BACK N A BIG WAY : Coach K Has His Little Devils Up to No. 6 in Nation Going Into Today’s Game With UCLA

Ricky Price went to Duke because he was tired of breaking in new coaches, concluding that six in four years of high school were five too many.

Going to Duke would be like investing in mutual funds.

“I wanted foundation, stability,” Price said from Durham, N.C. “I was thinking Coach K would be here till Duke closed down.”

Twelve games into Price’s freshman 1994-95 season, Duke’s rock kneeled into the Strait of Gibraltar.

Mike Krzyzewski, Coach Kingpin, molder of seven Final Four teams in nine years including national titles in 1991 and ’92 suddenly couldn’t comb his hair.

With great regret, but with little recourse, Krzyzewski walked away from his 9-3 team to undergo back surgery that couldn’t wait for the off-season.

Was it a big deal?

Duke lost 15 of 19 games without him and finished last in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

“It was a program in disarray,” says Price, a Carson resident who went to Serra High in Gardena.

Price was left to break in another coach, assistant Pete Gaudet, as the Cameron Crazies became the Cameron Crankies.

To what depths would the great program plunge?

Not far, it turns out.

Duke came back as soon as Krzyzewski’s back did.

Two years after near-Tobacco Road Armageddon, and one year after a let’s-get-reacquainted 18-13 season, Krzyzewski has Duke racing up the national charts with a bullet, exceeding major comeback projections by at least a year.

Duke begins this morning’s early-bird ABC special against No. 17 UCLA (16-7) at Pauley Pavilion playing some of the nation’s most inspiring basketball. The sixth-ranked Blue Devils (22-5) have won seven consecutive games, 11 of 12, and are 6-0 since going to their “small” lineup of darters and sharpshooters.

“This is the Duke I planned to attend,” Price says.

Duke greatness was supposed to be on layaway as it awaited the nation’s top recruiting class, led by Chris Burgess of Irvine Woodbridge.

But something clicked a few weeks ago that now has Duke thinking Final Four. The Blue Devils, 11-3 in conference play, can clinch at least a share of the ACC title with a victory over Maryland next week.

Duke might well snag that No. 1 NCAA tournament seeding long reserved for Wake Forest.

“I really like this team,” Krzyzewski says. “In fact, I love my team.”

What’s not to love?

With Coach K nudging the chess pieces and players who don’t plot their transfers every time the boss makes a lineup change, the Blue Devils are scorching college basketball’s landscape with a lineup bookended by Steve Wojciechowski, a 5-foot-11 bull terrier point guard, and Roshown McLeod, a 6-8 sort-of center.

The group debuted Feb. 2 against Georgia Tech but made bigger news three days later when it felled Wake Forest’s timber line of Tim Duncan, 6-10; Loren Woods, 7-1, and Ricky Peral, 6-10, on the road.

Duke’s motto is, “We’ll shoot over--or under--you.”

The team is averaging 8.3 three-point baskets a game, led by sophomore Trajan Langdon, “the Alaskan Assassin,” coming off a 34-point performance in Tuesday’s victory over Clemson.

“I told people when I got here as a freshman that Trajan was the best shooter in the world,” says Price, Langdon’s roommate. “I’m going to stay true to that. I honestly believe that.”

Duke is averaging an ACC-leading 80.6 points and giving up only 63.7, lowest at the school since 1950.

Krzyzewski had nine starting lineups before settling on the current one. He has played his “small” team of Wojciechowski, Langdon, 6-3; Jeff Capel, 6-5; Chris Carrawell, 6-6, and McLeod in parts of every game his season.

Krzyzewski surprised some when he started his Lilliputian lineup against Wake Forest, sitting 6-10 center Greg Newton, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder.

Sticking with the rotation became easier when Newton developed back problems--he sat out two games before returning to play 12 minutes in reserve against Clemson.

None of what Krzyzewski is doing might have worked without the right group. He describes his team as unbelievably unselfish.

Still, egos had to be confronted, and dealt with.

Price, a junior guard, had been a starter but is now Duke’s sixth man.

