Brownlow: Duke exorcised its demons, and Mike Krzyzewski and his players got to share a moment of joy

By Lauren Brownlow, WRALSportsFan columnist/reporter

Greenville, S.C. — With 3.9 seconds to go, Trevor Keels was fouled after he secured the Michigan State rebound with Duke leading 83-76.

As he walked to the foul line, the entire Duke cheering section in Bon Secours Wellness Arena was on its feet and screaming in pure jubilation.

Mike Krzyzewski, ears bright red and face flushed, broke into a wide smile, maybe his widest of the last month. He turned and faced the fans, pointing at them to show his appreciation.

But what he was actually doing was pointing at his grandchildren, some of whom were crying in pure joy. And maybe in relief, too.

"One of the best moments for me was turning around and seeing all my grandkids right behind the bench, and they're crying, they're cheering. Wow," Krzyzewski said, tearing up. "I mean, it's so good. It's so good. So 1,200 (wins are) great, but that scene was better."

He then turned his attention to his other family, the basketball players that he has entrusted his final season to, the ones that made him want to come back and do this farewell tour in the first place.

He high-fived Paolo Banchero, and he tried to congratulate Jeremy Roach in something that was a combination between a chest bump and a hug, jumping surprisingly spryly off his 75-year-old feet.

"I don't have a chest to bump," Krzyzewski said.

No matter what, it was the kind of hug we've seen Krzyzewski deliver on senior night wins to some of his most beloved players over the years when they came out triumphantly, as they almost always did.

But they hadn't a few weeks ago in Durham in Coach K's final home game. They hadn't last week in the ACC Tournament. They survived and advanced, until they faced a team good enough to where hanging on by its fingernails when things get tough wouldn't be enough.

So you can be forgiven if you doubted Duke.

Duke itself, though? It never did. Even down 5 with 5:10 to go.

"Losing didn't come up one time," Wendell Moore, Jr. said afterwards, when asked what Duke was thinking.

Krzyzewski couldn't help but interject.

"You're not going to talk about losing or else you're going to lose," Krzyzewski said.

But make no mistake — Krzyzewski and his players were staring their season's mortality in the face in a very real way.

Duke came into this game against 7-seed Michigan State a popular team to pick against. Duke had not beaten a top-40 team in Ken Pom since February 15. Duke had lost two of its last five games. And Duke had failed to close out games against opponents that were good enough to make them pay.

The North Carolina game at home. The Virginia Tech game in the ACC Tournament. Even the Syracuse game and the Miami game in the ACC Tournament. Two wins, two losses, all shaky performances that required some help from their opponents, and Duke often won in spite of itself.

It's been jarring to see Duke play that way, especially a Duke team with talent. Duke has often been the team that could look shaky for 10, maybe 20 minutes, but would right the ship and go on a decisive run just when it had allowed its opponent to hope.

This Duke team hasn't operated that way. This Duke team has seen teams refuse to go away no matter how many plays Duke itself makes and the longer a team sticks around, the tighter Duke has played.

It was an issue all year, but it was especially an issue after the North Carolina game. Duke had yet to beat a team that poured out absolutely everything against it. So many of Mike Krzyzewski's 1,200 wins have come that way, withstanding a team's barrage of its best only to come out on top in the end. Because they're better. And because they're tougher.

This Duke team has been knocked for its inability to face those moments. But it's impossible to appreciate what Duke's players have had to face this season. It's impossible to understand the level of pressure they have been under.

Most of us mere mortals could not begin to comprehend the pressure college athletes at high-profile programs are under anyway. Now ratchet it up a notch because it's Duke. Another because it's Mike Krzyzewski. And another 500 notches or so because it's his last season.

Now imagine you're doing all of this in front of a crowd that largely wants you to lose, and you're doing it in the NCAA Tournament when it's win or go home. And if you lose, the failure is Krzyzewski's, but it's yours too.

Everyone picks a side when the NCAA Tournament is in town, even if your team isn't playing. And when Duke is in the building, that side is rarely Duke.

