Duke Basketball Tournament Views

General Goods

With the class of Dawkins, Alarie and company now seniors, the 1986 Duke team won an NCAA-record 37 games while claiming titles in the Big Apple NIT, ACC regular season, ACC Tournament and the NCAA East Regional. They established a school record with a 21-game winning streak during the year (that has since been broken), were undefeated at home, advanced to the NCAA Championship game in Dallas and played more games (40) than any other team in college basketball history.

In 1992, the stage was set for an unprecedented chapter in college basketball history and Coach K and his squad were up to the task. Behind National Player of the Year Christian Laettner and fellow All-Americas Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill, the Blue Devils rolled to a 34-2 record and held the No. 1 ranking from start to finish (18 polls). Duke won its second consecutive NCAA crown with a 71-51 victory over Michigan. Along the way, the Blue Devils captured their fifth consecutive regional championship, won the ACC regular season and tournament titles and equaled the school record to that point for ACC victories with 14.

Krzyzewski led Duke to another outstanding season in 2001-02. The Blue Devils finished 31-4 overall, won the ACC Tournament title for a record fourth consecutive year, were a number one seed in the NCAA Tournament for a record fifth straight season and finished number one in the final AP poll for the fourth consecutive season, another NCAA first. Three Duke players — Jason Williams, Mike Dunleavy and Carlos Boozer — earned All-America honors and Williams became just the seventh repeat winner of National Player of the Year honors in college basketball history. That Duke threesome also departed for the NBA, where all three were drafted. Williams and Dunleavy were selected second and third, respectively, making them just the second set of teammates to be taken among the top three picks of the NBA Draft (UCLA’s Lew Alcindor and Lucius Allen went one and three in 1969).

The basketball program won it's 1000th game in 1974, making Duke only the eighth school in NCAA history to reach that figure. In a turnaround, Coach Bill Foster's 1978 Blue Devils, who had gone 2–10 in the ACC the previous year, won the conference tournament and went on to the NCAA championship game, where they fell to Kentucky. Mike Gminski ('80) and Jim Spanarkel ('79) ran the floor.