Since scoring five points in the last three games in January, Price has averaged 13 points and 3.5 rebounds in Duke’s last six.

“Ricky Price is playing the best basketball of his career,” Krzyzewski says. “He wasn’t playing the best basketball when he was a starter.”

Price says he’s comfortable in his role.

“I really didn’t deserve to be a starter,” he says. “More important, in the last five or six games, I haven’t started, but I’ve finished.”

Besides Langdon’s incredible shooting--he leads the team in scoring at 14.8 points a game and is making 49.4% of his three-point shots--the biggest story has been Wojciechowski’s play at the point.

The junior guard was considered the weak link before the season, the reason Krzyzewski so actively recruited Shaheen Holloway, who chose Seton Hall.

But “Wojo” has emerged as the team’s unsung hero.

“He’s pretty good,” Krzyzewski says.

Wojciechowski plays nip-at-your-heels defense and leads the ACC in steals, all while running the point with a 3-1 ratio of assists to turnovers.

Of course, the main reason Duke is back is because of Krzyzewski, now in his 17th season in Durham.

“I saw the fire in his eyes at the beginning of the season,” said former Duke star Johnny Dawkins, now interning in the school’s athletic department. “I came by practice, and I could just see it in him. He was just so excited and looking forward to getting it going. I guess the rest is history, because they’ve gotten it going.”

After a nine-year NBA career, Dawkins returned to Duke this year and does commentary on the team’s radio broadcasts. He says he appreciates Krzyzewski now more than ever.

“I had six coaches in the NBA for nine years,” Dawkins says. “I played under several other coaches, from Olympic trials to Sports Festival teams. He’s the best at preparing teams for games that I’ve ever been around.”

Krzyzewski says he never lost his desire for coaching. What he lost was the feeling in his legs.

“I always had fire,” he says. “When I was sick, it was tough to have fire, and I was sick.”

Price remembers Krzyzewski trying to work through the pain.

“The fire was still there, but physically he just couldn’t give it to us,” he says. “His back was killing him and he had to worry about himself.”

Krzyzewski, who turned 50 this month, acknowledges his time away from the program was restorative.

“It gave me a chance to reflect on what I do and why I do it,” he says. “Sometimes, in our haste to accomplish, we forget why we’re doing it. After reflecting on it, I realize even more, I love what I do.”

This is bad news for Duke haters.

Next year, Duke loses only Newton, Capel and Carmen Wallace, while reloading with Burgess, Shane Battier and Elton Brand, ranked among the top 10 in this year’s high school graduating class.

Krzyzewski, however, says he doesn’t expect Duke will ever duplicate its previous success.

“Arguably, if what we did with seven Final Fours in nine years was the measuring stick, we probably should all get out of coaching,” he says. “We feel unbelievably fortunate to have the kids and maybe the good fortune to do that. But if that’s the only thing that’s going to make me happy, then Mike may end up being a very sad guy.

“But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to go for that every year.”

For Duke, the future is apparently now, as Krzyzewski tries to go 5-0 against UCLA.

He never circled a calendar date in trying to predict Duke’s return.

“I don’t like to give a timetable,” he says. “But what this team has done is given me everything.”

Actually, it has been give and take.

“He competes like no other,” Price says of his coach. “The fire and desire have always been there. But now he can taste it.”

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DUKE’S RECORD

1980-1981: 17-13

1981-1982: 10-17

1982-1983: 11-17

1983-1984: 24-10

1984-1985: 23-8

1985-1986: 37-3 (LOST IN FINALS)

1986-1987: 24-9

1987-1988: 28-7

1988-1989: 28-8

1989-1990: 29-9 (LOST IN FINALS)

1990-1991: 32-7 (NCAA CHAMPIONS)

1991-1992: 34-2 (NCAA CHAMPIONS)

1992-1993: 24-8

1993-1994: 28-6 (LOST IN FINALS)

1994-1995: 13-18 (KRZYZEWSKI’S BACK SURGERY)

1995-1996: 18-13

1996-1997: 22-5 (SO FAR)