The Blue Devils have been at their best in those types of situations this year. But now they were facing a Michigan State team that had the talent to beat them, a team that had a 5-point lead and a lot of support in the arena, a team whose coach is literally nicknamed around the month of March and his team's success in it, a team that had beaten Duke in the Elite Eight just three years earlier.

The Spartans aren't a vintage Michigan State team, but they are a group that will be tough and physical. Michigan State hands grabbed on to the jerseys of Duke's big men when the referees were not looking. Bodies slammed into one another as they fought for rebounds. Guards ran around screens that often had a little extra on them, screens that sent them jostling backwards on unsteady feet.

And no matter what Duke did, no matter how many responses it had, no matter how many runs it went on, Michigan State seemingly always had a response.

It was a microcosm of Duke's season. Teams always want to beat Duke. As the "lasts" have piled up here towards the end of the year, and Krzyzewski's end feels more eminent no matter how it happens, teams have wanted to beat Duke even more.

Michigan State hit a 3-pointer to go up 68-65 with 5:24 to play, and then Marcus Bingham stole it from Mark Williams and got fouled in transition. His two free throws put Michigan State up 70-65 with 5:10 to go, and the precariousness of the situation was very real.

But Paolo Banchero, Duke's best player, did what he had done all game — he made a play.

Banchero got a spinning lay-up to go with 4:55 remaining, and the immediate response settled Duke down, as did Roach's ensuing driving layup that he somehow got to go with a foul.

Roach and the rest of the Duke bench exhorted the Duke crowd at that point, and they responded as the game went to a media timeout with Duke suddenly right back in it.

Banchero looked into the eyes of his teammates, knowing how many times they'd been in this situation this season.

"We were like, 'man, we've got four minutes. We can either lay down, or we can turn it up'," Banchero said. "That's really all it was, man. Just fighting, like you said, having heart. And just trusting each other really."

Then Trevor Keels, who'd struggled so much with his confidence in recent weeks and wasn't the most trustworthy shooter, hit a 3-pointer to give Duke the lead back.

But there were more plays to be made. Duke locked down on the defensive end, especially in the last three minutes. After a driving layup with little Duke resistance by A.J. Hoggard put the Spartans back up by two.

Keels made one of two free throws to put Duke up by 1, then Williams blocked a Hoggard layup attempt and Banchero made one of his own on the other end to put Duke up by 1 with 2:05 to go. Michigan State would score two more points.

Then Roach, a guy without whom Duke maybe doesn't even win two of its four games it won headed into the NCAA Tournament, nailed perhaps the biggest shot of Duke's season to put Duke up 78-74 with 1:16 to play.

Duke made 5 of 6 free throws down the stretch, another area where the Blue Devils have struggled at times in close games.

Coming into the Michigan State game, Duke had been out-scored in the last 10 minutes of eight of their last nine games decided by fewer than 20 points.

Duke only lost two of those games, but it led to plenty of dicey moments — against Wake Forest at home, when they escaped with a 2-point win; at Virginia, where they held on for a 65-61 win. North Carolina outscored Duke 35-20 in the game's final 10 minutes. The only team that Duke outscored in the last 10 minutes was Syracuse, a team playing without the ACC's leading scorer and a team that gave Duke a far better game than it should have.

Even Cal State Fullerton outscored Duke in the last 10 minutes, and the win felt less than satisfying.

But Duke had its most commanding "quarter" in the final one against Michigan State, closing out the Spartans by outscoring them 24-19 in the final 10 minutes.

Afterwards, Krzyzewski's cheeks were still flushed as he sat down at the podium mere moments after the win. He was still a little out of breath. It was like he'd just run across a room to hug a friend he hadn't seen in a long time. He was beaming with pride. A smile was ever present throughout, even just poking through at the edges as he raved about his guys. His eyes twinkled.

His opening statement almost sounded like he was suddenly remembering how close it was to ending, and then he remembered all over again how his players had saved the season, how maybe they'd been able to do the improbable — to hit the reset button after one of the more gutting losses in Duke history.

"I'm incredibly proud of my guys. You guys were terrific, man," Krzyzewski said, turning to look down the line at four of his five starters. "I'm really proud to be your coach."

