Winning cures all. After the win at Duke, Doherty was quickly becoming a star in the Carolina pantheon. Sports Illustrated did a lengthy profile on him in which—among other things—he made fun of Duke’s cheerleaders. Unlike Smith and Guthridge, his style was in-your-face. Carolina fans loved it.
And then, the winning stopped. Duke came into Chapel Hill on the last day of the regular season without starting center Carlos Boozer and buried one three after another in a 95–81 rout. That left the teams tied for the regular season title at 13–3. A week later, in the ACC championship game, Duke won even more easily, 79–53. The Blue Devils were clearly the hot team going into the NCAA Tournament. They were the number-one seed in the East. Carolina went to the South Regionals as a number-two seed but didn’t stay long—losing in the second round to Penn State. Not in football, in basketball.
Two weeks later, Doherty was chosen as the Associated Press’s national Coach of the Year, the voting having been completed in the last week of the regular season. The Boston Herald’s Mike Shalin wrote a lead on Doherty’s award that said: “Matt Doherty, who guided North Carolina from a trip to the Final Four in 2000 to a second-round loss in 2001, was today awarded the AP national-coach-of-the-year award.”
As it turned out, the AP award was the last of any kind that Doherty would win at North Carolina.
—
After beating Carolina by twenty-six to win the ACC Tournament for a third straight season, Duke reached the Final Four for the second time in three seasons and for the ninth time in Krzyzewski’s career. Once again, the NCAA had, by sheer coincidence, paired Duke and Kentucky in the same region. The fact that the East Regionals were being held in Philadelphia—albeit in a different building, across the parking lot from the Spectrum—certainly didn’t influence that decision at all.
This time, though, the committee and CBS didn’t get their made-in-TV-heaven matchup, because Kentucky was upset in the round of sixteen by Southern California. The Trojans, who were a number-six seed, had beaten Oklahoma State and third-seeded Boston College before beating Kentucky. Duke had won three games with relative ease, including a second-round win over Missouri, coached by Quin Snyder. The Blue Devils beat USC, 79–69, and cut down the nets. They hadn’t cut down the nets after getting to the Final Four in 1999.
“We’re going to cut this one down and enjoy it,” Krzyzewski said. “We’ll worry about the Final Four in a couple of days.”
The Final Four was in Minneapolis—the same place where Duke had won its second straight title in 1992. The semifinal win over Indiana that year had been the beginning of what was now a nine-year feud between Krzyzewski and Bob Knight. The 2001 semifinal was against Maryland, a team and a school obsessed with Duke and Krzyzewski.
The teams had already played three times that season. Duke had won in College Park in January, coming from ten points down in the final minute of regulation to win in overtime. A month later, Maryland returned the favor, winning in Cameron on the night that Carlos Boozer had gotten hurt. Boozer’s absence had caused Krzyzewski to completely revamp his offense, and the Blue Devils had won eight straight games to get to Minneapolis, including a riveting win over Maryland in the ACC semifinals.
Maryland had never been to the Final Four. Gary Williams had done a remarkable job rebuilding the program in the wake of Len Bias’s death and the probation that had come about four years later because of the incompetence of Bob Wade, who had been hired to replace Lefty Driesell in the fall of 1986. The Terrapins had gotten back to the tournament in 1994 and had gone for eight straight years. But, prior to 2001, they hadn’t gotten past the round of sixteen. They finally reached the Elite Eight—beating local rival Georgetown in the sixteens—and then beat top-seeded Stanford to make the Final Four.
And who was waiting for the Terrapins there? Duke.
“Of course,” Williams said years later. “It was as if it was meant to be. We finally make it and there’s Duke.” He smiled. “I think I know how Dean felt in ninety-one when he got back for the first time in how many years [nine] and Duke’s there too. At least he didn’t have to play them in the first game.”
Williams had actually beaten Krzyzewski the first time they had met—in a second-round NCAA game in 1985 when Williams was at Boston College. But he was 4–23 head-to-head against Krzyzewski since getting to Maryland, and many of the losses had been painful.
