A Season Inside (39 page)

The next four games were relatively easy victories: William and Mary, Miami, Virginia in the ACC opener, and St. Louis. But Krzyzewski wasn’t happy. Their play was sloppy. After St. Louis, he told his players, “If you improved a lot you’d be deplorable. You’re ripe to be picked.”

Players almost never believe coaches when they hear things like this, especially when they are 10–1 and ranked fifth in the country. But Krzyzewski knew what he was talking about. Two days later, Maryland came to Duke and stunned the Blue Devils, who immediately got down 12–2 at the beginning of the game and were then outscored 8–0 in the last three minutes to lose, 72–69. Now, King and his teammates understood what Krzyzewski had been talking about.

“What really made us mad was that Maryland didn’t even play very well and we still let them win,” King said. “We gave them too much respect. We knew they were talented but we forgot that so are we. We played tentative. The next few days in practice were like preseason again. We had a lot of cockiness knocked out of us. We didn’t like the way losing felt and the only way to make up for it was to win at Carolina.”

Duke wins at North Carolina about as often as the Chicago Cubs contend for the pennant. The Blue Devils won there in 1966. They repeated the feat nineteen years later in 1985. Twice in twenty-two years. But they had to win now. No big deal, right?

To change things a little, Krzyzewski took his team to shoot in the Dean E. Smith Center the day before the game. To everyone in the world, the 21,444-seat palace was the Deandome. At Carolina they always call it “Smith Center.” It is a reflex action. Say “Deandome” in front of someone from Carolina and they say, “Smith Center,” as
if you had pressed a button and gotten a tape. “Smith Center, this is a recording.”

The Deandome is a tough place for a visiting team to play for one reason: the opposition. Carolina is always good, more often than not excellent, occasionally great, and once every ten years virtually unbeatable. But Krzyzewski is not intimidated by Dean Smith, a fact that was evident the very first time they met.

Carolina won the game 78–76. This was in the last year of the old Big Four Tournament. Krzyzewski, then thirty-three, was brand new to the ACC. When Smith, thinking he was victorious, ran over to shake his hand, there was one second still on the clock. Krzyzewski shook him off, saying, “The damn game’s not over yet, Dean!”

Smith won that one and eight of the first nine in which the two men met. But slowly, as he built his program, Krzyzewski began to catch up. They had split their last six meetings going into this game in the Deandome, uh … “Smith Center, this is a recording.”

Duke blew to an early eleven-point lead, which was hardly unusual. Over the years, Carolina had made a habit of falling behind early at home, often way behind, then rallying and finding a miraculous way to win.

In the ACC this phenomenon is known as The Carolina Piss Factor. A Piss Factor game is one where you are winning, you are about to win, you have the game won, and then something strange happens, you lose and
you are pissed
.

Duke has been the victim of as many Piss Factor games as anyone. In 1974, the Blue Devils led Carolina by eight points with seventeen seconds left—and lost in overtime. Walter Davis scored the tying basket on a forty-foot shot that banked off the top of the backboard and went in at the buzzer. Piss Factor. In 1984, trying to deny Carolina a perfect ACC regular season, Duke had a two-point lead with nine seconds left and Danny Meagher on the foul line. Meagher missed, Matt Doherty raced downcourt, appeared to travel, shot off-balance, and the ball went in at the buzzer. Carolina won in double overtime. Piss Factor.

In 1986, in the inaugural game in the Deandome—Smith Center, this is a recording—Krzyzewski was hit with two first-half technical fouls that were so bad that Fred Barakat, the league’s supervisor of
officials, criticized the calls on television at halftime. Carolina won by three. Piss Factor.

This one had all the makings of another Piss Factor game. Slowly but surely, Carolina whittled the lead away in the second half. But there was another factor at work in this game—the King Factor. King was guarding Jeff Lebo, Carolina’s point guard and best outside threat.

In high school, King and Lebo had roomed together at summer camp and they had remained good friends. Lebo was an anointed player, a coach’s son who seemed born to play basketball. He had been recruited by everybody, yet there had been little doubt that he would play at Carolina. He had been an All-ACC player as a sophomore and was this year’s Designated Talker in the Carolina locker room. If you wanted to hear some pablum, you headed for Lebo.

