DURHAM -- Ben Bennett was a freshman quarterback at Duke in 1980, the same year the Blue Devils' new basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski, was making his start.
Talk about an unlikely duo. Bennett was a brash, outspoken California kid. Krzyzewski was quiet, intense.
"The football and basketball offices were only 15 yards apart, so we had to see them every day," Bennett said Friday. "I never looked at him as the national coach of the year or the best coach in the history of college basketball. I always look at him as Coach K, the guy who back in his first three years people wanted to hang him.
"It's a very neat thing for me to have gone back that far and have him in the same class."
That is, the 2011 class inducted Friday into the Duke Athletics Hall of Fame. Krzyzewski and Bennett, who set seven NCAA records and passed for 9,614 yards in his four seasons, were joined by former All-America golfer Jenny Chuasiriporn and tennis star Vanessa Webb.
And Bobby Hurley. It seemed fitting that the uber competitive point guard who helped lead the Blue Devils to national championships in 1991 and 1992 - the first of Krzyzewski's four NCAA titles - and had an NCAA-record 1,076 career assists go into the hall with his coach.
"I played for maybe the greatest coach of all time," Hurley said. "I was the lucky guy. Coach allowed me to be myself, to learn from mistakes at times early in my career because he had the vision of maybe what I could do and what I could ultimately bring to the table.
"He trusted me. He was secure enough to allow our team to be good without micro-managing every possession."
Krzyzewski will be entering his 32nd season at Duke, having won 13 ACC championships and taken teams to 11 Final Fours. He has 900 career victories, needing just three to pass his former coach, Bob Knight, as the winningest coach in Division I basketball history.
Krzyzewski conceded he has a hard time wrapping his arms around the "winningest ever" tag he's about to inherit.
"I don't like to put my arms around any one win, yet alone a collection of wins," he said. "Because if you do, how can you grab for more? I want to keep grabbing for more.
"If I had said, and I'm not saying this, that this is my last year, then it would have more significance because it would be a perceived ending. I'm going to coach as long as my health is (good), for a while. So I should win a few more. I better."
Krzyzewski already has been inducted the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He's in several other halls, including the National American-Polish Sports Hall of Fame.
Why did it take so long at Duke? Active coaches and personnel were not eligible until the rule was changed this year - something Krzyzewski said he did not know at first.
"When I heard I was in, I was wondering if (athletic director) Kevin White was trying to get me out of here," he joked.
That's not happening. And Krzyzewski said the Duke hall, for him, was the best. As Bennett would say, it didn't seem very likely in the early 1980s.
'It's kind of neat to do it when you're still coaching because you get to bring all the guys in," Krzyzewski said. "It's like a little bit of a renewal or revival ...
"When you're in a hall of fame it's kind of you're immortalized. It's forever. And to have that honor given to you from the place you love, Duke's done a lot for me. People say we've done a lot for Duke, but Duke's done more for us than we'll ever do for Duke."
