DURHAM, N.C. — In what would have been a more fitting tribute than most of the gifts Mike Krzyzewski will receive on this farewell tour, Georgia Tech got clearance from the NCAA for Bobby Cremins to sit on the Yellow Jackets’ bench Tuesday night at Cameron, giving him one last seat across the court from his old rival.
In the end, Cremins couldn’t make it, because of non-COVID health reasons. Truly, a potentially special moment lost, hearkening back to the long-ago early days of Krzyzewski’s Duke career.
“Bobby and I, we’re two of the guys in this league, man,” Krzyzewski said. “He and I and Jimmy (Valvano) were, during that time, that was a moment. A decade. The Georgia Tech-Duke games from about ‘85 to the early ‘90s were some of the elite games in the history of this league.”
This one was not, and COVID did have everything to do with that. Given the way things went, maybe it was for the best that Cremins didn’t have to see this one in person.
Duke was playing its first game in 13 days, Georgia Tech its second in 15. Neither team could find the basket with a map. Rock fights would object to calling this game a rock fight. They combined to miss 44 shots in the first half. As the N&O’s Steve Wiseman tweeted at halftime, Cameron needed a blindfold mandate as much as a mask mandate.
Georgia Tech, to its credit for a team that hasn’t exactly lived up to the mantle of reigning ACC champion, hung tough the whole way, getting within six late. Duke ground out a 69-57 win on defense and at the free-throw line, a resilient performance in difficult circumstances.
“That was an exhausting game,” Krzyzewski said, and later: “We’re not close to being the team we were before the break. But we can be. We just got to keep going.”
The pandemic hasn’t been great for college basketball, to take “all politics are local” to an extreme. Last year, empty buildings robbed the game of so much of its character until March and April, and even then it was a limp imitation. The fans are back this winter, at least, even at Duke, but the plethora of COVID pauses have robbed teams everywhere, not just Duke and Georgia Tech, of any continuity.
Some teams in lower leagues are still feeling the effects of last season’s disruptions that way. It’s a grind. It’s going to be a grind the rest of the way.
What’s left is games like this, in which two rusty teams — including what is clearly the most talented team in the ACC by some margin — look very much the part. It’s not ideal. It’s better than not playing at all.
That’s sort of like how Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner’s useless face shield — like COVID, it’s back and better than ever! — is better than wearing nothing at all, although the margin in this case is smaller. Is it helping prevent the spread of COVID in any way? No. Is Pastner wearing it again strictly because he’s in on the joke? Absolutely.
Pastner had as lengthy a postgame conversation with Krzyzewski as any coach in a long time, discussing not only the Cremins situation but a late-game flashpoint with Georgia Tech star Michael Devoe, who appeared to say something to Krzyzewski on the Duke bench as he called a timeout. Krzyzewski proceeded to stalk Devoe across halfcourt, gesticulating.
It wasn’t the first time something like this has happened at Duke this year. Krzyzewski has collected as many apologies from opposing players as rocking chairs. There was a weird sequence in the home opener against Army, Krzyzewski’s alma mater, that ended with Army guard Jalen Rucker running over to the Duke bench to apologize to Krzyzewski. Devoe appeared to do the same with Krzyzewski as time expired.
“In the heat of the moment, you can’t do that, no matter what the situation is,” Pastner said. “No player should ever talk to an opposing coach. I don’t know exactly on that, but I will talk to MIchael and have that private conversation with him, and I know Michael Devoe has the highest level of respect for Coach K.”
That happening twice at Cameron this season is not unlike everybody going through the COVID rites of passage all over again in this season of deja vu. Omicron ripped through both teams in December, so the good news is that it should be behind them. It appears impossible to avoid, so you’d rather deal with it now than in March, which is what happened to Duke last year. After playing it as safe as possible for months – not even parents were allowed inside Cameron — COVID finally punctured the Blue Devils’ bubble at the worst possible time.
Everyone’s allowed inside Cameron this season, which made for an odd backdrop, the obvious paradox of a nearly full student section at a Duke basketball game amid a COVID surge in which the university has deemed the campus unsafe for in-person classes. In this case, student basketball attendees underwent a game-day rapid testing regime that would be financially and logistically prohibitive to do campus-wide.
That goes a long way to reconcile the incongruity, even if the optics still aren’t exactly great. The same could be said of Duke’s win Tuesday night. It wasn’t easy on the eyes. Cremins may have missed it, but he didn’t miss much. In this season of disruption, Duke will take it and run.