In a Piss Factor game, Lebo would be the guy who hit the off-balance three-pointer at the buzzer. But King wasn’t going to let Lebo do much of anything in this game. Everywhere Lebo went, King went. When the game was over, Lebo had taken fourteen shots—and hit two.

In the final two minutes, neither team could make a big play. Carolina got the last shot—twice—and couldn’t hit either time. When Lebo’s last shot of the game hit the rim and bounced to Danny Ferry, Duke had a 70–69 victory. It wasn’t pretty but it didn’t matter—it was only the second game Carolina had lost during three seasons in the Deandome—Smith Center, etc.…

King felt this was a breakthrough victory for his team, not just because they had
competed
with a top team—they had
beaten
that team. Two years earlier when the ’86 team had won this kind of game, the key players on the ’88 team—King, Strickland, Ferry, and Quin Snyder—had been complementary players. And the fifth starter, Robert Brickey, had been a high school senior.

“I think until that Carolina game, we were still trying to find an identity as a team, King said. “Kevin and I still hadn’t really made this
our
team as captains. We knew we were good, but
how
good? Coach K kept telling us we had to learn how to fight our way through tough situations. In Chapel Hill, we did that.”

The King–Krzyzewski relationship was an interesting one. Although Krzyzewski remembered King’s impressive performance against Michael Brown, King remembered a summer camp game in which he guarded Reggie Williams, the future Georgetown star, as the one where he established his reputation as The Defender. Other than that, they disagreed on almost nothing.

Krzyzewski was a defensive coach and King the ultimate defensive player. “Of all the kids I’ve had at Duke, Billy probably knows what I’m thinking during a game and takes pride in it more than any of them,” Krzyzewski said. “Kids believe in what you’re saying in varying degrees. Billy, I think, more than anyone, has always believed in me. If I say something is so, he believes it and, as he’s gotten older, he’s become the guy who gets the other kids to believe it.”

Even though the Carolina victory was gratifying, Krzyzewski still wasn’t convinced this team had the kind of get-down-in-the-mud guts that the ’86 team had. When he watched the tape of the Carolina game, he saw a lot of things he liked, but he also saw some plays at the end when his team had looked scared. The difference in this game and others against the Tar Heels was that Carolina had looked just as scared.

The next two games were virtual walkovers for Duke: a victory over an outmanned Wake Forest team and a not-too-pretty win at Stetson. That set up the biggest week of the season: four home games in seven days, against Clemson, Georgia Tech, N.C. State, and Notre Dame, the last one a national TV game (clearly the type of game a coach plays only because the athletic director tells him to).

Well rested, the Blue Devils started the week by hammering Clemson, 101–63. “That’s the best team I’ve seen in the four years I’ve been in the ACC,” Clemson Coach Cliff Ellis said. “They don’t allow you to do anything.”

Two nights later, the Blue Devils were almost as good. They built a big lead early against Georgia Tech, let the Yellow Jackets get back to within four, then put the game away early in the second half, winning 78–65.

The defense was there every night for Duke. The question, as had been the case in 1987, was the offense. Against some teams, like Clemson, the defense created so many easy baskets that the opposition was never in the game. But against the really good teams, if they had to run a halfcourt offense to score, the Blue Devils were vulnerable.

That was Krzyzewski’s concern with N.C. State coming to town. If Valvano got the kind of pace he wanted and was able to run
his
halfcourt offense, State would have the advantage. With Shackleford and Brown inside, the Wolfpack had a combination Duke simply couldn’t stop.

Valvano had mixed emotions approaching the game. He still wasn’t
sure what kind of team he had. Since Hawaii, the Wolfpack had been up and down. They had opened conference play with a great victory, beating Georgia Tech in Atlanta on a tip-in at the buzzer by Brian Howard. But then they had turned around and lost at Wake Forest, a game so disheartening that Valvano couldn’t even look at the tape afterward.

“We had the game won,” he said. “We’ve got a five-point lead in the last two minutes. It’s over. My teams don’t lose those games. But we lose it. I want to be sick just thinking about it.”

That loss was followed by a 77–73 loss at home to North Carolina; it wasn’t a shock to lose but it hurt. If you are going to have a big year, it is the kind of game you win. Then came a crossroads game at Maryland. Valvano told his team this was a game it
had
to win and, after blowing a big lead, the Wolfpack won it, 83–81. Vinny Del Negro hit the winner just before the buzzer. “We lose that one, we maybe go in the toilet,” Valvano said. “Instead, we feel good about ourselves, go home and beat DePaul and Virginia.”