Williams and most Maryland fans were absolutely convinced that one of the reasons Duke won so often was because there was—wait for it—a double standard among ACC officials where Duke was concerned. Williams often joked that if you showed up for a game against Duke and any combination of Larry Rose, Mike Wood, and Duke (not named for the school) Edsall was working, you might as well go home.
Although Williams never went completely public with his feelings about Duke the way Krzyzewski had with his feelings about North Carolina in 1984, Krzyzewski was well aware of them. He knew that Williams wasn’t the only coach in the ACC who felt that way either. Four years after Smith’s retirement, he realized that in many ways he had become Smith.
“Dean had been the target for so many years,” Krzyzewski said. “Even when we were good or N.C. State or Maryland or Georgia Tech were good, they were always there. Of all the stats associated with Dean that I ever read or heard, one jumped out at me: they never finished lower than third in the ACC for the last thirty years he coached. Thirty years in our league? Are you kidding me?
“When I heard other coaches complaining that we got all the calls or that the league wanted us to win, it made me angry. It wasn’t fair to our players—it took away from their accomplishments. Then I took a step back and said, ‘Hang on, Mike, isn’t that exactly the same thing that made Dean mad?’ And, of course, it was. When Carolina was beating us regularly there was one reason for it: they were better. When we started to beat people regularly it was for one reason: we were better. But I can honestly say when it happened to me, it helped me appreciate Dean a lot more.”
Krzyzewski had even started to sound a little bit like Smith. After a win over a good Butler team in 2000, he commented that “this is the kind of team we might very well have to play in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.” Pause. “If we’re lucky enough to make the tournament.”
Duke was 21–2 at the time. The next day a friend left a voice mail: “We’re rounding up the guns.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, Maryland came out of the gate in the Saturday night semifinal like a team on a mission from God. Or at least from Gary. After fourteen minutes, the Terrapins led, 39–17. Krzyzewski called a time-out. The Duke fans were sitting in stunned silence. Many Maryland fans were literally dancing in the aisles at the Metrodome. This was their dream come true—being in the Final Four and kicking Duke’s butt all at once.
The dream turned into a nightmare pretty quickly. Duke cut the lead to 49–38 by halftime.
Then Krzyzewski—perhaps on the advice of the referees—made two adjustments. He took the ball out of the hands of his point guard, Jason Williams, and put freshman Chris Duhon on the point. This freed Williams to get open for jump shots and allowed Duhon to run the team without worrying about having to score. At the other end of the floor, Krzyzewski put six-foot-five-inch Nate James on six-foot-one Maryland star Juan Dixon, who had scored 16 points in the first half.
Dixon went 1 of 8 in the second half. Duke took the lead for the first time on a Williams three that made it 73–72. The Blue Devils pulled away in the final minute and won, 95–84. In the last twenty-six minutes of the game, they outscored Maryland 78–45.
Naturally, Maryland’s fans were convinced they had been done in by the officials. They weren’t the only ones convinced that Duke got all the calls—and all the media love. Lute Olson, who was about to coach Arizona against Duke in the championship game, made reference to “Dukie Vitale” in a TV interview, the implication being that Vitale was another Duke apologist.
Duke beat Arizona in the championship game with most of
the building screaming every time a call went Duke’s way. Even the normally low-key Billy Packer commented on CBS at one point that “I think a lot of people in this building believe Duke is getting the benefit of a lot of calls.”
He certainly wasn’t wrong—most people were convinced Duke was getting all the calls.
On that night, Krzyzewski really didn’t care what anyone thought. All he knew was that Shane Battier had gone out as a national champion; Mike Dunleavy had come through with the game of his life; Boozer had come back from his foot injury to play well; and Williams had hit the dagger three-pointer with just under a minute left in Duke’s 82–72 victory.
And assistant coach Johnny Dawkins, who had played on the ’86 team that had come up just short against Louisville and had been an assistant on the ’99 team that came up just short against Connecticut, finally had a national championship.
