The Chronicle celebrates one of Duke's most successful decades by honoring our top 10 Devils of the Decade. Each Tuesday, The Chronicle will feature one of the selected athletes. Today we profile athlete No. 4, Bobby Hurley.
Great sports stories always begin at the end. Whether it's the drama of a goal-line stand, the excitement of a last-minute rally or the finality of a buzzer-beating shot, greatness tends to emerge as the clock nears zero.
This story is an exception.
When the greatness of Duke point guard Bobby Hurley-and no matter where his future lies, he will forever be known as Duke point guard Bobby Hurley-is measured, the reckoning begins nowhere near the ending.
It must begin instead on March 30, 1991, at Indianapolis' Hoosier Dome.
For on that evening, when the unthinkable occurred, two undying images captured the magnitude of Hurley's Duke career. They are moments frozen in college basketball history, essentially the bookend plays of a victory that defied odds and spawned legends.
And they are images befitting a player who combined, perhaps better than anyone else in a Duke uniform ever did, the point guard's dual roles as quarterback and playmaker.
"The best game, for me, was the UNLV game," Hurley said, looking back more than eight years later. "Just for the feeling of an entire team playing as close to its potential as you thought it possibly could."
The first image from that night, that of an alley-oop pass thrown into the stratosphere and retrieved by Grant Hill, is a moment that still flickers through Hurley's mind today, even as it does for countless Duke fans.
Hurley's modest stat line from that night-12 points, two rebounds, seven assists-hardly captures the significance of the second famous moment, a cool-as-ice three-point shot launched from the top of the key in the game's waning moments.
"I knew the team was not going in the right direction at that time and we could have gone either way," Hurley said, the memories flooding back. "I knew we needed a basket.
"Those were kind of my times, when I was able to step up and do something to affect the outcome. I didn't think too much, just shot it."
The result is well-known. Hurley's jumper found the bottom of the net, rescuing Duke from the brink of elimination and sending
"The first one was phenomenal because no one expected us to do it," Hurley said. "We were doing something incredible for the first time. Everything was so new and exciting."
Those two magical plays helped Hurley erase another lingering image, that of a dreadful performance a year earlier against the same Runnin' Rebels. Nervous and ill, Hurley sandwiched a handful of turnovers and missed shots between trips to the bathroom.
"I was disgusted," Hurley said of a humiliating 103-73 loss in the 1990 championship game, a game in which somewhere, as the old joke goes, UNLV is probably still scoring.
"I looked at it as a blown opportunity, and I wasn't sure I was going to get another chance."
Hurley, now almost a decade removed from that terrible night, felt a bit like he was looking in the mirror recently when he visited Durham and met Jason Williams, Duke's latest version of "the next Bobby Hurley."
"Just having a couple conversations with Jason brought back reminders of my freshman year and how new everything was," Hurley said. "If you grew up like I did around basketball, you were watching it on TV all the time, and then the next minute you're right there in the mix."
Williams, whom Mike Krzyzewski has already compared to Hurley, bears more than a passing resemblance-no pun intended-to the retired No. 11.
Like Hurley, Williams arrives from New Jersey as a highly-touted freshman who will start from Day 1. He takes over a team that lost a top-five pick to the NBA draft (Elton Brand instead of Danny Ferry) but still bears heavy expectations.
And just as Hurley had a young Tommy Amaker to mentor him, Williams will learn from recent graduate Steve Wojciechowski.
"Having Tommy was big because there were a lot of times when I'd get caught up in the heat of battle and I was not mature enough to handle my emotions," Hurley said. "There were times when I lost it and Tommy would give me the advice to help me hang in there."
Hurley's advice to Williams: take charge of the team both on and off the floor and don't be shy.
"I diverted a lot to the veterans on the team, which to some degree I had to, but that held me back a little," Hurley said. "I never really felt like my freshman year it was my team."
All that changed as the 1990-91 Blue Devils made their inspiring run to the winner's platform at Indianapolis. For an encore, Hurley led the charge to a repeat championship, earning Final Four MVP honors after playing all 80 minutes of the final weekend for the second straight year.
He is the NCAA's all time leader in assists, both overall (1,076) and in tournament play (145). And he started more games in a Duke jersey (139) than any other player.
Although Trajan Langdon eclipsed Hurley as the school's all-time three-point leader, the 6-foot guard's assist mark could stand the test of time, particularly in this age of early NBA defections.
"Just being able to be a part of two championships means more to me than anything, any individual honors," Hurley said. I've always been more proud of team-type honors, but I still enjoy being remembered for having accomplished some [records]."
Bobby Hurley's story begins in the middle, with a pair of NCAA Championships. Its ending-a 82-77 second-round tournament loss to California-is almost anticlimactic enough to be an injustice.
A 32-point, nine-assist performance was not enough to save Hurley in his final game as a Blue Devil.
"There was a shot I'll always remember," Hurley said. "We had been down by 18 and fought back, had gotten into position with a chance to win. And I had made a lot of shots that day, but this one went in and out. I just see it in my head a lot."
After that game, Krzyzewski cried. It was the only time Hurley ever saw that.
Krzyzewski cried when Duke lost the all-out hustle and fierce drive to win that were Hurley's trademarks. They are remnants of years spent as a gym rat in Jersey City, where his father still coaches the legendary St. Anthony's high school program.
Some day Hurley sees himself coaching, too. But, in spite of a near-fatal car wreck and a series of injuries, Hurley won't call himself a retired player yet. At home doing rehabilitation on a torn ACL, Hurley dreams of a return to the court.
"There's something in there that still wants to play," Hurley said. "Whether my body allows that, I don't know. But deep down I still want to play."
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