Two nights later, the Blue Devils were almost as good. They built a big lead early against Georgia Tech, let the Yellow Jackets get back to within four, then put the game away early in the second half, winning 78–65.
The defense was there every night for Duke. The question, as had been the case in 1987, was the offense. Against some teams, like Clemson, the defense created so many easy baskets that the opposition was never in the game. But against the really good teams, if they had to run a halfcourt offense to score, the Blue Devils were vulnerable.
That was Krzyzewski’s concern with N.C. State coming to town. If Valvano got the kind of pace he wanted and was able to run his halfcourt offense, State would have the advantage. With Shackleford and Brown inside, the Wolfpack had a combination Duke simply couldn’t stop.
Valvano had mixed emotions approaching the game. He still wasn’t sure what kind of team he had. Since Hawaii, the Wolfpack had been up and down. They had opened conference play with a great victory, beating Georgia Tech in Atlanta on a tip-in at the buzzer by Brian Howard. But then they had turned around and lost at Wake Forest, a game so disheartening that Valvano couldn’t even look at the tape afterward.
“We had the game won,” he said. “We’ve got a five-point lead in the last two minutes. It’s over. My teams don’t lose those games. But we lose it. I want to be sick just thinking about it.”
That loss was followed by a 77–73 loss at home to North Carolina; it wasn’t a shock to lose but it hurt. If you are going to have a big year, it is the kind of game you win. Then came a crossroads game at Maryland. Valvano told his team this was a game it had to win and, after blowing a big lead, the Wolfpack won it, 83–81. Vinny Del Negro hit the winner just before the buzzer. “We lose that one, we maybe go in the toilet,” Valvano said. “Instead, we feel good about ourselves, go home and beat DePaul and Virginia.”
The Virginia victory put State at 13–4, 4–2 in the league. Duke was 15–2, 5–1 in the league. Valvano was convinced the Blue Devils were the best team in the conference. “They are a great college basketball team,” he said. “They do a great job taking you out of your offense, they have a great player in Ferry, they’re deep and they are well coached.”
Valvano believed all this. He also believed he could go to Duke and win. He had always had success at Duke and against Krzyzewski—ten wins in sixteen games. Some of the time this had been because State just had more talent. But there were psychological factors involved too. When Valvano took a team to Carolina, he almost never believed he could win there. As a result, his players followed his lead. Valvano was 0–8 in Chapel Hill. But Duke, even when it has an excellent team, never has overwhelming athletic talent. Valvano always thought he had a chance against Duke and that belief filtered down to his players.
There was also this: Valvano believes he will win most close games because he has Valvano on his side. His former coach, Bill Foster, once said about him: “Jimmy thinks he’s the best coach there is, period.”
Valvano denies this … sort of. “I’ve never put my mind into coaching 100 percent of the time the way some guys do,” he said. “Those guys are the best coaches. If I put my mind to it all the time, then, yeah, I think I could be the best coach.”
But for one game, give Valvano his choice of coach and he would, without question, take James T. Valvano. So, as the Wolfpack made the twenty-mile trip from Raleigh to Durham, Valvano was both confident and curious.
As they waited for the Wolfpack to arrive, the Blue Devils were antsy. They wanted to prove that the so-called State jinx was a myth. They also knew that a victory would put them in command in the ACC race.
The afternoon was a recruiters’ dream: sunny and warm, the Duke chapel bathed in sunlight, making it impossible to believe it was still winter. Inside Cameron Indoor Stadium, hours before tip-off, the students were jammed in tight.
Cameron is college basketball’s best-known fun house. It is ancient, small (8,564 seats), and because Duke is one of the few places left that believes the students deserve the best seats, they sit surrounding the court on all four sides. What’s more, they honestly believe that part of their job at a game is to come up with some clever way to throw the opponent off.
Over the years, when State has been the visitor, this has meant doing things like throwing aspirin at Moe Rivers after he had been arrested for stealing a bottle of aspirin, throwing red-and-white underwear at two players who had stolen some underwear, delivering pizza to Lorenzo Charles after he was involved in the mugging of a pizza delivery man, and waving car keys at Clyde Austin after it came out that he had two cars, a Cadillac and an MG.
