Can Duke deliver to Mike Krzyzewski a final ACC tournament championship to end his 42-year run in the conference? Or will North Carolina, Notre Dame, Wake Forest or someone else in the league come along and cut down the nets?
This year’s ACC tournament from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. will be dominated by the storyline of Coach K looking for his 16th ACC tournament title. The Blue Devils won the ACC regular-season title, but ended the regular season with a loss to rival North Carolina that was the talk of the sport.
The action starts on Tuesday with three early-round games, with six teams whose path to the NCAA Tournament means means needing to win five games in as many days in order to claim the automatic bid. Bubble team Wake Forest gets started on Wednesday, followed by Duke, Notre Dame, North Carolina and Miami on Thursday. All four earned double-byes based on their regular-season finish.This is the last time I will present my Top 25 rankings during the 2021-22 college basketball season. The next time I conduct this exercise, it will be for my way-too-early Top 25 following the 2022 NCAA Tournament. We’ve waited anxiously for the postseason to arrive, but now that it’s here, I want to tap the brakes. What so ever will I do without the unanimous approbation and support I get from The Athletic’s subscribers every Monday? Who will reach out to me on social media and give me a digital pat on my digital back for my insight and foresight? Please, won’t you still be my neighbor?
Yes, there’s plenty of excitement ahead, but before the Madness gets started, we’ve got one final turn of this gilded wheel. So once more, with feeling, I present to you the correct order of the top 25 teams in men’s college basketball. Meet ya in the comments section. Please be kind.DURHAM, N.C. — With 13 seconds left in the game, Mike Krzyzewski gazed across the court. The action was at the other end, where Armando Bacot took free throws. But for a long pause, Krzyzewski didn’t even glance that way. He just stared into space, his face showing no emotion. Finally roused from his daze, he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. Behind him, an army of his former players, three rows’ worth, shared the same vacant expression while a crowd, so frenzied it threatened to burst hours before tipoff, sat somewhere between shock and anguish. “Oh my god, oh my god,’’ one student said, a near maniacal laugh punctuating the two gasps of astonishment.
For months, Duke scurried to pull together the perfect last hurrah. A banner — “There Is Only 1K. Thank you” — was hung on the front facade of Cameron Indoor Stadium and another on the Science Drive parking garage. A harried ticket office fielded requests from the famous — Adam Silver, Jerry Seinfeld and Dirk Nowitzki among them. Sets were erected for ESPN’s “College GameDay” and the ACC Network, and then came the hard part, putting together the program, and sandwiching a basketball game in between. Krzyzewski’s daughter/ Duke assistant athletic director Debbie Savarino ran point on much of it, trying to somehow find the delicate balance of a beautiful sendoff without ratcheting up the emotion so much Krzyzewski couldn’t do his job.
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