At the end of this endlessly fascinating college basketball season, Wisconsin could not become what Duke became in 1991.
That’s because the 2015 version of Duke stood in the Badgers’ way.
When the Final Four came to Indianapolis in 1991, Duke took down an unbeaten team in the national semifinals and then won two nights later to transform its reputation in the college basketball world. Wisconsin — in the same city — was hoping to do the same thing after foiling Kentucky in its own pursuit of perfection.
Duke — trailing 48-39 with 13 minutes left — stood on the edge of collapse, but the unexpected excellence of Grayson Allen and the expected emergence of Tyus Jones enabled the Blue Devils to prevail in a way few pundits could have anticipated. (Student Section writer Scott King had more to say about Allen and Jones, plus other game keys, in this piece.)
The fact that Duke won is impressive enough, and it does much to enhance Mike Krzyzewski’s legacy, a legacy that really didn’t need any more polishing. Its place in the history of basketball is quite secure. What stands out about Duke’s win is the manner in which it was attained, balanced against Coach K’s other national championships.
Where does this Duke title fit within the larger run of college basketball history, and more specifically, the glowing history Krzyzewski has created since his first Final Four back in 1986? Let’s first take the time to note what this win does for Coach K and Duke in a strictly numerical sense.
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With this win on Monday night in Lucas Oil Stadium, Duke has become the fifth program to win at least five men’s basketball national championships (UCLA, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Indiana). There’s a neat bit of year-by-year symmetry in the workings of college basketball: In 2013, Louisville won its third championship. In 2014, Connecticut won its fourth. In 2015, Duke has won its fifth. (Does this mean Duke, UNC, or Indiana will win a sixth title in 2016?)
UCLA, of course, owns 11 national titles. Kentucky is second with eight. After that, the Duke-UNC-Indiana trio claims five titles apiece. Connecticut is now the only program with four. Kansas and Louisville have three each. Then come several programs with two.
Of the six programs that have won at least four national championships, only three of them entered Monday night witch coaches who had won at least four titles by themselves: UCLA is one, with John Wooden. Kentucky is another, with Adolph Rupp owning four national crowns. The third was Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. He began Monday night tied with a Kentucky coaching icon, but he has now surpassed the greatest head coach in the Wildcats’ storied history.
The weight of this plot twist is too great to ignore: At the end of a season in which Kentucky grabbed the majority of the headlines and won the nation’s attention, Duke’s most famous coach passed Kentucky’s most famous coach for the second-most national titles won in Division I men’s college basketball history. Krzyzewski is now alone with five titles, and the fact that he’s celebrating this milestone under these circumstances is what adds to his already-enormous legend, with Duke stealing Kentucky’s thunder on a number of levels.
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The biggest thing to appreciate about Mike Krzyzewski at the end of this NCAA tournament is that after Kentucky claimed the limelight and Tom Izzo received an avalanche of publicity for pulling off another March run, it was Coach K who eclipsed both John Calipari and Izzo.
Coach K wound up winning a title with multiple one-and-done players, out-Caling Calipari in the process. Krzyzewski won this title not with his high-end lottery-pick talent, Jahlil Okafor, taking over the game; he won with Grayson Allen scoring eight straight points in a time of crisis to save the Blue Devils’ bacon.
Duke winning this game thanks to Grayson Allen is much like the Blue Devils beating Butler in the 2010 national title game with Brian Zoubek getting 10 rebounds and becoming an essential presence on that imperfect team. It’s also a lot like the New England Patriots winning Super Bowl XLIX because Bill Belichick took the time to coach up Malcolm Butler in practice, never taking for granted that a player far down his depth chart was too insignificant to speak to.
Great coaches get every player ready to play, and it’s because Krzyzewski had Zoubek (2010) and Allen (2015) prepared to excel that Duke has five national titles instead of three.
This is where an important distinction needs to be made about Krzyzewski’s career:
In 1991, 1992 and 2001, Duke won national titles with high-end talent. Christian Laettner is one of the 10 most successful college basketball players in the sport’s history, hands down. Bobby Hurley was an all-time-great collegiate point guard. Grant Hill was a spectacular player in his own right. The 2001 team — with Jay Williams and Carlos Boozer and Shane Battier and Mike Dunleavy, Jr. — was similarly loaded. Duke won as a heavyweight those three seasons.
In 2010, though, Duke won a series of street fights with an odd assortment of parts, Zoubek being the oddest one of all. In 2015, Duke won another series of rugged, defense-first games, shedding its recent NCAA tournament reputation (hello, Mercer and Lehigh) as a soft defensive team.
Winning with toughness. Winning with defense. Winning with more one-and-dones than Duke is used to. Mike Krzyzewski didn’t have to play Kentucky in this Final Four, but he won in a manner Kentucky would have recognized. By winning thanks to a huge contribution from an unheralded player, Coach K also took the kind of route Michigan State’s become more accustomed to in recent years, when the Spartans have made the Final Four three times as a 5 seed or lower (2005, 2010, 2015).
We think of Coach K as a guy like Phil Jackson, someone who knows how to coach high-end players better than anybody else — just look at his Olympic Team and USA Basketball track records. Yet, after winning three national titles at Duke due to having the unquestioned best players on the floor, Coach K has won his last two titles with very different kinds of teams — not just in relationship to each other, but in connection with the past.
It’s this adaptability to the times and seasons — to the different ways a coach can construct a basketball team — which makes Coach K just as resourceful and crafty as Tom Izzo, yet also as much a motivator as John Calipari.
Certain coaches get a lot of love in the present moment when they do certain things. Coach K has made the Final Four only twice since 2004, so it’s not as though he’s been praised from the rooftops on many occasions over the past decade. Yet, his ability to close the sale with the likes of a Zoubek (five years ago) or an Allen (Monday night) show that he’s far more than just an expert at getting a No. 1 seed to the national title podium. What Coach K does in the cauldron of competition is far more diverse, creative and successful than his longstanding reputation might allow.
We’ll see if another national title — one more than all college basketball coaches not named John Wooden — enables Krzyzewski’s still-growing career and still-expanding resume to be appreciated in this richer and fuller light.