Sometimes, the Duke students go too far. In 1984, they had spelled out R-A-P-E at Maryland’s Herman Veal and thrown condoms and women’s underwear at him after he had been accused of sexual assault on another Maryland student. Scolded for that, the students made a superb comeback the next week against North Carolina: They presented Dean Smith with two dozen roses before the game, eschewed the “bullshit” cheer that has pervaded gyms everywhere in favor of “We beg to differ,” and, instead of waving their arms at foul shooters, held up signs which said, “Please miss.”
In short, when you came to Cameron, you never knew what was waiting for you. Today, the students were mild. When they saw referee Lenny Wirtz come on the floor, they serenaded him with their traditional “Oh no, not Lenny” chant. When Valvano came out they chanted, “Sit down” at him. Ever clever, Valvano sat—on the floor. The students liked that, but they had a comeback: “Roll over, roll over.” Valvano wasn’t going that far.
The game was as tense as the pregame had been fun-filled. King was guarding Del Negro and holding him in check, but Chris Corchiani, now entrenched as State’s point guard, was taking advantage of Duke’s overplaying defense, consistently penetrating to either score or set other people up. And, Rodney Monroe was coming off the bench to give State a boost when it most needed one.
Duke’s defense took command in the last four minutes of the first half. Trailing 29–28, the Blue Devils finished the half with a 14–3 binge, helped by a stupid behind-the-back pass by Shackleford that King stole and fed to Strickland for a three-point play. For ten minutes in the second half, Duke stayed in control. Two Ferry free throws with 10:44 left made it 59–44. What jinx?
This jinx: Monroe hit a three-pointer. Corchiani made a pair of free throws. Monroe hit another three, Corchiani two more foul shots. That made a 10–2 run, courtesy of the freshman guards, and it was 61–55. The Duke students were less jovial now. Quin Snyder, clearly nervous, threw a silly pass and Del Negro got loose for his first field goal of the game. Howard made a three-point play and Shackleford powered inside. Wham-Bam the run was 17–2, and State led 62–61 with 6:01 left.
From there, it was anyone’s game—except that one team was hoping to win, the other believed it would win. Krzyzewski put King on Corchiani down the stretch and King cooled the little guard off. But Del Negro now had room and he took advantage of it, hitting a ten-footer that put State up 73–72 with 1:50 left, and a gorgeous, jump-catch-and-shoot backdoor lay-up that made it 75–72. Duke had one last chance, trailing 75–74 with seven seconds left when Del Negro missed a free throw.
Ferry rebounded and thought he saw Phil Henderson open for a lay-up. But as he reached back to try to throw the long pass, Ferry, who almost never makes fundamental mistakes, lost control of the ball. His pass went right to Chucky Brown. Seconds later it was over, 77–74 State.
For Valvano, this was the biggest win of the season. His team had gone into a hostile gym, hung in for thirty minutes against a good team playing well, and made the big plays in the clutch. Everyone had helped: Monroe had 17 points, Shackleford had 16, Corchiani 15. Del Negro, held in check most of the day, only had 12 but he got them when they counted most.
“We could be a pretty good club before this is over,” Valvano decided. “But now, we’ve got to play like this consistently.” Every coach can find a “but” line in a victory
. This time, though, Valvano was hard pressed.
The feeling on the other side could not have been more different. The Blue Devils weren’t just unhappy, they were angry. King, normally the last one out of the locker room because he will answer every single question, was out in a flash. “I’m just so pissed off I don’t know what I could say to anybody,” he said. “There’s no way you can be a good team and blow a 14-point lead at home.”
That was exactly the way Krzyzewski felt. Again, he had the sense that, when it counted most, his team had played scared. He was most upset with Snyder, who had been outplayed by a freshman—Corchiani—and hadn’t seemed to know what to do in the final minutes. “Quin is playing to protect his spot, instead of being aggressive,” Krzyzewski said. “To one degree or another they’re all protecting. That’s just no good.”