Krzyzewski's eyes welled up with tears, and he choked up as he went on.

"It had nothing to do with coaching those last four or five minutes. It all had to do with heart and togetherness. They followed their hearts, and God bless them. We're in the Sweet 16."

There's no telling what the future holds for Duke. The Tournament is cruel. Momentum carried into it is often rudely interrupted by a team that comes out of nowhere to have the game of its life. The Tournament does not care about your favorite senior who's earned his big moment. It certainly doesn't care about your legendary coach playing his final season.

March Madness is brutal, and it's a battle, and the ending is final for someone every time.

To respond in moments like that is often the most difficult thing you can ask a college athlete to do.

Duke wasn't going to make a run if it didn't get better late in games, if it didn't learn to make plays when it had to. It wasn't going to win a national title if it kept playing as if it expected its opponent to go away on its own.

This time? Duke made their opponent go away. Sometimes, when you're in a slump, you need to have success. It could be a bad day where you've hit every traffic light and are running late to work and you just need a win, even a little one, to change your fortunes. It could be you've got the yips on the golf course and keep missing 5-footers.

You just need to see it go in a few times to remind yourself that you can do it.

If Duke has done that with this win, it changes what this team is capable of this postseason.

So much of this season has been about Krzyzewski, understandably so. You try becoming the most successful coach in college basketball and not wanting your flowers at the end of your career. It's not like he doesn't deserve it.

But as the season has neared its end, the focus on Krzyzewski has become almost manic in its singularity.

Krzyzewski has tried to undo it, tried to walk it back, tried to minimize the talk of him.

Because he understands something important, something that led him to be in the position that he'll end his career in — he's only responsible for so much of this team's success, or any of his team's successes.

"I've got guys who want to win, and our goal is to win the whole thing all the time, even if we're young," Krzyzewski said of the importance of his 26th Sweet 16 appearance, a number that feels almost as absurd as it is. "So it says a lot for the caliber of player that I've coached. Like these guys, they're good players, but they're really good guys.

"You don't go to those Sweet 16s just with talent. You do it with character. That's what my teams have had. It's not like I've given them that. We've recruited that, and we've made use of it."

The moment when Krzyzewski passionately embraced his players? It's the closest thing this Duke team has had to triumph this year.

It was a moment Krzyzewski himself desperately needed. He's wanted to see this team grow and progress all year. It's been up and down at times, but this moment was so far up from where Duke was two weeks ago. It was a genuine one, a moment where there were more smiles on the faces of the Duke players, more pure joy present in that moment than any Duke has had in the last month or more.

"Look, I'm 75. To have moments like that, you've got to be kidding me," Krzyzewski said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Really, how damn lucky can you be to be in that?

"And I want to share it. I don't want to sit down and say 'you guys enjoy it'. I want to be in the party a little bit. That's the enjoyment I've got, I've had for 47 years. Today was one of the really good days."

The second question in, a reporter asked Banchero specifically whether or not the "championship approach" Duke said it was taking for every game here on out had finally set in. "I guess this would make your second championship of the weekend," the reporter said. "How far do you take that?"

It's the million-dollar question, isn't it? Is this just a fleeting moment in time, one the Duke players and their head coach will always remember fondly, but that doesn't carry over? Or does it mean Duke's back in the national championship conversation in a big way?

They'll have to knock off Texas Tech, one of the best defensive teams in the country, and then probably Gonzaga, the No. 1 team in the country but a team Duke beat in a great game earlier this year. And they'll have to do it in on the west coast.

But that's the big picture. Duke will be in that moment when it's time. Now, they just have to worry about where they go next. At the time of the press conference, Duke did not yet know its next opponent as Notre Dame and Texas Tech were locked in a tight battle. And the NCAA Tournament is a time of quick turnarounds, a time where coaches can no longer avoid being asked about their next opponent after a game.

But before Banchero could answer how far Duke could "take that", Krzyzewski couldn't help himself.

"We'll take it to San Francisco," Krzyzewski said.

And if they do, they'll take it to New Orleans, too.