“Seeing Johnny getting to cut that net, seeing him kiss the rim the way he did, that might have been my best moment that night,” Krzyzewski said. “I was happy for all of us. I may have been happiest for him.”
Krzyzewski’s third national title put him in esteemed company. It meant that only John Wooden, with ten national titles, and Adolph Rupp, with four, had won more often than he had. He was tied with his former mentor, Bob Knight. And, most important, he had come all the way back from the nadir of 1995.
Duke’s victory did not, however, bring joy to all.
Ron Green, Jr., had worked for The Charlotte Observer for many years and had always had a great deal of respect for Duke and North Carolina and for Krzyzewski and Dean Smith. His father, a superb columnist at the paper, was a North Carolina graduate. Ron Jr. had gone to UNC-Charlotte.
His wife, Tamara, was also a Carolina graduate and was one of those people who considered Duke a four-letter word and found it difficult to stomach the fact that her husband liked Mike Krzyzewski. Ron wasn’t covering the Final Four that year; he was leaving to drive to Augusta for the Masters the next morning. He sat and watched the game while Tamara went to bed. When the game was over, Ron turned off the TV and walked upstairs.
“Okay,” Tamara said, “tell me who won.”
“Duke,” Ron said.
“Oh god,” Tamara said. “Can it possibly get any worse than this? Now we’re going to have to hear from all those Duke people that Krzyzewski has won as many national championships as Coach Smith.”
“You won’t have to hear that,” Ron said.
“Why not?” Tamara asked.
“Because Mike has three now. Dean won two.”
Tamara Green groaned and turned over to try to sleep. Apparently, it could get worse.
35
Dean Smith had vowed to give Bill Guthridge space when he retired from coaching. He maintained an office inside the building named for him and came in several days a week because he was still bombarded with mail and media requests.
“Now that I’m not coaching,” he said one day, “I don’t really have an excuse to not do these things.”
Reluctantly, he accepted an offer from CBS Sports president Sean McManus (a Duke graduate) to do some studio work for the network during the NCAA Tournament. He couldn’t stand it.
“I’m a lot more comfortable in front of a blackboard than in front of a camera,” he said. “Plus, they wanted me to critique other coaches. I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t fair.”
He gave up the job after one season and watched most of his basketball from the family room in his house. He went to a North Carolina game only if he was asked to be there to be part of a ceremony of some kind. Often he went, took part in the ceremony, and left. That didn’t mean he didn’t watch his old team play.
“He would turn on the television and take out a notepad,” Linnea Smith said. “Early on, I’d go in and keep him company, but after a while I realized he really didn’t want company. He was working.”
It wasn’t as if Smith was calling Guthridge—or, later, Matt Doherty or Roy Williams—to tell them what he was thinking, but he wanted to be prepared if asked. Guthridge asked often. At that point, Smith’s office was right down the hall from the basketball office and the two men talked on a regular basis. After Doherty got the job, amid all the upheaval in the basketball office, Smith and Guthridge moved to the basement of the Dean Dome to a small suite of offices that had no windows and were a far cry from the palatial digs where each had once worked.
“Do me a favor,” Smith said to a visiting writer one day. “Don’t describe where I am in this story.”
The office didn’t really bother Smith that much. What did bother him was what had happened to Carolina basketball after Guthridge’s decision to give up coaching. Doherty’s first season ended up being okay—nothing more—but there were serious problems that continued to grow during his second season.
The off-court issues bothered Smith. But the on-court product bothered him much more. The Tar Heels were awful. After winning twenty-six games in Doherty’s first season they won eight in his second. They began the season with a loss to Hampton—at home—and were 1–4 after five games. It only got worse after that. There was a humiliating 112–79 loss at Maryland and three losses to Duke, including an 87–58 defeat at home. The score in Cameron was 93–68. The 60–48 final score in the first round of the ACC Tournament almost felt like a moral victory because it wasn’t a complete blowout.
