Krzyzewski's journey to 1,000 wins

MIKE KRZYZEWSKI'S college basketball teams have won 999 games. His Duke teams have won four national championships, been to 11 Final Fours, won 12 ACC regular-season titles and 13 ACC Tournaments. He was also the head coach for the USA when it won two Olympic gold medals and two world championships.

Two years ago, Rick Pitino called him "our John Wooden."

Coach K can get win No. 1,000 as early as Sunday against St. John's.

Nobody is ever going to touch Wooden's 10 national titles because the game has changed so much from the 1960s and 1970s. Players like Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and Bill Walton would not be around in today's game long enough to be part of a college hoops dynasty.

So Pitino's praise seems accurate. Look at the 1,000 wins Coach K is about to get this way: 20 wins a season for 50 years or, in his case, 25 wins for 40 years. And then consider after his first eight seasons (five at Army, three at Duke), K was 111-106. So, over his last 31 1/2 seasons, his teams have gone 888-202. That's insane.

Let's go conservative and say Duke wins another 15 games this season. That would be 903 wins over the last 32 seasons, 28.2 per season, including 1994-95 when Krzyzewski only coached the first 12 games, going 9-3, before taking the rest of the season off following back surgery while also suffering from exhaustion. Duke went 4-15 the rest of the way under interim coach Pete Gaudet. Those games do not count under K's record, according to Duke. (Now you could debate that, but that debate was never really held and it is not going to be held.)

Coach K was hired at Duke after going 73-59 at Army, which was prescient by the Duke administration. He was not fired after going 38-47 in his first three seasons (and losing the final game of that third season, 109-66 to Virginia in the first round of the ACC Tournament) at Duke, which was brilliant by that same administration.

Since coaching the Blue Devils to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 1984, K has gotten them there every year but the one he did not finish.

And consider Duke's history. This was a very good program under Vic Bubas, close to a national power in the 1960s when the sport was much more a regional game. Bill Foster got Duke to the Final Four in 1978, but that was an aberration rather than a pattern in that era.

Before K, Duke had been to exactly four Final Fours: 1963 when it lost to Loyola-Chicago in the semifinals; 1964 when it lost to UCLA for Wooden's first title; 1966 when it lost to Kentucky in the semifinals; and 1978 when it lost to Kentucky in the championship game.

What people don't remember now is that before 1991, Duke was the school that was good enough to get there, but not good enough to win. Duke got to the Final Four in 1986, 1988, 1989 and 1990, losing in the semis twice and the championship game twice, getting humiliated by UNLV, 103-73, in the 1990 title game.

It all changed one day in Indianapolis when, a year after that epic blowout, Duke took out unbeaten UNLV in the 1991 semifinals. Two nights later, the Blue Devils beat Kansas for the school's first championship. The difference? An older, more confident team, a freshman named Grant Hill, who was every bit the athlete UNLV had on its roster, and a more experienced coach who had learned all of his lessons.

For the last quarter century, there is little argument that Duke has been college basketball's marquee program. Connecticut has won as many titles, but UConn also has down years when it plays in the NIT.

Duke does not have down years. Yes, Duke does lose to Lehigh and Mercer in the NCAA and, yes, Duke is a front-running program that generally does not react well anymore to playing from behind, to teams with great athletes or experienced players with a great X and O plan. After that ridiculous run of seven Final Fours in 9 years back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Duke has been to the Final Four just four times in the last 20 years.

But 1,000 is 1,000 and Coach K to 1K is an incredible accomplishment for a man who has the most unique résumé in basketball history, lacking only some NBA run. But he is a college coach who belonged in college. He turned down NBA chances because he knew better than anyone where he belonged. The record and the records tell his story.

No team in America has lost more close games the last two seasons than Colgate. Through all that, head coach Matt Langel along with assistants Mike Jordan and David Klatsky, all former Penn guards, kept coaching up their team, figuring it had to turn at some point. It has turned.

Colgate is alone in first place in the Patriot League with a 5-1 record. Its only loss was in double-overtime (naturally) at defending champion and preseason league favorite American, one of 19 losses by seven points or fewer in the last 50 games.

If a team keeps getting blown out, it is hopeless. If a team keeps losing close games, it is close. Usually, those close losses turn into wins that get you somewhere. Colgate, which is at Army tonight, may now be heading somewhere, perhaps even to the NCAA Tournament.

* The 24 rebounds Villanova's Daniel Ochefu got at Seton Hall are the most by a player in any game this season.

* There are just 18 players scoring at least 20 points. Two play in Pennsylvania — Penn State's D.J. Newbill from Strawberry Mansion High (21.7 points, fourth nationally) and Drexel's Damion Lee (20.2, 16th).

* Gonzaga is the nation's best shooting team, 53 percent, while Kentucky, going into last night, was holding teams to a nation's best 31.7 percent.

* Only six teams are shooting 50 percent or better. They are a combined 80-16. Four teams hold opponents to 34 percent or less. They are a combined 61-7. Two of them, Kentucky and Virginia, are the only unbeatens.

* In case you wondered whether Kentucky and Virginia were products of their schedules, forget it. UK has played the fourth toughest schedule by opponent records (173-89); UVa the seventh toughest (179-102).

* Wichita State has not lost a game to a Missouri Valley opponent since losing to Creighton in the 2013 Valley title game. That would be 27 straight and counting. Speaking of Creighton, think they miss Doug McDermott. The Bluejays were 27-8, 14-4 in the Big East last season. This season, they are 9-10, 0-6.