AN EPIC NIGHT FOR COLLEGE HOOPS AND HUBERT DAVIS, AS COACH K KNOWS

North Carolina spoiled his storybook ending (again), but as the sport’s longtime face, Mike Krzyzewski is walking away after a spectacular showcase — and a remarkable job by his counterpart

     He lost the game. He might even agree the better coach won. But on an indelible, pulsating night when his career ended with the personal hell of falling in the national semifinals to his grudge rival, damned Carolina, Mike Krzyzewski was no loser. The man who has been the ambassador and face of college basketball, for more than four decades, saw the sport lifted for two hours to a level of magnificence that made him proud.

     This was a masterpiece that somehow exceeded the monstrous hype. And he’ll have to live to his dying day with the pain, which must be akin to hemorrhoids, of watching North Carolina celebrate in the Superdome while counterpart Hubert Davis — in his first year ever as a head coach, unless you count his time running the junior-varsity team — did nothing more than rush a handshake en route to the championship game. Still, if not for missed free throws and a lack of proper defense on deadeye killer Caleb Love, Duke and Coach K would be off to another Monday night.

     Most important, it seemed, was how a wayward sport with a murky future — as Krzyzewski had bemoaned from the moment he arrived in New Orleans — entertained us with wild emotional swings and 18 lead changes. For one evening, anyway, the greatest rivalry in college sports reminded us of the joy and sensational magnitude of the Final Four.

     “I’ll deal with me later. I’m concerned for my players,’’ he said moments after the 81-77 loss. “It’s an emotional win and an emotional loss, and that’s the way a game like that should be. It’s not about me, especially right now. I’ve said my entire time coaching that I wanted my seasons to end where my team was either crying tears of joy or tears of sorrow. If so, it means they gave everything. I have kids who are crying. We have to take care of them. They played great basketball. So did the other team.’’

     Carolina, that is. For all the focus on Krzyzewski, he honestly didn’t have pressure Saturday night. His legacy was poured into concrete long ago, with five national titles, a resurrection of the U.S. Olympic program and an ability to evolve as elite players were empowered by radical culture changes. The pressure, all season, has been on Davis, who replaced another legend in Roy Williams — in a program where the arena is named for another legend, Dean Smith — and started out like a man unworthy of the burden.

     The message boards crucified him when the Tar Heels lost to Tennessee by 17, Kentucky by 29 and Miami by 28. Was it a joke when he’d emphasized the Final Four on the first day of practice? “I put a picture of the Superdome in their lockers. And I talked about it at midcourt at practice,’’ Davis said. “I said there’s going to be a lot of hard work, but this is our expectation of this team. I just really wanted them to see where they were going. I told them to tell their parents: book their hotels and travel arrangements, that we would be in New Orleans in April. And the reason being is, I really felt like this team had a chance to be able to do that.’’

     His tears flowed again in his post-game interview, as they have after each of five victories in the NCAA tournament. And this time, America was able to absorb what an amazing job he has done. Regardless of a past that included six national championships and the starpower of Michael Jordan and other legends, Carolina Blue had faded in recent times, starting with an academic scandal and a 6-14 crash during the pandemic-shortened 2019-20 season. Williams retired after a blowout loss to Wisconsin in the opening round of last year’s NCAA tournament. In came Davis, who played a dozen seasons for six NBA teams and learned as Williams’ assistant but lacked a Carolina-type coaching pedigree.

     Oh, how wrong the critics were. In out-dueling younger, more talented Duke in the second half, Carolina showcased a perseverance and toughness instilled by Davis. He turned loose his guards, Love and R.J. Davis. His dip into the transfer portal brought a bearded senior by way of Oklahoma, Brady Manek, and he became a revelation. Big man Armando Bacot was a demon on the offensive boards, and he didn’t allow an entanglement with teammate Leaky Black to keep him out for long, limping back for the final minutes. Back and forth the lead went, but it was Love who nailed the three-pointer — already, it ranks with Jordan’s title-winning jumper in the same building 40 years ago — after Duke big man Mark Williams missed two free throws with 46.7 seconds left. When Love clinched the victory by making two free throws, Krzyzewski was left to peel himself off his stool on the elevated court and take his final walk down the handshake line.

