A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  “You can reach me,” Krzyzewski answered, “at my office.”

  The argument in the press lobby tonight is about the three-point shot Ed Steitz, the secretary of the rules committee, who has been the most vocal defender of the ridiculously close shot, is being hounded by several people who think the shot stinks. “People love it,” Steitz keeps insisting.

  The Division I coaches don’t love it. Earlier in the day, they voted almost unanimously in favor of moving the line back. But the Division 2 and Division 3 coaches were almost as unanimous in saying it should stay where it is. “Are you people saying,” asked Iowa State’s Johnny Orr, “that you think the damn line should be in the same place where high school kids and girls are shooting it from?”

  That is what they are saying. At 2 A.M. Steitz is still saying it. It must be almost time to play basketball, mustn’t it?

  DAY FOUR : SATURDAY

  The new TV contract between CBS and the NCAA calls for the Saturday doubleheader to begin at 5:30 P.M. eastern time. That is 4:30—or to be precise as to actual game time, 4:42, in Kansas City. That makes for a lot of waiting for everyone on Saturday.

  The first formal meeting of the day takes place at the Kansas City Club, which is where the officials are being housed for the weekend. At 10 A.M. they meet with Hank Nichols to learn their game assignments. Nichols has been the NCAA’s supervisor of officials for two years. A professor at Villanova, he is one of the most highly respected officials in the history of the game and the creation of this job for him has been applauded by everyone.

  Technically, the basketball committee selects the officials and makes the assignments. But only Nichols saw all four regionals last week. His recommendations are, in all likelihood, going to be followed.

  Politics plays a role in these selections. As has been the case in recent years with teams, there is a preponderance of good officials in the East. The fact that seven of the nine officials here are from east of the Mississippi—five from the ACC/Big East-is evidence of that. But the West Coast must be represented, especially with a Pac–10 team in the Final Four for the first time in eight years. That is why Booker Turner, a nice man who is well past his peak as a referee, is among the nine men in the room.

  It also has something to do with Forte not making the final. In fact, of the three men who worked the ’87 final, Forte is the only one back in the Final Four. Nichols announces the assignments, in order. “Game one: Booker Turner, Larry Lembo, Jim Burr.” The three nod, each of them disappointed. Everyone wants the final.

  “Game two,” Nichols continues: “Paul Housman, Joe Forte, Luis Grillo.”

  Forte’s heart sinks. “The first thing you think is, ‘Aah shit,’ ” he admitted later. “It’s a competitive thing. The first thing you feel is as if you lost a game. We would all like to work the final.”

  The three officials chosen to work the final are Tim (Barney Rubble) Higgins, Ed Hightower, and John Clougherty. Forte is delighted for Higgins and for Clougherty, both good friends. But he also knows that Clougherty’s selection for the final may influence ABA–USA’s decision on which referee will represent the U.S. at the Olympics. Unofficially, the two finalists for the assignment are Forte and Clougherty.

  Later that morning, the NCAA does something nice. At a brunch thrown for the media as part of the fiftieth anniversary celebration, NCAA executive director Dick Schultz presents a plaque of appreciation to Marvin (Skeeter) Francis. Skeeter Francis is the assistant commissioner of the ACC. Each year he runs the ACC Tournament and each Final Four he helps run the press operation. He is one of those rare people who is liked and respected by everyone he comes in contact with. Francis never sees himself as being important, yet he is invaluable.

  Even as the brunch is ending, word is starting to make the rounds that Valvano has pulled out of the UCLA job. This is a surprise because most people expected him to wait until after the Final Four to make a move one way or the other. But in Los Angeles, Valvano is telling people he will stay at State. Speculation immediately swings to Larry Brown, who would be delighted to give UCLA his home phone number.

  Kansas is a grim group when it arrives at Kemper Arena. Many teams come to the Final Four wanting to win but—as they all like to say—so happy to be involved that they show up on Saturday almost giddy just to be taking part. This is not true of the Jayhawks. They feel they owe Duke one (at least) and, playing so close to home, they feel this is now their tournament to win.

  “Danny hasn’t smiled once all week.” Assistant Coach R. C. Buford says. “He feels like we’re on a mission now and he isn’t going to relax until we’ve got it done.”

