There was a time when the end of the one-and-done rule didn't seem like it would affect the Duke Blue Devils.
Duke was the team which won by keeping players around for four years, riding seniors like Shane Battier to the national title in 2001 and Jon Scheyer to the championship in 2010.
This hasn't been the case for a while and certainly isn't the case for this season's Blue Devils, who are now three wins away from winning their second freshmen-led national championship in five years after beating the No. 4-seed Virginia Tech Hokies, 75-73, on Friday in Washington.
Mike Krzyzewski pivoted his approach once to keep up with the sport's changing landscape and might have to again in the next few years.
The NBA is likely to lower its draft age to 18 at some point in the next few years _ likely by the 2022 NBA draft _ which would effectively end the one-and-done era of college basketball.
If he came along in 2022, Zion Williamson probably wouldn't have gone to Duke. R.J. Barrett might have skipped college, too _ at least that's what common knowledge would suggest.
At his pregame press conference Saturday at Capital One Arena, Krzyzewski said it's too soon to be certain players like Williamson and Barrett, a pair of first-team All-Americans this year, would have automatically gone straight to the NBA out of high school.
"I don't think that it's a done deal that everyone will do that because a big thing about going to the NBA is staying in the NBA and trying to be prepared once you go in there, not just physically but emotionally," the Hall of Fame coach said ahead the No. 1-seed Blue Devils' Elite Eight matchup with the No. 2-seed Michigan State Spartans on Sunday. "I applaud and I'm glad the kids will be given the opportunity to make a decision. Am I ready to do that? The other thing, I would hope that the powers to be _ that the NBA will be well-prepared. The NCAA is not prepared right now. They need to be in concert with the NBA in developing a plan that is specific for men's college basketball.
"We should already have a plan and I think what you do is, the NBA has a plan, then we have a plan and you say, well, do they mesh? OK. Oh, that's pretty good, your plan. In other words, we work a little bit better than our government, where we don't just sit on both sides of the aisle."
The NBA's initial proposal was only sent from the league to the National Basketball Players Association in February, so specifics of a potential deal are far from set and so is a potential NCAA response.
Could the NCAA's compensation model change for players? Will the draft allow reentry? What does the NBA G League look like?
These are just a few of the specifics Krzyzewski knows will affect both college and professional basketball moving forward.
Chances are, Krzyzewski will have to change the way he builds Duke teams once again. Chances are, a team like these Blue Devils, which starts four potential first-round freshmen, won't be able to exist much longer.
Duke will look different in 10 years, just like it looked totally different 10 years ago. It's just too soon to know how radical the difference will be.
"Tell me the environment that we're going to be in. That's what I'm saying," Krzyzewski said. "We don't know that environment. I don't know that environment. I don't know what a youngster, how a youngster will be taken care of."
