A Season Inside

by John Feinstein

  The opener was your basic yawner. Maryland had shot its wad the day before. What’s more, the Terrapins didn’t really think they could beat the Tar Heels. After an early 15–12 Maryland lead, Carolina went on a 16–4 binge to take a 28–19 lead. Maryland got back to within six by halftime but Carolina started the second half with a 9–2 run and Maryland never again got closer than eight—and that with a minute to go. The final was 74–64.

  The only entertainment was provided by the Duke students who, each time the Carolina band played its fight song, stood and held up their fingers to indicate the number of times the song had been played. There are those who believe the Carolina pep band knows only two songs: the fight song and the national anthem. But, in its defense, the band plays the national anthem faster than anyone in the country, clocked at an average of fifty-four seconds when in midseason form. In an era when some singers stretch the anthem to over two minutes, a fifty-four-second rendition cannot be underappreciated.

  The other amusing moment came after the game when Carolina’s Jeff Lebo, talking about why it was important for the Tar Heels to win the tournament, commented, “We’re probably the only ones who thought we had a chance at the start of the season.”

  Carolina had been a consensus pick to win the league in preseason. When this was pointed out to Lebo, he said, “Well, I saw some preseason magazines that picked us second, third, even fourth.” If a magazine existed that had picked the Tar Heels fourth, no one had ever seen it. If it did exist, one might guess that it would cease to exist making those sorts of predictions very quickly. Anyway, Lebo was convinced he and his teammates were the underdogs. His coach wouldn’t have it any other way.

  Game two was as tense as game one had been dull. Krzyzewski had made a point of not talking about revenge to his team beforehand. Instead, he had just said again and again, “Play our game, not theirs.”

  State’s game, as had been proven earlier, was hard for Duke to handle. With the two talented big men, Shackleford and Chucky Brown, and the slashing point guard, Corchiani, State was always going to give Duke trouble. What’s more, the Blue Devils were tired; they had played until midnight on Friday and then had to come back and play at 4 P.M. Saturday afternoon. This was the same route State had taken to the championship a year ago. It could be done.

  At halftime Duke led 38–36. Just as they had done in Durham, the Blue Devils came out flying at the start of the second half, building a 51–41 lead. But State had seen this before. Valvano inserted Rodney Monroe, his designated Duke-killer, and Monroe began his devastation act again. With some surprising help from backup guard Kelsey Weems, he shot the Wolfpack right back into the game, scoring nine points in four minutes. A Weems free throw tied it at 60–60 and the script looked familiar.

  But the Blue Devils were getting some unexpected help of their own. Ala Abdelnaby, the talented but often immature sophomore, came off the bench to score 12 points in nine minutes, giving Duke an offensive spark it needed. Still, when Monroe bombed a three-pointer that Ferry deflected to no avail, State led 67–64 with 5:50 left. Ferry missed a jumper. Shackleford posted and was fouled. Two free throws would make the lead 5.

  “This is right where we want to be,” Valvano thought on the bench. “We’ve got them thinking, ‘Oh no, not again.’ We’re on a roll. We’re in control.”

  But standing on the foul line, King was not thinking desperate thoughts. “I looked at Shack and said to myself, ‘He’s going to miss.’ I just thought sooner or later our luck had to change against these guys.”

  Sure enough, Shackleford missed. Ferry hit to cut the margin to one and then Weems went to the line for another one-and-one. He missed too. Ferry hit a short jumper with 4:15 left and Duke was back up, 68–67.

  “Now it’s just a battle,” Valvano said. “They had a chance to ice us, we had a chance to ice them. No one did it. Now it comes down to one play. Those kind, anything can happen.”

  Valvano was right. Both teams were reeling with exhaustion. Del Negro, clutch as always, put State back up, 69–68. But then came the shot that should have told people this was Duke’s day.

  The shot came from Phil Henderson, the enigmatic sophomore guard. With Duke’s offense looking totally disorganized and State all over Ferry, he nailed a three-pointer. That made it 71–69. Chucky Brown tied it at 71–71, but missed still another free throw. Duke called time with 2:06 left to make sure to get a good shot.