The Virginia victory put State at 13–4, 4–2 in the league. Duke was 15–2, 5–1 in the league. Valvano was convinced the Blue Devils were the best team in the conference. “They are a great college basketball team,” he said. “They do a great job taking you out of your offense, they have a great player in Ferry, they’re deep and they are well coached.”

Valvano believed all this. He also believed he could go to Duke and win. He had always had success at Duke and against Krzyzewski—ten wins in sixteen games. Some of the time this had been because State just had more talent. But there were psychological factors involved too. When Valvano took a team to Carolina, he almost never believed he could win there. As a result, his players followed his lead. Valvano was 0–8 in Chapel Hill. But Duke, even when it has an excellent team, never has overwhelming athletic talent. Valvano always thought he had a chance against Duke and that belief filtered down to his players.

There was also this: Valvano believes he will win most close games because he has Valvano on his side. His former coach, Bill Foster, once said about him: “Jimmy thinks he’s the best coach there is, period.”

Valvano denies this … sort of. “I’ve never put my mind into coaching 100 percent of the time the way some guys do,” he said. “Those guys are the best coaches. If I put my mind to it all the time, then, yeah, I think I could be the best coach.”

But for one game, give Valvano his choice of coach and he would, without question, take James T. Valvano. So, as the Wolfpack made the twenty-mile trip from Raleigh to Durham, Valvano was both confident and curious.

As
they
waited for the Wolfpack to arrive, the Blue Devils were antsy. They wanted to prove that the so-called State jinx was a myth. They also knew that a victory would put them in command in the ACC race.

The afternoon was a recruiters’ dream: sunny and warm, the Duke chapel bathed in sunlight, making it impossible to believe it was still winter. Inside Cameron Indoor Stadium, hours before tip-off, the students were jammed in tight.

Cameron is college basketball’s best-known fun house. It is ancient, small (8,564 seats), and because Duke is one of the few places left that believes the students deserve the best seats, they sit surrounding the court on all four sides. What’s more, they honestly believe that part of their job at a game is to come up with some clever way to throw the opponent off.

Over the years, when State has been the visitor, this has meant doing things like throwing aspirin at Moe Rivers after he had been arrested for stealing a bottle of aspirin, throwing red-and-white underwear at two players who had stolen some underwear, delivering pizza to Lorenzo Charles after he was involved in the mugging of a pizza delivery man, and waving car keys at Clyde Austin after it came out that he had two cars, a Cadillac and an MG.

Sometimes, the Duke students go too far. In 1984, they had spelled out R-A-P-E at Maryland’s Herman Veal and thrown condoms and women’s underwear at him after he had been accused of sexual assault on another Maryland student. Scolded for that, the students made a superb comeback the next week against North Carolina: They presented Dean Smith with two dozen roses before the game, eschewed the “bullshit” cheer that has pervaded gyms everywhere in favor of “We beg to differ,” and, instead of waving their arms at foul shooters, held up signs which said, “Please miss.”

In short, when you came to Cameron, you never knew what was waiting for you. Today, the students were mild. When they saw referee Lenny Wirtz come on the floor, they serenaded him with their traditional “Oh no, not Lenny” chant. When Valvano came out they chanted, “Sit down” at him. Ever clever, Valvano sat—on the floor.
The students liked that, but they had a comeback: “Roll over, roll over.” Valvano wasn’t going that far.

The game was as tense as the pregame had been fun-filled. King was guarding Del Negro and holding him in check, but Chris Corchiani, now entrenched as State’s point guard, was taking advantage of Duke’s overplaying defense, consistently penetrating to either score or set other people up. And, Rodney Monroe was coming off the bench to give State a boost when it most needed one.

Duke’s defense took command in the last four minutes of the first half. Trailing 29–28, the Blue Devils finished the half with a 14–3 binge, helped by a stupid behind-the-back pass by Shackleford that King stole and fed to Strickland for a three-point play. For ten minutes in the second half, Duke stayed in control. Two Ferry free throws with 10:44 left made it 59–44. What jinx?