To advance to Final Four, Duke will fight recent trends and (nearly) ancient history
It’s a little funny how, in Mike Krzyzewski’s final NCAA tournament, the obstacles standing between Duke and New Orleans represent a sort of Coach K Revenge Tour as much as a farewell tour. The same hurdles that Duke will have to clear now have tripped Duke up too many times in the past.
Start with the fact Duke is a No. 2 seed and not on the top line as many would have assumed coming into the season – and based on results elsewhere, even winning the ACC championship wouldn’t have changed that. Of Krzyzewski’s four first-round losses, one was to 15th-seeded Lehigh in the Carolinas, Greensboro instead of Greenville. The other three were as a No. 3 seed, so Duke was in this zone even if it had been properly seeded.
Then if Duke can take care of business against Cal State Fullerton, lurking in the second round, yet again, are Tom Izzo and Michigan State. Krzyzewski is 13-3 all-time against Izzo, but that includes two crushing NCAA tournament defeats: The 2019 East Regional final, when the Spartans denied Zion Williamson and company a trip to the Final Four, and 2005 when Michigan State derailed top-seeded Duke with J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams in the third round in Austin.
Krzyzewski has certainly ended the Spartans’ season often enough in return – four times, including the 2015 Final Four – but since 2019 he’s got some unfinished March business against Izzo.
Davidson would present a different kind of historical challenge: Krzyzewski is 6-3 in the second round as a No. 2 seed but 0-1 when the No. 10 seed advances. Which is also to say: In Krzyzewski’s 42 years at Duke has never beaten a No. 10 seed in the second round, albeit in the smallest of samples.
That’s small potatoes compared to the big hole in Krzyzewski’s NCAA resume, which would be up next. Starting with his first-ever NCAA tournament game, a loss to Washington in Pullman, Wash., Krzyzewski has famously never won in the NCAA tournament in the Pacific time zone, going 0-5. That includes some powerful Duke teams, like Danny Ferry and a young Christian Laettner in the 1989 Final Four in Seattle; Kyrie Irving and what was left of the 2010 champions in Anaheim in 2011; Brandon Ingram and Grayson Allen in 2016, in Anaheim again.
Nor has Duke ever made the Final Four out of the West Regional, since it has lost twice before ever making it to the West Coast. There is, of course, some method to this madness: Krzyzewski’s better teams have typically done well enough in the regular season to avoid getting sent out west in the first place, with 1989 the unavoidable exception. Still, with Duke headed to San Francisco if it can advance out of Greenville, there’s at least one thing left Krzyzewski has never done at Duke that he can still do in his final season.
Duke would also have to overcome what has become a second-seed hex. Krzyzewski’s first four No. 2 seeds all made it to the Final Four and the third, in 1991 won the national title. But since 1994, Duke has yet to make it past a regional final as a No. 2 seed in seven tries. Duke’s last four trips to the Final Four – 1999, 2001, 2010, 2015 – and last three national titles have all come as a No. 1 seed.
Not to mention Duke’s opponents in San Francisco would most likely be Texas Tech and Gonzaga, and as things stand Duke would be a Vegas underdog against either on a neutral court.
Of course, none of that matters if Duke plays to its full early season potential. The Blue Devils showed in November and December that, at their best, they can beat teams like Kentucky and Gonzaga, who could easily end up comprising half the Final Four. But as much as that works in Duke’s favor, especially if the Blue Devils can use this week off to fix what ailed them in Brooklyn, there’s still a lot of history pushing the other way.
Forty-two years and five national titles later, in his final NCAA tournament, Krzyzewski still has new territory to conquer. A better farewell than the one he got in Cameron or at the ACC tournament depends on it.
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This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 5:15 AM with the headline "To advance to Final Four, Duke will fight recent trends and (nearly) ancient history."
