Tuesday night was not the first time Mike Krzyzewski attempted to coach the Cameron Crazies the same way he coaches his team, and it probably won't be the last.
His apoplectic fury as he berated the Duke students for chanting "Jeff Capel, sit with us" at the Pittsburgh head coach (and former Duke player and assistant) was unusual, though, and Krzyzewski's apology for mishearing the chant still leaves two unanswered questions:
What did Krzyzewski think the students said about Capel?
And why didn't he at least recognize the "sit with us" chant, a Cameron staple for decades?
We may never know the answer to the first. As for the second, clearly just hearing the words "Jeff Capel" amid the din was enough to set him off, especially in the unique circumstance of a former player on the opposite sideline for the first time, on what was already an emotional night for Krzyzewski with the pregame tribute to Kobe Bryant.
"I thought it was something personal," Krzyzewski said afterward. "I apologize to the students for that. I don't apologize for the timing. You shouldn't say that in the middle of the first half in an ACC game. This isn't some cutesy little thing where we can just bounce a ball around and giggle."
We've seen that kind of furor from Krzyzewski in the huddle many times, but not directed toward his own fans, not like that. Putting aside the impropriety of an authority figure on a college campus addressing students in that manner, Krzyzewski has long operated as if he views the Duke campus outside the basketball program as a collection of coachable entities, from the Crazies to the student paper to the administration, with varying degrees of success and failure.
Krzyzewski's attempts to rein in _ and later, ramp up _ the student section go back decades, and played a critical role in the transformation of the Crazies from their rowdy, profane and out of control early days to their choreographed, ritualized antics today, still an essential part of the Duke basketball experience at both ends of that spectrum.
The days are long past when the Crazies threw pizza boxes at Lorenzo Charles after the N.C. State forward was arrested for relieving a pizza delivery man of his cargo, or condoms and women's underwear at Herman Veal, a Maryland player accused of rape (he was later cleared by a controversial campus investigation). Krzyzewski finally had enough, and his commendable public criticism of the student section in the mid-90s led to the more sanitized fan performances of this era.
He may even have pushed things too far in that direction. Spontaneity and attendance both dipped, and by 2008, Krzyzewski went so far as to threaten to take seats away from the students after few showed up for a preseason exhibition. Four years later, he praised them for turning the arena into "Club Cameron" when the atmosphere once again met his standards.
"I really thought that when our fans left today, they said 'We won,' " Krzyzewski said in 2012 after a win over Ohio State. "That's when Cameron's great. Not that the kids won, but we won. In my years here, when we're able to do that, get that, there's nothing like it."
While they may have been copied elsewhere over the past 30 years, and matched in decibels in some places, they remain a force unto themselves, especially in the cramped and intimate contours of Cameron.
There is indeed a long history of Krzyzewski exerting his influence on the students, and he has yelled from the bench to silence an offensive chant before, but his rage Tuesday night was unlike anything the Crazies _ or anyone else _ had seen before. It was quite a sight, the winningest coach in college basketball history red-faced and unhinged, screaming at his own stunned fans, restrained by a referee.
At a time when the Crazies do the same chants at the same times in every game, dance to the same songs at the same television timeouts every night _ the "sit with us" chant, for top recruits, celebrities and former players, has long been a part of that repertoire _ it's hard to imagine them doing anything that could get Krzyzewski that angry.
Or justify his actions toward them Tuesday night.