He glanced at a picture of the 1986 team that hung on his office wall. “I’ll tell you one thing. This team isn’t anywhere near where that team was,” he said. “It isn’t so much talent, although that team did have more talent. What this team doesn’t have is a motherfucker.”
In the coaching vernacular a motherfucker was a guy the other team just didn’t want to mess with. Del Negro was that kind of player; so, to some extent, was Corchiani. Meagher and David Henderson had played that role in the past for Duke. Now, there was a void, and Notre Dame was coming to town looking to knock off a top team. The Irish were rested, the Blue Devils tired and frustrated.
It was a game Duke easily could lose because in the long run, it didn’t matter. The team was going to be in the NCAA Tournament regardless. It would have been easy to rationalize a loss and go on from there. But King wouldn’t let it happen.
In pregame the next day, he was on his teammates in a very un-Kinglike manner. Snyder, who was being benched by Krzyzewski, caught the brunt of King’s anger. “You can’t play scared, Quin,” he told him. “Go out and be angry. Prove to Coach K that he’s wrong.”
King had a major assignment for the day himself: He was to guard David Rivers, the All-American point guard. Rivers’s importance to Notre Dame was best summed up by the Duke students who, as the Irish were introduced, chanted, “One-man team, one-man team.”
That wasn’t true in this game. Sophomore guard Joe Frederick, averaging 6 points a game, was 9-for-13 and had 23 points. At halftime, the Irish led 35–32. King had held Rivers in check for twenty minutes, but could he do it for forty? And would fatigue set in after two games in twenty-four hours and four games in seven days?
With 12:20 left, Notre Dame still led 48–44. King was giving Rivers absolutely no room to breathe. When Forte called him for a foul early in the second half, King, who calls all the officials by their first names, yelled, “Come on, Joe, don’t protect him because he’s a star.”
“I’m not, Billy, you fouled him.”
King smiled. “I know.”
Rivers saw no humor in the situation. “After he told the ref not to protect me, they never called anything on him the rest of the day,” he complained later. Rivers had no right to complain; the fact that he did was a mark of how frustrated he was by King. Rivers is not a whiner. After this game against Billy King, he whined.
It was Snyder, playing aggressively, who made the basket that got Duke going. He hit a three-pointer that cut the lead to 48–47. A moment later, King drove the baseline and put the Blue Devils up for good, 49–48. Then, to put an exclamation point on the day, he hit a ten-foot jump shot, something he had done in most leap years during his career.
It was over after that. Duke cruised home, 70–61. This was King’s day. Rivers finished with 9 points on 3-of-27 shooting and turned the ball over 4 times. “When he started slapping at my hand on inbounds plays, I knew I had him,” King said.
King, the nonscorer, also hit 5 of 7 shots and had 11 points. It was the first and only time in his senior season that King would score in double figures. For Rivers it was the first and only time in his senior season that he would not score in double figures.
With thirty seconds left, Krzyzewski took King out to what was undoubtedly the loudest standing ovation ever given in Cameron for a player who had scored 11 points. King, being King, understood how special this day was for him.
“A year from now David Rivers is going to be playing in the NBA as a first-round draft pick,” he said. “He’ll be making six figures and then some. I’ll be working at a desk somewhere, fighting rush hour traffic every day.”
King smiled. “But I’ll always have the tape of this game. And when I’m old, I’ll pull it out and show it to my kids and say, ‘You see, the old man could play a little defense in his day.’ ”
February 9–10 … Philadelphia
If you care about college basketball as a sport, about its history and its traditions, then you must make a pilgrimage at least once a season to the Palestra.
The Palestra is to college basketball what Fenway Park and Wrigley Field are to baseball. It is a place where you feel the game from the moment you step inside. The popcorn smells like college basketball, the noises are those of the game: the crowd, the bands, the players, the coaches. All of it. Even though the old (born in 1927) place was given a $1 million sprucing up in 1986, complete with new paint and new seats, it still feels old. Most of the seats are still bleacher-style. The locker rooms are tiny and the seats are close enough to the floor that the crowd is always part of the game.