  The person Krzyzewski wanted to see shooting in this situation was Ferry. Even on a day when Ferry’s shot wasn’t dropping, he was the key to the Duke offense. He was such a talented passer, such an instinctive player, that any time he handled the ball Duke’s offense improved. “Good things tend to happen,” King said, “when we get the ball to Danny.”

  This time, they got the ball to Danny and he drove the lane for a short, pull-up jumper. That made it 73–71. There was still 1:45 left. State wanted the ball in Del Negro’s hands almost as much as Duke wanted it in Ferry’s. He drove the baseline, but with King all over him his shot rolled off the rim. Snyder skied over everyone for the rebound. There was 1:10 left. Duke could not run the clock out. Again, the ball went to Ferry. This time, though, he missed and State had one more chance.

  “That kind of situation, last thirty seconds, game on the line, everything is so frenzied it’s usually good for the offense,” Valvano said later. “Almost always, someone on defense will get confused somewhere along the line and you’ll get a good shot. But Duke isn’t your average defensive team. I didn’t want to call time-out, but I had to.”

  Valvano called time with twelve seconds left. He wanted to get the ball to Del Negro or Monroe, his two best one-on-one players offensively. Let them do what they could and send Shackleford and Brown to the boards.

  On the other bench, Krzyzewski was thinking with Valvano. He also had a picture in his mind that he couldn’t get to go away. “It was a Rodney Monroe highlight film,” he said later. “In it he makes about a million shots against Duke and the last one is a three-pointer at the buzzer in the ACC Tournament.”

  For a split second, Krzyzewski was tempted to switch King onto Monroe. But he resisted. Keep the senior on the senior. Del Negro was still State’s most dangerous player. Krzyzewski told King to face-guard Del Negro and Henderson to face-guard Monroe. In other words, their sole responsibility was to deny them the ball. They weren’t to worry about helping out or double-teaming.

  Leaving the huddle, thinking with his coach as he always seemed to do, King had the same disturbing vision of Monroe. He walked over to Henderson, pointed at Monroe and said, “Don’t let him get the ball.”

  Henderson listened. The ball came in to Corchiani. King and Henderson were all over Del Negro and Monroe. With time running down, Corchiani tried to throw a lob in to Shackleford, who had gotten behind Ferry. But Corchiani had thrown the ball in to Shackleford on a straight line instead of on an angle. “A straight-line lob, there’s time for the help to get there,” Valvano said. “On an angle, the help can’t get there.”

  Robert Brickey was the help. He came up behind Shackleford. There was contact. Valvano screamed for a foul. There was no call. The ball rolled off Shackleford’s leg and out of bounds with five seconds left.

  Duke was able to run the clock out. It had won—survived—73–71.

  Valvano was crushed. He had thought his team was going to win the game and then find a way to beat Carolina. Now it was Duke that would have the chance. Even so, as he and Krzyzewski shook hands, they hugged. They were an odd couple, these two. For thirteen years—first at Iona and Army for five, then at State and Duke for eight—they had coached against each other. They were as different as two men could be except that each, using entirely different methods, was very successful. Twice, Valvano had beaten Krzyzewski. But in the game both wanted most, Krzyzewski had won.

  King felt totally drained by the game. “We worked so hard to win it felt so good,” he said. “I was ready to celebrate right then.”

&nbs
p; It was Snyder who brought everyone back to earth. As his teammates were congratulating themselves in the locker room, he walked around saying quietly, “Carolina. One more. Let’s go.”

  DAY THREE

  There were very few people in the Greensboro Coliseum for the Duke–North Carolina final who gave the Blue Devils much chance. To begin with, history said that Dean Smith did not often lose to the same team or coach three times in a season. In twenty-seven years, three coaches had done it to him: Vic Bubas, the great Duke coach of the ’60s; Norman Sloan, when he had David Thompson at State in the ’70s; and Bobby Cremins, during his dream season at Georgia Tech in 1985.

  There was more. Carolina was rested. The Tar Heels had played early Friday and won easily. They had played first Saturday and won easily. Duke had played very late Friday and won, but not easily. It had played second Saturday and had fallen across the finish line, exhausted.