  By contrast, Duke is loose—maybe too loose. The Blue Devils have oozed confidence all week. They believe that, having beaten Kansas in Lawrence, there is no reason not to beat them again. What they haven’t counted on is how much Kansas has improved in the six weeks since that game.

  King, having shut down Mark Macon a week ago, has no reason to believe he will have any serious trouble with Milt Newton. Snyder is convinced he can make life miserable for Kevin Pritchard at the point. The concern, of course, is Manning. But he will be double-teamed most of the time and, even though he scored 31 points in Lawrence, the Blue Devils won the game. Why should today be any different?

  It is different because Kansas is primed for the tip-off and Duke is not. On the opening possession of the game, Ferry misses a wide-open lay-up. The team’s exchange turnovers before King fouls Chris Piper inside, and he opens the scoring with two free throws for a 2–0 Kansas lead.

  No big deal. Except that Manning steals the ball and feeds Newton, who promptly hits a three-pointer. Then Manning steals the ball again and, a moment later, takes a feed from Pritchard and scores to make it 7–0. Quickly, Duke turns tight. Ferry and Strickland miss. Krzyzewski goes to the bench looking for help. Manning scores again. Phil Henderson misses and Newton hits another three-pointer. Snyder forces a pass inside and Manning makes his third steal, flipping the ball upcourt to Newton for a breakaway lay-up.

  The game is less than five minutes old and Duke is down two touchdowns, 14–0. Abdelnaby finally breaks the shutout with a hook shot at 15:12. But the Blue Devils are in a hole they will never dig out from.

  “As long as I live I’ll never figure out what happened there,” King said later. “I know we were ready to play. We were prepared. Kansas just came out so ready. They surprised us a little and we reacted by panicking with some of our shot selections.” What Kansas had done was out-Duke Duke. The Jayhawks had thrown a Duke-style, overplaying, hawking man-to-man defense at the Blue Devils and had caught them off guard. They had shown flashes of this in the game in Lawrence but had not been able to sustain it. This time, they did. Even after Duke scored, the carnage continued. The lead built to 24–6 when Piper drove through the entire Duke defense for a lay-up. At that point, even Krzyzewski was shell-shocked. “I was thinking that if this kept up we were going to get beat 82–20,” he said. “We just couldn’t do anything right.” Ever so slowly, the Blue Devils began to work their way into the game. Greg Koubek, the talented freshman who had been inconsistent with his shooting, hit a three-pointer to give everyone a boost. Strickland hit a drive and Brickey dunked. Snyder, whose first two shots would not have hit the water if thrown from a boat, hit a fourteen-footer. Ferry, who had missed four straight shots, made a pair of free throws. That cut the margin to 11, and that was where it was at halftime, 38–27. Everyone’s sentiment was the same: Duke was lucky to be so close. That was certainly the feeling in the Duke locker room. King reminded everyone of their good start in the second half of the Temple game. “We do that and we’ll be back in it in no time,” he said. Kansas was thinking the same thing. Duke had come from behind to beat them—though not nearly as far behind—in ’86 and in the game in Lawrence. No one wanted a repeat performance. “Start out playing the same kind of defense we showed in the first half and we’ll be fine,” Brown told them. “Danny, stay aggressive.” Manning already had
15 points and 3 steals. He couldn’t get much more aggressive than he had been. Newton had 14 points, a stat that staggered King. “I didn’t give him enough respect,” he said. “I didn’t think he could do that to me.”

  By accident, King may have explained Duke’s problem in this game. Because this group had always had success against Kansas, one way or the other, it had no reason to believe that this game would be any different. In a sense, this helped with a large deficit to overcome because no one was giving up. But it was also probably the reason for the deficit.

  They say the tone for a game is always set in the first five minutes of the second half. That was certainly the case in this game. Once again, it took Duke almost five minutes to find a field goal. Snyder’s free throw was their only point in the first 4:30. In the meantime, the Jayhawks were scoring 8 points and the lead built back up to 18 at 46–28. And now, there wasn’t plenty of time left to come back.

  And yet, Duke almost found a way. Ironically, it was King’s fourth foul with 14:06 left that started Duke’s turnaround. He had to come out of the game. Greg Koubek replaced him, King walking to the bench mumbling obscenities, something he almost never did. “I don’t usually talk to myself during a game,” he said. “But this game, I did.”