Things have changed, as they inevitably must, over the years at the Palestra. Once, all the schools in Philadelphia’s Big Five—Villanova, Temple, LaSalle, St. Joseph’s, and Pennsylvania—called the Palestra home. All of the traditional city games were played there, usually as the second half of a doubleheader. The first game would bring a major national power to town, then would come the Big Five game. The gym was smack in the middle of the Penn campus but it belonged, really, to the city and to The Game.
The Palestra still considers itself at least a part-time home for all five schools. It is the only arena in America that has national championship banners hanging for two schools: LaSalle (1954) and Villanova (1985).
But when big dollars came into college basketball, the Big Five schools were lined up like everyone else to grab some. Villanova joined the fledgling Big East while Temple and St. Joseph’s joined the Atlantic 10. LaSalle became part of the Metro Atlantic. The conferences were where the TV money was—especially in Villanova’s case—and were the schools’ route into the NCAA Tournament. The City Series games became less and less important until, in 1986, it looked as if they might end completely.
Temple and Villanova no longer wanted to play home games in the Palestra. Villanova had built a new arena and Temple wanted to build one. What’s more, when you played in the Palestra, you split the money, taking away the financial home court advantage.
More and more in recent years, local rivalries in college basketball have gone the way of the dinosaur. The teams in power don’t want to play the weaker teams because they somehow fear that a loss might knock them off their pedestal. And, they know that a big local win could revive a rival that is down, making them a threat again. The attitude is: Forget the fans, who love local rivalries, and forget the fact that there is plenty to go around for everyone these days.
Georgetown Coach John Thompson is a perfect example of this kind of thinking. Every year Thompson sprinkles his schedule with teams like St. Leo’s and Morgan State, teams so bad that no one should be asked to pay money to watch them play. In the meantime Thompson has dropped Maryland, George Washington, and American from his schedule. He also refuses to play Howard University.
He is not alone. For years, Kentucky would not play Louisville. Dean Smith won’t play any in-state teams other than the ones in the ACC. Alabama will not play Alabama–Birmingham. Heck, Hawaii won’t even play Chaminade.
Dan Baker, the executive secretary of the Big Five, did not want to see this happen in Philadelphia. He knew he had no chance to keep the City Series in the Palestra as it had been in the
past. So, he struck a compromise. Beginning with the 1986–87 season, the designated home team in a City Series game could choose the site. This meant that Temple and Villanova would get their home games on campus and it meant that Penn, LaSalle, and St. Joseph’s could continue to have theirs in the Palestra. The new contract was for ten years.
“It took hours and hours and hours of talks to get this,” said Baker, an unfailingly polite, soft-spoken man. “I think it’s a shame that some of the people involved don’t have more feel for the tradition of Philadelphia basketball. But this was better than losing the whole thing altogether.”
That much is true. There are not nearly as many games in the Palestra as there used to be. But they do still play here and, when they open the doors on a cold winter night, there are few better places to be.
Tonight is a doubleheader night. Game one is LaSalle–St. Peter’s, two teams unbeaten in the Metro Atlantic Conference. Game two is one of the great traditional rivalries in the sport: Princeton–Penn.
Jam-packed, the arena can seat almost ten thousand people. The crowd tonight is 6,297. They come streaming in off 33d Street, working their way to the front door. Only when you are within ten feet of the building can you read the sign that says, “The Palestra.” Since the building opened sixty-one years ago, it has hosted more college basketball games than any gym in America. It is a place where even the bathrooms could tell stories if they could talk.
LaSalle–St. Peter’s will not go down with any of the Palestra’s more memorable games. LaSalle has the best player on the floor in Lionel Simmons and, even on a night that is not his best, Simmons is good enough, with fifteen points and eight rebounds, to produce a 56–47 victory.
Princeton and Penn is the main event. For the last twenty years, these two teams have been the Ivy League. Since 1968, when Columbia beat Princeton in a playoff to win the league championship, only Brown, in 1986, has interrupted the Penn–Princeton stranglehold on the league. Penn has won ten titles, Princeton eight during that time.
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