     It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that Davis never once sat on his stool, preferring to pace the sideline, work the officials and implore his players. At 51, he is 24 years younger than Coach K, who is being succeeded by Jon Scheyer, who is 17 years younger than Davis. Let the rivalry continue.

     “I felt like over the last few years, North Carolina wasn’t relevant,’’ Davis said amid the celebration. “North Carolina never should be irrelevant. It should be front and center with the spotlight on them.’’

     Relevance has been his mantra this season even in the ugly times, when he refused to blast his players as much as support them. He knew what they were dealing with on social media, on campus. “This is not a job. To me, this is missionary work. It really is.’’ Davis said. “It's put me in a position where I can help and give back to these kids. … If I’m only coaching basketball, then I need to quit or be fired. I’m not just a basketball coach. My job is to help and to teach and care for them.”

     They’ve responded by buying into his every word, not an easy feat dealing with kids in the 21st century. They will take Davis’ tears with them into the title game against Kansas. “It shows how much he cares about us and how much he cares about the game,’’ Love said. “We knew about his passion, and we carry that with us. We feed off him and his energy. That’s why you see us playing so hard for him.’’

     “Coach Williams has been a hell of a coach for a long time; he has his way of doing things," Black said. “I feel like coach Davis is the new age coach. He knows basketball is evolving, and he made that leap.’’

     If Krzyzewski had to lose his final game, through gritted teeth, at least it happened against a coach he respects. Corruption is everywhere in a sport that still hasn’t announced punishments for dirty programs — such as, well, Kansas. Hubert Davis is not one of the dirtballs.  “What Hubert’s done with his first year is magnificent,” Coach K said. “There’s a lot of pressure taking over a program the level of North Carolina’s, with the tradition of excellence they’ve had. And for him to do it, he’s under immense scrutiny. And they got knocked back a number of times. I just thought he always had poise and he has great humility. And he had a belief in his players and in what he was doing. He’s running his own race. He hasn’t tried to be Dean Smith or Roy or anybody else. He’s been himself within that culture. I think it’s a great way for the culture to grow.”

     The championship game will seem an afterthought to euphoric Carolina fans, as the World Series was to Red Sox fans after the comeback from 0-3 down against the Yankees in 2004. That is the one rivalry-game moment, in American sports, comparable to the Tar Heels beating Coach K in his final game. Davis will be challenged to elevate the passion against Kansas, if that is possible after the eternal perfecta: spoiling Krzyzewski’s farewell game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, then ending his 42-year Duke career shy of a sixth national title. “Dwelling on the two wins against Duke doesn’t help us against Kansas,’’ said Davis, who was impressed like the rest of us by the Jayhawks’ 81-65 victory over undermanned Villanova.

     “Our program, without question — it’s one of the top programs in the country,” said Kansas coach Bill Self, looking for his second national title, “and nobody can debate that at all. But to be thought of as the equal of anybody else, we have to cut down nets on Monday night, and we need to do more of that.”

     Said guard Christian Braun: “You come to Kansas for big games, but you don’t come to Kansas to play in the Elite Eight. You don’t come to Kansas to play in the Final Four. You come to play for a championship.”

     Somewhere, Mike Krzyzewski might watch the title game with his wife, Mickie. They left the court together, hand in hand as always. He didn’t look back at the Carolina party.

     “I’m sure at some time, I’ll deal with all of that in my own way,’’ he said of the final defeat, juxtaposed against the rest of his years. “I’ll be fine. I’ve been blessed to be in the arena. And when you’re in the arena, either you’re going to come out feeling great or feel agony, but you always will feel great about being in the arena. And I'm sure that's the thing when I'll look back that I'll miss. I won't be in the arena anymore. But, damn, I was in the arena for a long time, and these kids made my last time in the arena an amazing one.’’

     He lost, but he also won. When college basketball wins, Coach K wins.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.