  Down 16, Duke rallied. Ferry scored 6 quick points and Koubek popped a jumper. The margin was down to 8. Manning hit a hook shot to stop the run, but Koubek bombed for 3 to cut the lead to 51–44. King came back and took a pretty pass from Ferry for his first and last field goal of the game. That made it 51–46 with 9:26 still left. An eternity. For the first time all afternoon, the Jayhawks looked a bit apprehensive.

  “Come on,” Manning yelled at his teammates, “settle down!”

  The next five possessions probably decided this game. Pritchard missed a jumper and Duke came down with a chance to cut the lead again. But Strickland took a bad shot, an air ball that was woefully short. “Think, Kevin, think!” King yelled at his roommate.

  Kansas’s turn. Manning drove—and missed, a rare occurrence. Again, Duke had a chance. This time, Strickland took a good shot, a lined-up three-pointer. The ball went in the basket, seemed ready to drop through and then spun out. The ball was so far down that the Duke bench had come to its feet, thinking the lead was down to two.

  If Strickland’s shot had dropped, Brown would almost certainly have called time-out. The lead would have been two with almost eight minutes still left. Instead, Kansas raced back the other way and Newton fed Piper for a lay-up. That built the margin back to 53–46. Manning and Ferry exchanged baskets and then Booker Turner made the one key call in the ball game, taking a basket away from Koubek on a player control foul.

  That lost basket and Strickland’s in-and-out were awfully significant when Strickland dunked off a Snyder feed and Ferry stole a pass and dunked. That made it 55–52 with 4:17 left. Duke could have been leading. Instead, Pritchard came up with a circus shot, a short bank as he was falling down trying to draw a foul with five seconds left on the shot clock.

  Duke cut the lead to three once more on a Snyder jumper with 2:27 left, but then Manning came up with the game’s key rebound, grabbing a Pritchard miss and scoring to up the lead to five with 2:09 to go. Duke never got that close again. The Jayhawks then made five of six free throws during the next ninety seconds while the Blue Devils were making two of four and Manning was blocking a Ferry shot.

  In the last minute, desperate for points, Krzyzewski had to take King out. This was not the ending King had envisioned. He sat on the floor in front of the bench, his eyes averted as the final seconds of his career ticked away. Newton had scored 20 points. “The gunslinger got shot down,” King would say of himself in the aftermath.

  It ended, 66–59. Manning was hugging Archie Marshall when the buzzer sounded, wanting him to be a part of this. King, a towel around his neck, had his eyes on the floor when he felt an arm around his neck. It was Ed Manning, who had recruited him four years ago. King was fighting tears. Ed Manning just put his arm around him and walked him off the floor.

  “Finally,” Danny Manning said to Alvin Gentry. “We finally got them.”

  Indeed they had. Now, there was one more team still to get.

  Most people expected Arizona–Oklahoma to decide the title. Both had been No. 1 seeds and won their regionals. Both had been in the top five for the entire second half of the season.

  No one was more ready to play than Kerr. As the teams warmed up, Kerr felt tingly as he looked around him. “I thought about all the times I had watched the Final Four and now here I was playing in it,” he said. “Everything had gone perfect getting ready for the game. Coach Olson never gave us any speeches about the Final Four, he just talked about what we were going to have to do to beat Oklahoma.”

  Kerr had seen his mother and brother briefly at the hotel after they had arrived and had come over to the arena with his teammates during the first game. As he warmed up, his shot felt great. “Everything was going in,” he said. “I felt the same way Friday practicing in front of all those people. I really thought I was ready to have a good game. I was watching Tom [Tolbert] and Sean [Elliott] and they weren’t making a thing. I remember thinking, ‘I hope these guys aren’t tight.’ ”

  Kerr laughed at the irony in those words. “As it turned out, I was the one who stunk the joint out.”

  It didn’t start out that way for Kerr or Arizona. Quickly, the Wildcats led 9–2, handling the Oklahoma press with ease. But the Sooners, especially guards Mookie Blaylock and Ricky Grace, kept forcing the tempo. If they didn’t steal the ball, they forced Arizona into a quickened pace, and that was not what the Wildcats wanted. A bank shot by Stacey King and a steal by Blaylock put the Sooners up 16–13.

