Just Call Him Special K From Now On

He didn’t have the talent to beat Nevada Las Vegas in 1991, but he did.

He had only half of Christian Laettner in the 1992 final against Michigan’s Fab Five, but he beat them, too.

He doesn’t have the best team since the Wooden Bruins, he doesn’t have Bill Walton backing in down low, he doesn’t have Keith Wilkes freeing up along the baseline, he doesn’t have Dave Meyers and Swen Nater to wave in off the bench, but he does have the first set of back-to-back college basketball titles since UCLA in 1972-73.

If you spot a trend here, you’ll probably need a crib sheet to spell it.

The name is Krzyzewski .

That’s Mike to his friends, Coach K to his players (and harried sportswriters on deadline) and the best in his profession to anyone who wants to know.

For a guy who began the decade as The Coach Who Couldn’t Win The Big One, Krzyzewski is surely making up for lost NCAA semifinals now. His Duke Blue Devils were marked men all regular season, the team to beat every time they stepped onto the court and dead meat in each of their last three postseason games.

They were 2.1 seconds and 94 feet away from surrender in the East Regional final against Kentucky. Sean Woods’ flying bank shot through the lane had just been nominated for Play of the Year, pandemonium was rocking the Spectrum and panic was trying to elbow its way inside Duke’s sideline huddle.

Krzyzewski elbowed back. “We’re going to win,” he told his players, sternly but earnestly, and you saw what happened next. Grant Hill threw the pass of a lifetime, Laettner hit the shot of a lifetime and Duke, in this tournament, still had a lifetime.

A round later, the Devils are down by 12 in the first half against Indiana and the world as we know it is in grave danger: Bob Knight has another chance to be king for a year. Forward Brian Davis sprains an ankle. Laettner sprains a backboard, clanking away at an uncharismatic, uncharacteristic 2-for-8.

Krzyzewski moves a few pieces around the board, coaxes eight points in nine minutes out of a 6-11 pawn named Cherokee Parks, switches defenses to and fro . . . and Duke leads by nine in the final minute.

Monday night’s title game against Michigan presented Krzyzewski with his greatest challenge since shutting down Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon on the same evening. Krzyzewski’s best player, Laettner, had apparently been body-snatched and replaced by a peanut vendor who couldn’t hit the fan in the end seat from the aisle.

Laettner missed his first three shots and was 2-for-8 in the first half. And that was the good part of his game. When Laettner wasn’t shooting the ball, he was feeding it to the Wolverines. In the game’s first nine minutes, Laettner threw the ball away seven times.

Take Don MacLean out of UCLA’s flow and 27-point blowouts to Indiana happen.

Take Laettner out of Duke’s flow and the Devils take a few deep breaths, nod in unison at Coach K’s suggested course corrections . . . and win going away, 71-51.

Krzyzewski dealt with Laettner’s worst possible half at the worst possible time by subtle substituting and subtler coercion.

“When a player isn’t playing the way he normally plays, you try to help him out,” Krzyzewski said. “We subbed for him a lot more in the first half so we could talk to him on the bench.

“We talked to him harshly, softly, emotionally--and all the time, we were trying to do other things on the court. By the second half, he was emotionally better prepared.”

Laettner’s first two shots of the second half found their mark--including one from behind the three-point stripe--and Duke had been jump-started. Laettner finished with 19 points and Duke won by 20.

Parks, the wide-eyed freshman from Marina High School, marveled at Coach K’s brand of cerebral reversal.

“He was harsh when he spoke to us at halftime,” Parks said. “His face was turning red, he was losing his voice. He doesn’t wait until the game’s over to tell you what you’re doing wrong. It’s never, ‘We shoulda done that.’ He tells you right now, and corrects it immediately. He told us exactly what we had to do.”

Krzyzewski’s best idea was ordering Grant Hill to drive to the basket more. “They were giving us the baseline,” the coach said. Drive, he said, and Hill did, which accomplished two things.

Hill scored 10 second-half points to trigger Duke’s pullaway.

And Hill lured Michigan defenders inside with him, creating more space for Laettner to maneuver outside.

“Grant’s penetration was the key to the ballgame,” Krzyzewski said. “He created some things for Christian and Christian can’t be stopped going one-on-one, at least in a college game.”

Krzyzewski was palpably giddy in the interview room, jabbing Laettner repeatedly about his first half from hell.

Laettner: “I don’t know what was happening. I threw away five balls in the first 10 minutes . . . “

Krzyzewski: “Seven, Christian. You threw away seven. Five of them went for layups.”

Laettner, rolling his eyes: “Oh, really.”

Krzyzewski: “See, he has no eligibility left, so he can talk back to the coach.”

Laettner: “That’s true, coach.”

Krzyzewski teased point guard Bobby Hurley (“Of all these players (at the dais), can you tell which one’s from Jersey City?”) and grinned at everyone’s attempts at humor, whether successful or not.

“I’m happy,” Coach K explained. “This is the greatest year I ever had as a coach and it culminated with this win.

“We beat Michigan, Indiana, Seton Hall and Kentucky. We feel like we really deserve it. From my position, the whole year we were ranked No. 1 and our players did all the things I asked of them to stay there. They did it all. That’s why I’m happy.”

Duke now has a dynasty-with-training-wheels going and Davis knows the reason why.

“It begins with Coach,” he said. “At the start of the year, he laid out the game plan we needed to win the national championship and stuck to it . . . I don’t think we were ever mentally fatigued because Coach puts us in the mindset that we never feel tired. And, at the same time, he doesn’t whip us.”

Take that, Bob Knight.

Krzyzewski will take Monday night and the new nickname that comes with it.

Special K.