A few hours after Duke punched its ticket to the national championship, the Blue Devils were front and center on a different national stage—"Saturday Night Live."
The Saturday edition of the NBC show opened with a joke discussion of the "student" role of student-athletes. Head coach Mike Krzyzewski (played by Taran Killam, donning a black wig) announced in a mock press conference that freshman center Jahlil Okafor would be unable to play in Monday's championship game—due to a biology test.
"These are student-athletes—students," the fake Krzyzewski says. "If they only came to college to play basketball, then we'd all look pretty silly."
Krzyzewski tells the crowd of reporters that Okafor will be replaced by walk-on "Steve," played by Bobby Moynihan, a 36-year-old graduate student who is markedly unfit for the championship game.
"It's like I told all my players, college is the most important year of your life," Krzyzewski says when people press about the decision to allow Okafor to focus on school.
Turner Sports commentators Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith and Charles Barkley—played by Beck Bennett, Jay Pharoah and Kenan Thompson, respectively—then weigh in on the importance of academics to college basketball player.
See the full video below:
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