College Basketball 1991-92 : That Was Then, but This Is Now : Duke: The Blue Devils were champions last season, but you won’t hear them talking about a repeat.

The 1991 NCAA champions have decided that defending is something you do with your knees bent and your hands up. It is not something you do to a trophy.

Center Christian Laettner, point guard Bobby Hurley and wing players Grant Hill and Thomas Hill are back from the Duke team that knocked off presumed national champion Nevada Las Vegas in the semifinals last year and then beat Kansas to win the first NCAA title in Duke history.

The Blue Devils have one of the better opportunities to be the first team to repeat as NCAA champion since UCLA won consecutive titles in 1972 and ’73. UNLV, whose season was scrutinized by people pondering whether it could beat the worst NBA team, hasn’t done it. Nor has Georgetown, which won with Patrick Ewing in 1984 only to be beaten in the final by Villanova’s 79% shooting in ’85. Nor North Carolina, which lost James Worthy from its 1982 team but had Michael Jordan and Sam Perkins back and fell to Georgia in a regional final in ’83.

In a semantic twist designed to take the focus off an improbable quest, Duke has all but declared it impossible. Coach Mike Krzyzewski is eschewing the words defending and repeat .

“It’s not the same team trying to repeat, it’s the same school,” Krzyzewski said. “To me, that’s so obvious. I mean, it’s not the same team.”

It is not. Greg Koubek was a senior starter on that team, and three-point shooter Bill McCaffrey transferred to Vanderbilt, oddly, to gain more prominence. Brian Davis probably will replace Koubek in the lineup, and Duke’s two huge and talented freshmen centers, Cherokee Parks and Erik Meek, are going to play, freeing Laettner and his versatile talents.

The idea is that, yes, there is the possibility that with luck and without injuries, Duke could repeat. But the 1990-91 Duke team has passed into history.

“I remember in watching (NCAA champions) come back the next year, my main feeling about those teams was that they weren’t the same teams,” Krzyzewski said. “It was as if there was some life that was different. You have to create a life for a team that is different from the year before.

“That’s why I don’t call us defending champions. There’s nothing to defend. What’s the mind-set? Is it to defend or pursue? I’d rather have a team pursue. You have to make it new.”

Of all the things that Krzyzewski is a master of--and one, after four consecutive trips to the Final Four, is the NCAA tournament--none may be more crucial to the program than the idea of moving on.

How else could Duke have recovered from its 103-73 loss to UNLV in the 1990 championship game and been able to defeat the Rebels the next year? And then recovered from the exhilaration of that victory to come back two days later to beat Kansas in the final?

How else could team after Blue Devil team decline to accept the sense of failure heaped upon it after reaching the Final Four and not winning? Last season, Duke’s players persisted with heads up after a 17-point loss to Virginia at Charlottesville in January and a 22-point loss to North Carolina in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, when NCAA teams are supposed to be peaking.

“I think it’s mainly the program, Coach K and his staff,” Laettner said. “We treat a loss as a loss. We’re upset about it, but only for a few minutes. It never devastates us.”

Tommy Amaker, a Duke assistant who was the point guard on the 1986 team that lost to Louisville in the NCAA title game, points to Krzyzewski as well.

“Part of his personality is to go on from one thing to the next and not let the last thing drag you down so that the previous thing affects the future,” Amaker said. “Or at least, not let it affect us in a negative way. If it does affect us, we want it to be instilled in the players in a positive way.

“I’ve heard him say over the years, ‘Hey, go on to the next play.’ I may come down and throw the ball into Row F. You want to show signs of negativity and disbelief in your body language. Then you hear him say, ‘Hey, go on to the next play.’ ”

Hurley, whose maturing in his sophomore season was one of the key components of the run to the championship, has heard that phrase a few times.

“My freshman year, if I wasn’t playing well--a couple of turnovers, a missed shot--it would be like an avalanche,” Hurley said. “Everything would cave in. (Last season), I was able to move on. I could make a bad play or two and move on to the next play and make it a good play.”

