You might not like the guy for the way he looks, the way he acts, or the way he seems to get all the calls (or almost all of them).
But even Mike Krzyzewski's most enthusiastic adversaries had to admire how the guy clinched his fifth national title.
You thought they were toast. We thought they were toast. Heck, K himself admitted afterward that his team was "dead in the water" when he put foul-plagued Justise Winslow and Jahlil Okafor on the bench with 13 minutes left.
He didn't put them on the bench in a tie game to steal some minutes. He put them on the bench with his team down nine points and on the verge of getting blown out of the building.
It was a certified masterstroke for one of the best this game has ever seen.
And on the other side, Bo Ryan's postgame appraisal was ... something less than a coaching masterstroke.
Apparently Greg Gumbel doesn't actually listen to the postgame interviews, because immediately after Ryan's crybaby routine Gumbel remarked that Ryan was "classy and gracious in defeat."
And then Ryan took it a step further a few minutes later, as you can see in this article.
"Every player that's played through the program, okay, we don't do a rent-a-player," Ryan said. "You know what I mean? Try to take a fifth-year guy. That's okay. If other people do that, that's okay.
"I like trying to build from within. It's just the way I am. And to see these guys grow over the years and to be here last year and lose a tough game, boom, they came back. They said what they wanted to do, they put themselves into that position, and they won't forget this for a long time. I told them that's life. Wait till you get a job. Wait till you start the next 60 or 70 years of your life. It's not always going to work out the way you would like it to. But you measure a person by what it takes to discourage them."
For a team that was so fun to watch during its run to the Final Four, it was surely not fun listening to their excuses after the game.
Wisconsin's players - some passive-aggressively, some quite overtly - also made it clear they weren't happy with Duke's 16-3 edge in second-half free throw attempts.
"They got to the line and scored with the clock stopped," Wisconsin forward Sam Dekker said. "It felt like that's all they did in the second half was make free throws. You can't come back if they're scoring with the clock stopped."
Duke, in fact, scored only 12 of its 37 points in the second half at the foul line. But Wisconsin's complaints seemed to center on the way its defense was officiated when Duke's guards penetrated.
In the first half, Wisconsin was called for just two fouls, which prompted several conversations between Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and the officiating crew of Joe DeRosa, Michael Stephens and Pat Driscoll. The script was flipped in the second half, as Duke was called for just six fouls to Wisconsin's 13.
"It was extremely tough, especially when we felt like we were doing the golden rules for not fouling a guy driving to the rim: staying on the ground, both hands high, chest up," Wisconsin forward Nigel Hayes said. "To still get fouls called on you was a little frustrating, and that kind of hurt us and gave them energy and ultimately we weren't able to come back from that."
Mark Bradley of the AJC says K works one of his greatest games.
"Coach Wooden," Mike Krzyzewski said early Tuesday, "he's on a separate level." And that's true: John Wooden still has twice as many NCAA titles as any other coach, and the only one who has half that many just won his fifth here Monday night.
But this is also true: Wooden won his 10 in a 12-year span at a time when only conference champs made the NCAA tournament and winning a national championship required four postseason victories, not six. Krzyzewski has taken his five over 24 years, which means he has been winning NCAA titles for more than a generation. And he's as good now as he has ever been, which is to say he stands alone on Level 1A, just a hair behind the Wizard of Westwood.
The game Krzyzewski worked against Wisconsin was among his greatest, and that's saying something. Duke trailed by nine points with 13 minutes remaining and had its best player, Jahlil Okafor, laden with fouls. (He would play only 22 minutes.) Unlike Kentucky's John Calipari, who froze against Wisconsin just as Kentucky had taken the lead, Coach K took to conjuring on the fly.
Pat Forde examines how K adapted to the one-and-done era.
Krzyzewski has always been reluctant to rank his titles - but his glee in winning this one was obvious.
"I haven't loved a team any more than I've loved this team," he said. "We have eight guys, and four of them are freshmen. For them to win 35 games and win the national title is incredible. ... I've been in this for 40 years, and I'm the coach of that group that did this. You know, how good is that? They've been a joy. They've been an incredible joy. When you're already happy, and you get happier, it's pretty damn good."
The life changes Krzyzewski has coached through illustrate his incredible longevity and enduring genius. He's the first coach to reach 1,000 wins and the second to reach five titles - and there is no end in sight. The distance between the first Final Four nets he's cut and the last is 24 years, by far the widest span between titles of any coach in the sport's history.
The first two (1991 and '92) were captured with largely the same cast, but it was an entirely new group in 2001, and a different group again in 2010, and a different cast this year as well. Krzyzewski has reinvented his program multiple times to win a fistful of rings.
Wooden's run will never be duplicated, but it was condensed: 10 titles in 12 seasons. Adolph Rupp, who Krzyzewski passed Monday night, captured his four in a span of 11 seasons. Bob Knight's three were in 12 seasons. Jim Calhoun's three were in 13.
Among active coaches, the 68-year-old Krzyzewski is by far the oldest to have won a national championship. But he's also the sixth-youngest to win one, capturing the first at age 44.
"The ability to adapt is key in everything," he said. "I think I've adapted well."
More on that here from ESPN's Dana O'Neill.
It is anathema to what Duke had long been, a team built on wily seniors who stuck around and eventually won a championship. The last time the Blue Devils won a title, in 2010, Krzyzewski had mostly avoided one-and-done players. By the end of June he might be saying goodbye to three who remained in Durham, North Carolina, for only one season.
Yet what's maybe even more astounding is that Krzyzewski has not only made the change.
He has loved it.
"They're genuine,'' Krzyzewski told ESPN.com as he walked off the court for the final time this season, stopping to fist-bump security guards and wave to the crowd. "When you have believers, you're happy all the time. My wife would tell you that. When you can be creative instead of trying to figure out attitudes, it's so much easier. I never had to figure it out. When you get kids like I have, it's so easy.''
It is easy, too, when they are wildly talented, slightly brazen and incredibly opportunistic.
And this writer for The Sporting News says only losers cry about the officials.
LW
This post was edited on 4/7 8:45 AM by Larry_Williams
