Mike Krzyzewski doesn’t have to look very far to feel old before the national title game.

The Duke coach and his family had an Easter egg hunt in their hotel suite Sunday, just like they did during their first Final Four 25 years ago. But this time, his six grandchildren were hunting the eggs, not his daughters.

The coach on the other bench for Butler, 33-year-old Brad Stevens, is much closer in age to his players than to Krzyzewski. Can the iconic Duke head coach even remember what it was like at that age?

“I do remember when I was 33,” Coach K replied during a press conference Sunday. “Do you?”

Barely, he was told.

“Barely,” he said. “I have photos. I don’t think they had (video) tapes then, but we have photos.”

Krzyzewski, at 63, doesn’t look much different than he did when he first brought Duke onto the national scene — same jet black hair (if a bit thinner), same big nose, same intense glare.

But few coaches in the NCAA have reinvented themselves or their programs more successfully than the man who could win his fourth NCAA title tonight at Lucas Oil Stadium.

It’s easy to see the continued success at Duke and see Krzyzewski as always having been at the top, but his closest followers know better. He has gone through his share of highs and lows in the business, always managing to find a way to bring Duke back to the top.

With a victory tonight against Butler, he will become just the third man to win a fourth national championship. John Wooden, who may never be caught, has 10. Adolph Rupp, the late Kentucky coach, has four. Krzyzewski’s mentor, Bob Knight, has three, and his longtime rival Dean Smith has two.

Krzyzewski will have won his four in the most competitive era of college basketball, adapting over those 25 years to the changes to the game and within his program.

Duke was Butler, in perception at least, when it won its first title beating UNLV in 1991. Now, the Blue Devils are the powerhouse facing the upstart in Butler.

Duke could build a dynasty with four-year players like Grant Hill and Christian Laettner in the early 1990s. Now, like everyone else, Coach K has had to deal with the one-and-done element of college basketball and try to build his teams while introducing new faces.

“College basketball has changed,” Krzyzewski said. “If you’re in this as a coach, you have to keep re-inventing yourself a little bit to stay up with the kids. It’s different cultures.

“I mean, Apple just introduced something (the iPad) (Sunday). Talk about instant gratification. People are in line wanting something new. It’s every aspect of our society, not just college basketball.”

Krzyzewski won those two titles in 1991 and 1992, then saw his program tumble when a back injury forced him to take a leave of absence in 1995. He started delegating more to his staff and built the team back to prominence quickly, winning his third national championship in 2001.

But then, Duke fell a step back again. Duke had gone six years between Final Four appearances — an eternity for this program — and that drought inspired Krzyzewski to make changes again.

He adjusted his recruiting strategy, targeting more of the NBA-level prospects that had started going elsewhere, and adopted a new approach to the strength and conditioning program.

“I think the thing that separates Coach K from most others is his ability to be motivated daily,” said Chris Collins, who has been an assistant on his staff for a decade now. “This guy has won almost 900 games, has been at 11 Final Fours, and he coaches every day as if he’s never won a game.”

If Krzyzewski wins his next game, it might be the start of another Final Four-run for the Blue Devils. Duke is bringing in a stellar recruiting class, including St. Patrick star Kyrie Irving, and could be ranked No. 1 in the country in preseason polls next autumn.

That perch would be nothing new to Coach K — and it’s one that, no matter how many years pass, never gets old for Duke.

Source: NJ.com

Krzyzewski became a coaching legend the old-fashioned way — by staying at one school for three decades. A Duke victory Monday night over Butler would give him his fourth national title, moving him past Bob Knight and into a second-place tie with Adolph Rupp on all-time coaches’ list.

There is no one way to establish a legacy.

You have win-and-run nomads like Larry Brown, who can’t sit still in a chair for 10 minutes. Yet, Brown has won titles in the NCAA and the NBA and could, in two weeks, take your ragtag local youth team and win the YMCA title.

You have guys like Don Nelson who have never won it all in coaching but have made enough horrible teams competitive to compile more coach-of-the-year trophies than Phil Jackson.

Or you can be Jackson, align yourself with four or five of the all-time greatest players and Zen your way to 10 championships.