During last season, the coaches took Hurley aside and showed him a few film clips: Hurley whining about a call, Hurley angry about no call, Hurley complaining and then making another mistake.

“Bobby, we don’t know if you understand what this looks like to your teammates, what this looks like on TV,” the coaches said.

Hurley took it in, and changed.

“His outward signs aren’t as demonstrative as they have been in the past,” Amaker said. “He really used to let things affect him. One turnover would affect the next 2 1/2 minutes of the ballgame.”

In the 1991 Final Four, after having been ill the year before and embarrassed by UNLV’s Anderson Hunt, Hurley played all 80 minutes.

“I’m pretty proud of that,” Hurley said. “It makes me feel good about how important the coaches think I am to the team.”

In the six tournament games, he had 43 assists and only 10 turnovers.

The coaches say that Hurley, as well as the other top six or seven players, improved in the off-season. Where he used to either take a three-pointer or drive to the basket, he now can pull up for a 12- to 15-foot jump shot.

And, “in our scrimmage this year, I don’t think I said a word to the official,” Hurley said.

“I think Coach K gets us to move on to the next thing. He doesn’t let a loss go by without talking about mistakes, but we move on. You also have to be able to handle the success of winning, to win a big game and still be able to concentrate on the next one.

A case in point would be last season’s final.

“He made us forget Vegas,” Hurley said.

Amaker said: “You saw him after the (1991) Vegas game. The buzzer goes off, we win, and he’s saying, ‘Settle down. We have another game to play. Let’s go on to the next play.’

“He likes to say you treat failure and success, those two impostors, the same. You don’t get too high or too low.”

Back when the focus was on what Duke hadn’t done, Krzyzewski steadfastly declined to express frustration.

Once, after the loss to Seton Hall in the 1989 semifinals, he was asked if he would be unfulfilled if he never won the NCAA title.

Krzyzewski paused and smiled. “It was one of those double negatives,” he said. But the answer he gave was that he could be fulfilled, even if his team never won.

“It would be kind of sick to say the only way you’ll be happy is to win it all,” Krzyzewski said. “I’ve won it all, and I’m not any more happy than I was last year at this time.

“Our goal isn’t to win basketball games. It’s to develop an outstanding unit. We should win basketball games as a result. If you do it the other way, you grow up to be a boring person--and unfulfilled.”

Consider the many possibilities of any season.

“What if two guys were sick or somebody got hurt before the Eastern Regional final?” Krzyzewski said. “What if we won the game anyway, but that was as far as we could go?”

That, he is saying, would be another kind of accomplishment.

Krzyzewski, whose teams have won 79.4% of their NCAA tournament games, highest among active coaches, said he knows more about the tournament than he did a few years ago. He has theories about pacing, about being loose, about not looking ahead, because “the whole world is looking ahead for you, because everybody has those brackets.”

Perhaps most of all, he has a theory about avoiding injuries, which is nice if you can pull it off. With the exception of the thigh injury to Robert Brickey during the 1989 semifinal loss to Seton Hall, Duke has not had a physical problem that had any real effect on its tournament performance.

Along the way to a possible second consecutive championship, there are a thousand obstacles.

“Complacency,” Hurley said. “Also, egos can come into play.”

“There’s too much talent,” Krzyzewski said. “Too many good players.”

Still, as Duke goes “on to the next play,” occasionally even the Blue Devils’ minds wander.

“It would be a tremendous accomplishment,” Hurley said. “Obviously, that’s our ultimate goal. But we can’t look at it as if that’s our only goal--to win the national championship. I’ve got some goals. I’ve never won an ACC tournament. That’s something I’d love to do. There are certain games on the schedule I see where I say, ‘This one I really want.’ ”

Ultimately, they only have so much control.

“A lot of it has to do with peaking at the right time,” Laettner said. “And a lot of it has to do with luck. Those two things are the most important, even though most people don’t want to admit it.”