The season was even more rock-bottom than Duke’s 1995 season had been. Most of the Blue Devils’ losses that winter had been close—and frustrating. Many of the Tar Heels’ losses in the winter of 2002 were embarrassing.
Doherty did prove apt at one very important aspect of coaching: recruiting. During that disastrous season he managed to get commitments from Raymond Felton, a superb point guard; Rashad McCants, a talented shooter; and Sean May, a gifted big man with soft hands.
In one of those “it can only happen in college basketball” twists, Doherty and Carolina were helped immeasurably in May’s recruiting by Indiana’s decision to fire Bob Knight in the fall of 2000. May was the son of Scott May, the star of Knight’s 1976 undefeated national championship team. If Knight had still been coaching at IU, Sean May almost certainly would have gone there to play for him. Beyond that, Knight told Scott May that if his son went to play for Mike Davis, who had succeeded Knight, he would never speak to him again.
That took Indiana out of the mix.
With the three freshmen in the lineup the next season, Carolina improved: winning nineteen games, beating Duke at home, and reaching the NIT quarterfinals. That wasn’t good enough to save Doherty’s job. Several players were threatening to transfer if Doherty returned, and he had angered enough people away from the court that there was no groundswell to give him another year, even though the Tar Heels had won eleven more games than in 2002.
Two things sealed Doherty’s fate: he had earned Smith’s enmity by the decisions he had made about his coaching and office staffs, and, perhaps just as important, Roy Williams was ready to come home.
Williams had been tortured by the fact that he had said no to “Coach Smith” in 2000. Even though he coached Kansas to the Final Four in 2002 and the national title game in 2003, it was clear to those who knew him that if Coach Smith asked him to come home again he wouldn’t be able to say no a second time.
And he didn’t.
Kansas fans were furious when he announced he was leaving, because he had said three years earlier he would never leave Kansas. But circumstances had changed: his alma mater was floundering and in 2000 Williams had figured that Larry Brown would take the job when he turned it down. He hadn’t. Carolina had gone 27–36 in Doherty’s last two seasons. That was unacceptable.
“The truth is, when I said I was staying at Kansas forever that was what I was planning to do,” Williams said. “I wasn’t lying. I wasn’t thinking I’d get the call from Coach Smith again three years later.” He paused, his voice getting very soft. “The hardest thing I ever did in my life was say no that first time. I wanted
to win a national championship at Kansas. I came close, very close. I knew they’d go out and hire a great coach, which they did—Bill Self. I just couldn’t say no to Coach Smith twice.”
Williams’s sentiment was understandable. He was entitled to go back home and rescue the program that had been built by a man who was a father figure to him. In all likelihood, the anger people felt in Kansas would have subsided a lot more quickly if Williams hadn’t kept bringing up how much he loved Kansas and everyone who had ever set foot inside the state.
He even went so far as to wear a Jayhawk sticker on his sports coat the night Kansas played Memphis in the 2008 national championship game—two days after beating North Carolina in the semifinals. That didn’t thrill a lot of his fans back home. It also became a running joke on the Internet and in the national media. One website carried a photo of the Dean Dome’s floor with some “renovations” that Coach Williams had requested. The logo at midcourt was a giant Jayhawk.
—
Because he was so intense and out there with his emotions and because of a habit he had of referring to himself in the third person, Williams was often the object of jokes and scorn. But no one could argue with the results he got.
Krzyzewski, whose relationship with Williams evolved much the way his relationship with Smith had—from sniping back and forth to mutual respect—actually had a routine he did for friends that he called “the Roy Williams coaching clinic.”
“In the first session, Roy Williams will talk about competing,” Krzyzewski would say, “because no one competes like Roy Williams. In the second session, Roy Williams will talk about loving your players, because no one loves his players like Roy Williams does. In the third session, Roy Williams will talk about working hard because no one works as hard as Roy Williams. And, in the fourth session, which will go on all night, Roy Williams will talk about everything he ever learned from Coach Smith.”
The Legends Club Page 43