Krzyzewski rebuilds team after titles, back surgery

This is the final installment in a three-part series highlighting the accomplishments of Duke men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski as he approaches his 500th career win.

Entering the 1994-95 season, the men's basketball team had been to seven of the last nine Final Fours. Months earlier, Duke was one Scottie Thurman rainbow three-pointer away from winning its third national title in four years.

Though superstar Grant Hill had graduated, the Blue Devils still boasted a combination of talented freshmen and championship-seasoned veterans. Some let-down was expected, but only a small one; Duke opened the season ranked eighth in the country and rose to sixth by late November.

"I want to play for the whole thing every year," coach Mike Krzyzewski said in the preseason. "Going into it, most people would think we don't have a chance of doing that with this team. But going into last year, most people would have thought the same thing....

"Our goal is to try and win a national championship every year, no matter which team we have. Otherwise, I don't want to coach."

Little did he know that he wouldn't be coaching come January. In mid-October, Krzyzewski had undergone surgery to repair a slipped disc in his lower back, but missed only one week of practice. After his team lost to unranked Iowa on Dec. 27 in the Rainbow Classic, the plane trip from Hawaii to Durham aggravated Krzyzewski's injury. He would coach two more games before entering the hospital on Jan. 6; five days later, it was announced that he would be sidelined indefinitely while associate coach Pete Gaudet guided the squad.

The Blue Devils lost on the road to Atlantic Coast Conference foe Georgia Tech in their first contest without Krzyzewski. Then they lost at Wake Forest.

And the ACC defeats kept coming. Virginia. N.C. State. Florida State. Maryland. North Carolina. Clemson. Finally, on Feb. 9, Duke knocked off the Yellow Jackets for their first conference win. It finished the season 13-18 overall, 2-14 in the ACC. There was no NIT berth, let alone a return trip to the Final Four.

Late wins over Maryland and UCLA allowed the Blue Devils to sneak back into the NCAA Tournament, but by the time they faced the Terrapins again in the ACC Tourney, guards Chris Collins and Steve Wojciechowski had been felled by injury as well. Walk-on Jay Heaps, that year's national freshman of the year (in soccer), had to play and hit a big three-pointer against Maryland, but Duke ended up losing by 13 before falling to Eastern Michigan in the first round of the NCAAs.

Suddenly, the coach who had recruited five players whose jerseys now hang in Cameron Indoor Stadium couldn't put five scholarship athletes on the floor. Krzyzewski knew that depth in talent was necessary to return the Blue Devils to glory.

"That [was] really the nature of our teams in the 1980s and early 1990s," he said before last season. "Since then we have had less competition.... Each day [in practice, the first team] competed against a group that was capable of beating them. Maybe they didn't come out feeling that way every day, but on certain days they did. They became accustomed to playing against people the way people were going to play against them. That's critical for us this year."

Indeed, Duke's 1996-97 roster included three talented freshman plus transfer Roshown McLeod. Running out of bodies was no longer an issue. But while the Blue Devils boasted a strong incoming class last year, nothing could have prepared Duke fans for what happened before the season even began.

Shane Battier. Elton Brand. William Avery. Chris Burgess. One by one, four of the top high school players in the country committed to Duke, each announcement increasing the puddle of drool on the chins of the Blue Devil faithful-as Krzyzewski brought in what some consider the greatest recruiting class in the history of college basketball.

"It was really tough to decide," Battier said after he picked Duke over Michigan, Michigan State, Kansas and North Carolina. "It came down to my relationship with Coach Krzyzewski. I truly felt a connection with him."

Duke would win the ACC regular season title in 1996-97 before falling in the second round of the NCAA Tournament after opponents adjusted to its small lineup. But many people could not help thinking, "Wait 'til next year."

Next year is here, and the Blue Devils are No. 1 in the nation heading into their showdown with arch-rival North Carolina. A Duke win on Saturday and Krzyzewski will pick up his 500th career victory. After missing 19 games three years ago, the man they call Coach K is back on top of college basketball.

Some observers have argued that Krzyzewski has accomplished all he can at the collegiate level and will want to take on the challenge of the NBA at some point. But he has turned down numerous offers to coach professionally in the past, and continues to maintain that he's not fantasizing about becoming the next Rick Pitino or John Calipari.

"I think Mike would be successful coaching wherever he would go, whether it's the NBA or college," said Maryland coach Gary Williams. "I've always felt if you can coach you can coach.... In fact, I'd like to recommend that Mike go to the NBA as soon as possible and maybe we could win a few more games in the league next year."

Whether or not Williams gets his wish, Krzyzewski right now has more pressing matters on his mind, as he himself would say. Like leading his team back to the Final Four, once an annual event but something it hasn't been to in four years.

"Mike's a legend," said his good friend, Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins. "He went through a tough time with his back injury. But he's revitalized himself and his program. How he did it only he can answer. Mike's a great person. He's a winner. He's on another one of his missions. He's as tough as they come. I was a better player in college than Mike, I'm a better tennis player, but he's a better coach."