Emotion of final home game can wait for Duke’s Coach K, who won’t look past Pitt
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Mike Krzyzewski has spent more than 800 weeks as a college basketball head coach, logging 1,560 games on the sidelines.
It was posited to him Monday that none of those prior weeks will be as emotional for him than this one. Nor that any previous game might pull at his heartstrings as much as Saturday’s.
Could that work to the advantage of Pitt, which hosts Krzyzewski’s Duke Blue Devils on Tuesday? Any chance that Krzyzewski or his team might be tempted to look past the 13th-place Panthers with a special Saturday night on tap that will be Krzyzewski’s final game at esteemed Cameron Indoor Stadium while likely also his final meeting with historic rival North Carolina?
C’mon. You don’t last almost five decades, win five national championships and become a basketball icon by breaking the cardinal rule of coaching: Don’t look past your next game.
“My total focus is on Pitt,” the 75-year-old Krzyzewski said during the ACC coaches’ teleconference Monday, the eve of Tuesday’s 8 p.m. game against the Panthers (11-18, 6-12 ACC).
“I don’t look at a week. I look at my next opponent. I have done that (since) I learned how to coach a few decades ago. That’s what I do. Some of (the job) is dealing with whatever, (but) that game and what happens before, during and after the next game, and, hopefully, doing a good job with all three of those times, and then moving on again is my approach. And I’m not gonna change in that regard.”
Not even with the culmination of a Hall of Fame career that has featured a record 1,195 wins quickly approaching, and not even with what will surely be a hero’s goodbye for “Coach K” when he directs his team in front of the home fans for one last time right around the corner Saturday.
Then again, Krzyzewski is more than accustomed to the spotlight.
“We (at Duke) have always evoked a lot of attention. Maybe it’s a little bit more now, (but) it’s something I have been dealing with for a good part of my career,” Krzyzewski said.
“But Pitt is the only thing really on my mind right now.”
Duke (25-4, 15-3) can clinch the No. 1 seed in next week’s ACC Tournament and at least a share of a 13th regular-season ACC championship for Krzyzewski with a victory at the Petersen Events Center.
But it’s a venue at which the No. 4 Blue Devils have lost two of their past four meetings, including 79-73 last season. Pitt is 9-3 all-time against top-five teams at The Pete.
In other words, Krzyzewski is saving any sappiness for after the season is over and his retirement is official. Or, at least until Saturday night in Durham, N.C.
“We would want to beat Pitt and lock up the No. 1 seed whether we played two more (regular-season) games (after it) or whoever we would play (regardless of it was UNC),” Krzyzewski said. “And (the Pitt game) is the biggest thing happening this week, until something else will happen.
“Look, for every game and every opponent, you have to prepare the same way with the same intensity. And that’s what we are doing for Pitt.”
At least for his final trip into hostile on-campus territory, the face Krzyzewski sees as his counterpart will be a very familiar one. Pitt coach Jeff Capel was a four-year starter and captain at Duke in the 1990’s and spent the seven years beforew his 2018 hiring at Pitt as an assistant under Krzyzewski.
“I never thought at 18 years old (as a freshman player) that as I got older in my 40s that the guy I chose to play for would become a friend,” Capel said Monday. “And that’s what it was. He’s been a mentor. He’s been all of those things, but it was a genuine and true friendship.”