There Was Little Difference, but Dawkins Made Most of It

The game was hardly over--half a minute, maybe--but Johnny Dawkins, the earl of Duke, already was down on one knee in a mob of his admirers at center court, signing a slip of paper. As good as he might be, and as good as he obviously was in Saturday’s 71-67 victory over Kansas in the NCAA tournament semifinals, it seemed a peculiar place and a peculiar time to be granting somebody an autograph.

Turned out, he was not. Ron Kellogg, the game’s leading scorer for Kansas, the guy whose shot nearly beat the clock and saved the day, had approached the Duke guard immediately after the game. He wanted Dawkins’ phone number. He wanted to call him sometime when the season was over so they could talk--not just about the game but about the fact that they might be related.

“It could be we’re cousins,” Kellogg said. “I’d have to ask him about his grandfather. But if Johnny Dawkins is related to Darryl Dawkins, then we are definitely related.”

Kellogg, who claims to be distantly related to Darryl, will be disappointed to hear that the two Dawkinses have no such family tie. Truth is, they have very little in common. The NBA’s Darryl is 6 feet 11 inches tall and makes Mr. T look undernourished. Duke’s Johnny is 6-2 tall and built like a clarinet. Darryl breaks backboards. Johnny breaks hearts.

“Oh, he did it to us, absolutely,” Kellogg said. “Johnny Dawkins does all the things that make great players great. He hurt us bad, real bad.”

Fatally, even. Duke’s dangerous little left-hander scored 24 points, nearly twice as many as anyone else on his side, to lead the No. 1 team in the land into Monday night’s final with Louisville. Duke and Kansas were ranked Nos. 1-2 in the last weekly poll and brought a combined record of 71-5 to the Final Four.

This game was played in a building called Reunion Arena and was, in fact, the second meeting between them. Duke defeated Kansas by six points in the season’s first month. Duke’s mascot, the blue devil, did not seem all that happy to see them again, scrawling a message in the lining of his cape that read: “Kansas: There’s No Place Like Home, So Go Back.”

That is about all the Jayhawks can do for now. Coach Larry Brown said, “I think I’ll stick around Monday to see how this thing turns out,” but his players will be in street clothes for the rest of the tournament. They bowed out with a record of 35-4 and with the feeling that if only the three referees who worked the Duke game had forgotten or swallowed their whistles, things would have been different.

Kansas’ best players were missing in action. Greg Dreiling, the flat-topped, 7-1, 250-pound center, fouled out with 5 minutes 40 seconds remaining in the game. Danny Manning, the gifted 6-11 sophomore, sat out 17 minutes of the game and fouled out three minutes after Dreiling did. And Cedric Hunter, the Kansas point guard, also fouled out.

It did not help any that Dreiling and Manning were having miserable days, scoring 10 points between them. As Duke center Jay Bilas said afterward: “If you had told me before the game those guys would only get 10 points, I’d have told you to go get your head examined.”

Making things even worse for Kansas was a second-half knee injury to 6-6 forward Archie Marshall, a reserve whose 13 points put some sock into the offense. “Losing Archie hurt us every bit as much as losing those other players on fouls,” Brown said. “Because even with all the trouble we were having, putting Duke on the free-throw line all the time, I still thought we were going to pull this thing out.”

Duke had 30 free-throw attempts in the game, Kansas 12.

“It’s a tough job,” Dreiling said graciously, on behalf of the referees. “If you get five fouls like I did, of course you’re going to disagree with a couple. But that wasn’t the game. We had our chances to win.”

The big ones came in the final minute. With the score tied at 67, freshman Danny Ferry of Duke found a loose ball sitting all by its lonesome beneath his own basket. He picked it up, laid it in and gave the Blue Devils the game.

“That one should have been mine,” Dreiling said, bemoaning the fate that had exiled him to the bench. “Instead, it had Danny Ferry’s name on it.”

With 11 seconds to play, Kellogg drove the hoop and tried a layup that went in and out. Kansas’ lousy luck continued. First, a foul was called on Kellogg, who steamrolled over Ferry. Second, if Kellogg’s layup had at least stayed in the basket, it would have counted and tied the score. And third, even when Ferry obliged by blowing the free throw, Kellogg’s desperation shot with four seconds to play banged off the rim. It was only his fourth miss out of 15 shots.

“Could have gone either way, either way,” Kellogg said. “The foul and the shot. Two plays could have gone either way.”

And put Kansas in the final.

The Jayhawks knew it was going to take considerable skill and a little bit of luck if they were to have a chance at their first national championship since 1952. It was that year that Kansas played its games in bright red uniforms, not blue ones, but since scarlet costumes are sometimes brought out for special occasions, the team wore red against Duke. Brown had only done that twice before.

It did not bring the team much luck. By the finish there was nothing but sadness, in the words of Kellogg and Dreiling and in the eyes of senior guard Mark Turgeon, who, while lining up to watch Duke’s Tommy Amaker make two meaningless free throws with one second to play, wept freely, wiping the tears away with his wrist.

Brown, though, did not sound like a man down on his luck. “I’m just thrilled we could hang in there,” he said. “I really did think we would make a last shot and win the game. Even with the funny lineup we had in there at the end, because most of our best guys were on the bench. I knew we were in big trouble if we had to go overtime, but I thought we could still pull it off in regulation.”

So, there will be no reunion at the Reunion with Louisville. Kansas played Duke twice this season and also played Denny Crum’s Cardinals twice, losing once by five points and later by two. Now, Duke gets a shot at them. “I don’t think Duke can win if they get their big people in foul trouble,” Brown said.

When asked for predictions, college athletes tend to side with the team that eliminated them, because it lends substance to their defeat. And losing to Duke, the No. 1 team, is no one’s disgrace. But Kellogg, cousin of Johnny Dawkins or no cousin, had this to say: “Everybody I know’s been picking Duke, so I got to go against the odds. I got to pick Louisville. I got to say Louisville’s the best.”

It was his last shot of the season.