There is an ideal way, though, to get a sculptor to chisel your bust: plant roots.

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski — like Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, Dean Smith and John Wooden before him — is now a full-grown sequoia.

You never have to wonder, with these guys, which hat they’re wearing into the hall of fame.

They stayed in one place and outlasted everything — temptation, criticism, administrations, illness, envy, U.S. presidents, playing styles and rule changes.

Some coaches with this potential didn’t see it through.

John McKay left USC for the hapless temptation of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Steve Spurrier should never have left Florida.

Paterno might never have become Paterno had he succumbed, in the 1970s, to an offer from the Washington Redskins.

Krzyzewski, wrapping up his 30th season at Duke with a chance to win his fourth national title, has played it right.

He has faced career crossroads, but ultimately realized things could never be better than where he was at.

In the summer of 2004, the Lakers wanted to make him Coach K-ching, offering Krzyzewski a five-year, $40-million deal. Kobe Bryant, who would have attended Duke had he not skipped college, made a personal pitch on behalf of General Manager Mitch Kupchak.

“I was more than tempted,” Krzyzewski said Sunday. “I seriously considered it. One, because it was the Lakers. Mitch is great. It would have been an opportunity to work with Kobe. He and I are very close.

“I guess because I did not accept it, it really speaks to, you know, how much I love Duke and college basketball, but especially Duke.”

Krzyzewski might have won big with the Lakers, or failed, at a cost to his reputation.

By enduring at Duke, he was able to navigate through a college basketball sea change, the odorous era of one-and-done, and get to the precipice he has reached tonight.

If Duke beats Butler, Krzyzewski will have surpassed the three national titles won at Indiana by his mentor, Bob Knight.

Krzyzewski will have tied Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp on the all-time list, separated in history only from Wooden’s 10 titles.

Krzyzewski will have done it with his least talented title team, with juniors and seniors not quite good enough to have left early to the NBA.

A win tonight sends Coach K’s legacy straight to the time capsule.

Take a look at the team picture of Duke’s 2001 national champion. Look at that lineup: Shane Battier, Mike Dunleavy, Chris Duhon, Carlos Boozer, Jason Williams.

Duke’s title teams of 1991 and ’92 had Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill and Thomas Hill.

This year’s Duke team might not beat those teams if they got spotted 10 points per half.

“I have a group now, there isn’t a Jason Williams here, they are not Laettner or Grant Hill,” Krzyzewski said.

The way to win big now is to rent one-year players (think Kentucky) or take slightly less talent and mold it into juniors and seniors.

Duke is in the title game with Kyle Singler, Nolan Smith, Jon Scheyer and Brian Zoubek. These are nice players, but maybe not future NBA All-Stars.

In some ways, though, that makes tonight extra special. Krzyzewski has been prickly all year in defense of a team labeled by some as substandard — by Duke’s standards.

Duke, though, has played marvelously in this tournament and the Blue Devils’ 21-point destruction of West Virginia on Saturday may have been the most close-to-perfect game Duke has played in years.

This has only enhanced Krzyzewski’s stature and advanced the mutual-love-affair narrative.

“Duke has been committed to me when I wasn’t with Knight and Rupp and those guys,” Krzyzewski said. “They were committed to me when we were 38-47.”

In the legacy time line, those early years were the Dark Ages.

Duke was there in January 1995, when Krzyzewski took a leave of absence to deal with a back injury and the team went 13-18 that season.

“I was even thinking of not coaching,” he said. “So that’s another time where Duke was really committed to me and helped me.”

Hang around one place long enough and you become the face. Krzyzewski is the face of Duke, the one defiled in a newspaper illustration last week.

Being the face means taking the barbs personally — because you are as invested in the school as it is in you.

“I think it’s really easy to talk about not liking us because we’re a private school,” Krzyzewski said, “We’re not a state. We don’t have a state press. You know, people wouldn’t take the shots at us that they do if we were a state school because the people of that state wouldn’t like it . . . that’s just the way it is, and I’m OK with it. I think it helps us keep our edge.”

