CHUCK LIDDY - cliddy@newsobserver.com
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski (right) speaks with mentor and former NCAA D1 record holder Bobby Knight.
NEW YORK -- When Mike Krzyzewski won the first game of his coaching career, the player who would deliver him his 903rd was still almost 16 years away from being born.
Andre Dawkins was born on Sept. 19, 1991, years after Army beat Lehigh on Nov. 28, 1975, to inaugurate a coaching career that still rolls on 36 years later and when, on a Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, Dawkins scored 26 points to help Duke to a 74-69 win over Michigan State that meant nothing and everything.
It moved Duke to 3-0 on the season, gave the Blue Devils a second quality win over an NCAA tournament-caliber team, and secured Krzyzewski's place in basketball history, not that he wasn't there already, in front of his own coach at Army, the man who until Tuesday night held the record with 902 wins, Bobby Knight.
When it was over, Krzyzewski shook hands with Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, then headed straight across the court to Knight, who was working as an analyst for ESPN.
Krzyzewski and Knight shared a prolonged embrace as his players donned '903' hats.
After a presentation at midcourt with NCAA president Mark Emmert, it was on to his wife, Mickie, sitting behind the Duke bench, and then a huddle with his team before he was ushered off the court, with more celebration to come later in the night.
But this 903rd win is just another win for a coach who has won hundreds.
It doesn't secure a 12th trip to the Final Four. It doesn't win a fifth national title.
It doesn't win another Olympic gold medal.
"I don't know yet," Krzyzewski said. "I just play every game, coach every game the same. They just start adding up. I think it'll mean a lot when it's all over. I don't know when that will be."
It doesn't set the bar, because Krzyzewski is nowhere near finished.
It's a nice nonconference win on a November night that gets the record out of the way so Krzyzewski can move on to the real business at hand: getting a very young Duke team ready for ACC play, ready to win games like this in March and April when they matter for reasons nothing to do with the coach and how long he's been around.
And oh, he's been around long enough to watch his players become pros, become broadcasters, become coaches. Many of them were at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, and not just sitting beside him on the Duke bench - Grant Hill, Shane Battier, Bobby Hurley, Mike Dunleavy and Jay Bilas, just to name a few - along with a few of his Olympic players who didn't go to Duke.
At this point in his career, with the record and the national titles and the Final Fours and the gold medal, it's fair to ask, what's next? The answer, as always, is another game, another win, another step forward toward the goals that really matter - ACC championships, Final Fours and national titles.
"He's just a winner," said Hurley, the point guard on Krzyzewski's first national title team. "That's kind of what drives him every day, to be successful.
"He's got new teams, new players constantly coming in the program that he wants to coach, he wants to help get them to the next level, and to continue the tradition of the program. That's what drives him."
He won't be happy with the way the Blue Devils played late, as a 20-point lead dwindled down to five. It'll be a learning moment for Krzyzewski, once the 903 hats his players wore Tuesday have been cleared out of the locker room.
"It's just time, time to move on," Krzyzewski said.
The record will continue to grow, but in the background now, as Krzyzewski goes back to work - after more than three decades and 903 wins.