  And, there was the old Smith theory that it’s very hard to beat a good team three times in a season. That had worked for Duke on Saturday. Now, it would work against it.

  But in an ACC Tournament final, logic is wasted. Like the tournament itself, the final is unique. The atmosphere is different from an NCAA game, or any other game for that matter. The two teams know each other. They are always playing for a third time. The players are often friends. The coaches know each others’ foibles. And, there is the Krzyzewski theory of being King of the Block. This is the street fight where everyone stands around in a circle while the two big guys go at it to see who is boss.

  On Saturday night, after the team had met to go through matchups, King, Strickland, Snyder, and Ferry sat in the hotel watching the movie Stakeout. They had become an almost inseparable foursome, the two seniors and the two juniors. All four had been part of an ACC championship in 1986. But that had been different. They had been complementary players then. Now, they were the nucleus. “We wanted one we could absolutely call our own,” King said.

  It would not be easy and they knew it. King had shut down his friend Lebo twice. Doing it a third straight time would be tough. Reid had played poorly in Durham. He wasn’t likely to be so bad again. They talked about the game, the matchups, and how much they wanted to win until exhaustion overtook them and they went to bed.

  The referees for the final would be Joe Forte, Dick Paparo, and Tom Fraim. For Fraim, this was special: his first ACC final after twenty-three years of officiating. It would also be his last. He had decided to retire at the end of the season to spend more time with his family. On Saturday night, all the officials got together and took him out for a farewell dinner.

  Sunday morning was cool and gorgeous, a reminder that spring was not far away. The arena would be split between Duke and Carolina fans. Many of the other schools’ fans had gone home, selling their tickets to Duke and Carolina people on their way out.

  Both teams came out blazing. The first four baskets of the game were three-pointers. Brickey picked up his second foul early. Krzyzewski gambled and left him in. King had been right about Lebo. He opened the game with a three-pointer, then hit another. By halftime, he had 13 points.

  It was 37–37 at intermission, Carolina outscoring Duke 10–1 during the last four minutes. Walking off the floor, King heard the Carolina players saying, “Yeah, yeah, we got ’em going now.” His mind went back seven days to Durham. “It was 36–36 then. I thought, ‘Twenty minutes. Just suck it up for twenty minutes.’ ”

  That was Krzyzewski’s theme at halftime. He knew his team was tired and sore. But this was no time for nursing wounds. They had to regroup and come back out with as much fire as they had displayed at the start of the game. King wondered if his team could hang on. Reid hadn’t scored a single point in the first half. In fact, the Carolina starting front line had two points combined. That wasn’t going to last.

  In the other locker room, Smith thought his team was right where it wanted to be. He knew that his front line wasn’t going to be shut out for forty minutes. He knew Duke had to be tired. “I was very confident,” he said. “We weren’t shooting well, but my gosh, the effort was certainly there.”

  The Tar Heels came out blazing in the second half. Ferry missed twice for Duke and Williams and Reid scored for Carolina. Krzyzewski took a quick time-out. He could feel the game slipping away. During the time-out he made a decision. “If they don’t show me something quickly, I’m coming in with the kids.”

  The kids, the second team, had been coming in as a unit in the first half for the last three games. But never in the second half, especially not with an ACC title at stake and Carolina on a roll. But Krzyzewski felt he needed to do something drastic.

  Snyder did break the second half shutout—the 4–0 start meant the run had reached 14–1—with a three-pointer that cut the lead to 41–40. But Reid immediately went inside and King was forced to foul him to prevent a dunk. It was his fourth foul. Reid only made one of two but Krzyzewski had made his decision: In came the kids. The starters were surprised.

  “Carolina was all wound up,” King said. “They were saying to each other, ‘Come on, let’s make this a big run.’ We were definitely down. We were feeling sorry for ourselves. If a couple more possessions had gone by like that, it might have gotten to the point where we just said, ‘well, we gave it our best effort.’ Sitting on the bench, we watched the young guys. We figured if they cared enough to play that hard, we could suck it up one more time.”