Source: LATimes.com

With every year that passed with a Duke-free Final Four, the skeptics became louder: Had Mike Krzyzewski somehow lost his touch?

Maybe not.

Perhaps the 63-year-old Hall of Famer was merely waiting for his current crop of maturing players to figure out how to storm through a bracket. It might have taken longer than it ever did during his three-decade reign in Durham, but Coach K is back at the Final Four.

And at least one of his former stars never questioned whether he’d return to college basketball’s biggest stage.

“I didn’t have any doubts. One thing people need to know about Coach K, is if they have doubts, they are mistaken,” said Utah Jazz forward Carlos Boozer, who led Duke to its most recent national title in 2001.

“That guys figures out ways to be successful,” he added. “That’s why he’s been successful for 25 years. He’s got three championships, working on a fourth championship maybe this year in Indiana. He takes critics on, and he figures out ways to be successful. We don’t have the most talented team in the country, but guess where we are?”

They’re in familiar territory for their coach, even if none of the current players have advanced this deep into the bracket before.

The Blue Devils (33-5), who play West Virginia (31-6) on Saturday night in the national semifinals, are in the Final Four for the 11th time under Krzyzewski but first time since 2004, when these players were in high school — or younger.

And for those doubters who wondered whether Krzyzewski had grown out of touch with younger generations of players, whether his time coaching the U.S. Olympic team had taken too heavy a toll back home in Durham, or whether he simply became a victim of his own success — well, Coach K just doesn’t seem to care too much about them.

“Anyone who’s successful over a period of time is going to have detractors, not just for a few years, but throughout your career,” Krzyzewski said. “That’s just part of the game. Everybody has that, and not to take that personally. No one is going to get everybody supportive of them. So I think you just go about your business. This isn’t about my vindication or anything like that. It’s about coaching this group of kids who deserve your full commitment.”

What impresses his next adversary is how Krzyzewski, a noted protégé of Bob Knight, has been able to carve out his own path, whether he’s leading the Americans to the gold medal or chasing a fourth national championship with the Blue Devils.

“I think there’s no question that (Knight) had a tremendous influence on Mike,” West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said. “Mike’s done a great job through the years of playing to his guys’ strengths and letting them play to their strengths. I think that’s to be commended. I think Mike is very much his own man.”

Krzyzewski, who is seven wins shy of 800 at Duke, has long maintained that his second job with the Olympians has only made him a better college coach because working with NBA players gave him a broader perspective on the game.

“Some people would say that’s hurt your program — that’s just so crazy dumb to think that,” Krzyzewski said. “It was one of the worst trains of thought of how you analyze me, that (coaching Olympians is) going to hurt me and my program, because it’s done nothing but help, and help, I think, a lot. I know I’m a better person.”

In a break from the school’s recent past, he reportedly accepted a verbal commitment from the first junior-college transfer in Duke history, forward Carrick Felix of the College of Southern Idaho.

While NCAA rules prohibit him from discussing recruits before a letter of intent has been signed, Krzyzewski said he would entertain the idea of signing a JUCO player only if he could play three seasons “because it would be impossible to graduate from Duke.”

Said former player Elton Brand, one of the first to leave Duke early for the pros: “Coach really wants guys to be there for longevity. He wants guys to graduate and become great men, regardless of basketball. That’s what he’s about. He’s about family, and he’s about seeing his student athletes grow into great individuals.”

Krzyzewski also sounds determined to make Final Fours an every year thing again at Duke — and maybe even chase a coincidental bit of symmetry. Nine years passed between Krzyzewski’s second title in 1992 and the ’01 crown. Nine years later, and Duke’s back in the Final Four again, still dealing with those heightened expectations that were raised during the days of Christian Laettner and Grant Hill.

“I’m really very excited for my team. I really love these guys,” Krzyzewski said. “They have suffered from comparisons, which shouldn’t happen. It just absolutely shouldn’t happen, to what’s happened before. It’s a different landscape. It’s different. They haven’t been given credit along their careers for what they’re doing and what they’re trying to accomplish. I’m really pleased for them.”

Source: AP as posted on GoDuke.com