  Then, with the score 22–19, Oklahoma made one of its patented runs. Dave Sieger hit a three-pointer to push the lead to six. Harvey Grant hit two free throws and Andre Wiley hit a follow. Grant then hit a jumper. In two minutes, Oklahoma had pushed the lead to 31–19. Kerr finally hit a three-pointer to end the drought but a Grace three and a Terrence Mullins three upped the lead to 39–25 before two Elliott free throws made it 39–27—a score startlingly similar to the first game—at the half.

  Elliott had 12 points and Anthony Cook seven but Tolbert, Craig McMillan, and Kerr were a combined 3-for-12 (Kerr, 1-for-6) and that wasn’t going to get it done. Oklahoma’s 20–14 margin on the boards hurt too. There were no hysterics from Olson at halftime. He had a veteran team that knew what had to be done.

  Sure enough, the Wildcats came back. Coming off the bench, Jud Buechler provided a big boost with two quick buckets, one off a pretty feed from Kerr. King hit a free throw but Elliott made a spectacular coast-to-coast move, finishing with a jarring dunk. That made it 51–48 and there was still 12:50 left. “Right there we should have really been able to take it to them,” Kerr said later. “But we just didn’t give Sean enough help.” The lead fluctuated between nine and four, Elliott cutting it to 58–54 with 8:08 left with another strong move inside. Grant and Blaylock both scored, but Elliott bombed a three to make it 62–57. Single-handedly he was keeping Arizona in the game.

  If I could have just hit one three,” Kerr lamented. “Just one.” Actually, he hit one, but it came after the Sooners had put together a 10–2 burst that widened the margin back to 72–59. By then, just three minutes were left. Try though they might, the Wildcats couldn’t get closer than 8 during those last three minutes. The final was 86–78. Oklahoma had too many weapons. Grant and King each finished with 21 points, Grace had 13 and 8 assists, Wiley came off the bench to score 11, and Blaylock had 7 points and 6 assists.

  Elliott had 31 for Arizona in a performance worth remembering, and Cook had 16. But Kerr finished 2-for-13, his worst shooting day of the season at the worst possible time. “I felt sick,” he said. “The only person to blame for that loss is me. I didn’t choke, but I’m a shooter and I had a bad day shooting. I’m convinced that if I had shot well, we would have won. Sean had a great game, everyon
e else had an average game, and I had a horrible game. It was simple as that.”

  It wasn’t anywhere near that simple. Kerr had shot poorly but that was not the entire story. Oklahoma had just been the better team. Kerr didn’t buy it. “My mother could have stayed in Cairo and seen better basketball,” he said.

  As disappointed as Kerr was by the loss, he came away from Kansas City with one indelible memory. Back in the locker room, Olson quietly told his players how proud he was of them and the season they had had, winning thirty-five games. He told them that they could have done better but that there was no shame in losing to Oklahoma. Then, as the players and coaches all moved to the middle of the room to put their hands into a final huddle, Olson grabbed Anthony Cook, hugged him and started to cry.

  “A lot of us had our heads down, maybe crying just a little before that happened,” Kerr said. “But when Coach Olson did that, we all just started hugging each other and crying. Everyone broke down completely. It sounds so corny but it was just an unbelievable feeling of love we all had for one another right then. I mean, everybody was crying, just kind of hanging on to one another for a while. It wasn’t so much that we had lost, but that it was over, that we would never be together like this again and we knew that we had all gone through something together that was incredibly special.

  “I hate the fact that we lost that game. But I’ll never forget what it was like in that locker room with the guys the rest of my life. It was something really, really special. I don’t think any of us had ever seen Coach Olson like that. No one in the room was ashamed to cry. It was the right thing to do.”

  For Olson, this was an emotional evening. A few minutes later, standing in the hallway, Olson was asked to talk about Kerr’s career. It was then, for the first time, that it occurred to Olson that Kerr’s career was, in fact, over. “In the five years I’ve known him,” Olson said, “I wouldn’t change one thing.” He choked up as he spoke and his eyes glistened.