  The kiddie corps didn’t score. But during the two minutes they played, the Tar Heels only stretched the lead to 46–40. Snyder was the first starter to go back in and he promptly hit another three-pointer to breathe some life back into his team. Then, John Smith, still in the game for Ferry, made a spectacular spinning lay-up, got fouled, and made the free throw. The score was tied at 46–46. The rest of the starters came back. The run was done. Duke had its second wind.

  From there, the game was anybody’s. Fatigue became a factor for both teams. Carolina couldn’t score, but neither could Duke. Smith put the Blue Devils up with a neat inside move, 58–57, with 5:07 left. Ferry then hit a huge shot, a three-pointer with 4:14 left. That pushed the lead to 61–57. Both teams kept missing. Scott Williams’s two free throws cut it to 61–59 with 2:26 left. Ferry missed. Bucknall charged at the other end.

  Carolina fouled King with 1:28 left to keep Duke from using up too much clock. King has always been a poor foul shooter. “When I was eight, I can remember not being able to make free throws,” he said. “It just never changed. This time, though, I thought I was going to make it. I just told myself the shot was going in. I was shocked when it didn’t.”

  So, apparently, were the Tar Heels. While Reid and Kevin Madden watched helplessly, Ferry grabbed the ball off the rim and quickly put it back in. Again, something that never happened to Carolina had happened to Carolina. Careless boxing out in a critical situation had been costly. Now, it was 63–59 with 1:16 left. Carolina worked the ball inside again and Madden was fouled. He made both free throws with fifty-seven ticks to go. It was 63–61. Duke had to score again.

  The Blue Devils let the game clock run to twenty seconds, the shot clock to ten. Naturally, the ball went to Ferry. But Lebo made a brilliant play, dropping off his man and reaching in on Ferry as he tried to go the basket. He stripped the ball cleanly and took off, heading for a tying lay-up. Freshman King Rice was with Lebo. The only Blue Devil back was Snyder. Lebo fed Rice and they went in on Snyder two-on-one.

  “At first I thought sure Rice would go back to Jeff,” Snyder said later. “I thought about going towards him but then out of the corner of my eye I saw Kevin [Strickland] coming back and getting close to Jeff. I gambled and stayed with Rice.”

  Rice also saw Strickland. It would have taken a miraculous play by Strickland to stop Lebo if he had gotten the ball back. But Rice didn’t want to take the chance. He went to the basket, looking for a lay-up or a foul. Snyder, 6–3 and perhaps the second-best athlete on the Duke team (behind Brickey), jumped with him. Rice had to t
ry to shoot over Snyder. The ball rolled off the rim. Strickland grabbed it, turned and saw everyone else still sprinting toward him and the Carolina basket.

  Except for Brickey, who was a step behind—but now a step ahead—of everyone. Instinctively, he released the ball to Brickey who went in so pumped to dunk that he rammed the ball off the rim. It went high in the air and, remarkably, it was Snyder who grabbed it. He had turned and raced back downcourt, taking nothing for granted. With time running out, Lebo had to foul. Four seconds were now left.

  Carolina called time to let Snyder think about the situation. If he missed, Carolina could tie with a two-point shot, win with a three. If he made one, a three could still tie the game. If he made both, it was over.

  Snyder was the first one out of the huddle. He went right to the foul line while King gathered the rest of the team to double-check on matchups. Standing on the line, waiting to hand him the ball was Forte, who had made the call on Lebo.

  “That was a good call, Mr. Forte,” Snyder said, glad to have someone to talk to.

  “Thank you, Quin,” Forte answered. “You’re right.”

  They both laughed. Both teams were now in position. As Snyder stepped up to the line, King walked up behind him. “End this shit,” he hissed. Snyder nodded and took the ball. He stared at the rim and shot. Swish. It was 64–61. Snyder took the ball again, his eyes never leaving the rim. He aimed and shot again. Swish. 65–61.

  Now, it was over. Brickey intercepted the inbounds pass and time ran out. Krzyzewski was so thrilled that he forgot to shake Smith’s hand before joining the celebration. He was in midleap when he looked down and saw Smith standing there, forlornly, waiting to congratulate him. “I felt like an idiot,” Coach K said later. “That was bad after a game like that. If anyone thinks this tournament is meaningless, they should have watched this game.”