The 2015 Final Four is set, and while this college basketball season has featured Kentucky’s quest for 40-0, another storied program in the sport has managed to create a major achievement, one that ripples through the pages of time.
Sunday afternoon in Houston, Duke claimed the final spot in this esteemed foursome, fending off Gonzaga in a South Regional final with A-plus effort and C-plus shotmaking. We mentioned after the regional semifinals that Gonzaga had to deliver a great shooting performance in the Elite Eight against Duke. A 44-percent outing wasn’t that bad, but when paired with a 2-of-10 performance fron the three-point arc and a meager nine free throw attempts, it didn’t amount to much.
The supreme lamentation for Gonzaga — denied yet again in its pursuit of a first-ever Final Four — is not just that Kyle Wiltjer biffed a layup in the final five minutes of regulation, a lapse that took the wind out of the Zags’ sails. No, the bigger source of pain for the West Coast Conference champions is that Duke hit only 37.5 percent of its field goals, with Jahlil Okafor scoring only nine points, his second straight game with under 10 points in Houston. Duke, as was the case against Utah on Friday, shot poorly enough to lose… but its opponent couldn’t snatch the opportunity.
Enough of Gonzaga’s lamentation. What does this victory mean to Duke and its coach?
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No one would confuse 2015 Duke with a juggernaut, but as was the case the last time the Blue Devils played a South Regional in Houston, their opponents didn’t bring enough to the table. (There were certainly some major stylistic differences between this game against Gonzaga and Duke’s win over Baylor in the 2010 South final in Houston, but that’s a separate discussion.) Duke’s bracket path was a favorable one, and the Blue Devils stepped through the portal to take full advantage of it.
Now, just like 2010, Duke moves from a South Regional title in Houston to a Final Four spot in Indianapolis. We’ll be able to talk about that Final Four in the coming days and discuss the matchup with Michigan State in a sexy first semifinal, but for now, it’s worth appreciating what this Final Four means for the Duke program.
It’s really hard to believe, but it’s true: Since Duke’s Final Four in 2010, neither the Blue Devils nor their chief rivals, the North Carolina Tar Heels, reached the Final Four. Duke was a top seed in 2011 and lost to Arizona in the Sweet 16. North Carolina reached Elite Eights in 2011 and 2012, losing to Kentucky and Kansas. Duke made the Elite Eight in 2013 but had the misfortune (the opposite of this year’s bracket path) of being the 2 seed in the same region as Louisville, the team that won the 2013 national championship.
Expectations are sky-high for both Duke and North Carolina. As we’ve seen with Roy Williams, a rut of three years brings out desperate pleas for a new coach and a change of scenery from the fringes. (These are fringe fans, but they’re vocal enough to get noticed.) Of anyone in college basketball, Mike Krzyzewski is as close to owning lifetime immunity from criticism as one could possibly imagine. Yet, even he had not reached a Final Four since 2010. Interestingly enough, Tom Izzo has taken that same journey, making his latest Final Four five years after his previous one.
That last fact is illuminating: It took two giants of the sport five whole years to return to college basketball’s coveted early-April stage, reminding us that this stuff is hard to do with machine-cranked regularity.
Here’s the money line, then, on the heels of that fact: Because of his work over the past 30 years — with his first Final Four coming in 1986 — Krzyzewski has now made 12 Final Fours, tying him with John Wooden on the all-time list and moving him one ahead of the recently departed Dean Smith (11). Coach K’s legacy and standing in college basketball have been secure for quite some time. Yet, certain kinds of milestones enable the public to fully and firmly appreciate what a legacy looks like at the highest level of achievement. Tying Wooden for the most Final Fours — a feat magnified by the fact that UCLA’s teams played regionally-oriented opponents, meaning that they did not venture out of Western locales before the Final Four — cements Krzyzewski’s position at the very top of his sport… not just today, but for all time.
Quinn Cook, Tyus Jones, Okafor, Amile Jefferson, Marshall Plumlee — Duke went through this South Regional with a lot of uneven performances at the offensive end of the floor. Yet, the star turns of Justise Winslow (Friday against Utah) and Matt Jones (Sunday versus Gonzaga) were enough to get the Blue Devils to the Four-front of their sport, one more time.
Twelve Final Fours in more than a third of a century. Such a feat simultaneously conveys how difficult it is to get to the top in college hoops… and how often Mike Krzyzewski has done so. In that sense, Coach K’s latest achievement mirrors the weekend he and his team endured in Houston: Everything about it was a struggle, but sweet victory emerged at the end.
It’s tough for everyone in college basketball, but Coach K has succeeded more in the face of cutthroat competition than any other coach in the sport’s NCAA tournament history.
If that doesn’t say everything that needs to be said about this coach, nothing else possibly could.
Now, Duke will try to say everything it wants to say at next weekend’s Final Four, the 12th in Coach K’s crowning career.
