 40 when it comes to Adjusted Defensive Efficiency in Kenpom Ratings, but they tightened the screws when it mattered the most.
Can Duke lose to North Carolina on Saturday? That's quite possible. The very recent memories of first-year coach Hubert Davis spoiling Coach K's farewell party in the Duke's home arena in Durham, with only five players in the second half, are fresh.
But would that change anything regarding the legend status of Mike Krzyzewski?
Hardly.
He would always be remembered as one of the best coaches to find a way back to success on the court, doing whatever it takes. Three Olympic golds, two World Cups, and reaching NCAA tournament final fours in five different decades are already indelible signatures of greatness.
He is a master of adaption, improvisation, and winning in the purest sense.
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