Along with guiding his No. 2 seeded Blue Devils into the NCAA Tournament, which starts today, the guy has been moonlighting as the U.S. senior men's national team coach.

He's living a jam-packed double life and loving every spoonful.

"It's been unbelievable and incredibly interesting and gotten me even more excited about basketball," Krzyzewski said. "The whole thing has helped make me better."

Krzyzewski, 61, has been blazing a new trail for USA Basketball as the first senior men's national team coach.

In prior years, coaches and players were recruited for one event -- a world championship, an Olympics, a qualifying tournament. This time around, players and coaches had to commit not several months but three years to prepare for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

For a man who has run one of the most successful college basketball programs for 28 seasons, and who took a sabbatical in 1995 because he pushed himself too hard physically, adding another job for a three-year period might seem ill-advised.

Krzyzewski views it as serving his country, just as he did as a West Point cadet and Army captain.

He also sees it as another chance to learn.

"The thing about sports and leadership is that no one knows everything," he said. "If you stop learning, you stop living. It's not about a system; it's about learning what parts of the game work for the team you have.

"We're trying to do that well with both of our teams."

In the summer of 2005, Jerry Colangelo, the managing director of the senior men's national team, asked Krzyzewski if he wanted to coach the national team en route to Beijing.

Krzyzewski thought only of the honor and said yes to Colangelo, former owner of the NBA's Phoenix Suns and Major League Baseball's Arizona Diamondbacks.

"I didn't know what it would entail, but I knew there would be sacrifices," Krzyzewski said.

Krzyzewski did have to convince his family it was a good idea. His wife, Mickie, and three daughters were concerned it would take time away from a family that includes three sons-in-law and five grandchildren.

Daughters Debbie Savarino, Lindy Frasher and Jamie Spatola balked at giving up the annual family vacation.

"When I talked to Mike, I said to him, 'When you tell me this thing is an honor for you to be selected, I'm telling you a bigger honor is that your daughters are not willing to give up the family vacation for it,' " Mickie Krzyzewski said.

But she said the U.S. team job has not cut out family time. The family has spent more time relaxing together the past two years, adding a long family weekend in October before Duke practice begins. In June, they vacationed on Figure Eight Island off the North Carolina coast.

Still, Krzyzewski has had to make sacrifices. As a special assistant to Duke's president, Richard Brodhead, he had to cut back on last-minute meetings with visitors and other special duties he performs. Krzyzewski discussed the job with Brodhead and athletic director Joe Alleva, and both supported the move.

Krzyzewski also has cut back on his speaking engagements, though the requests have only increased during his U.S. tenure.

"Financially, that knocks off a chunk," he said, "but timewise I had to do that."

Mickie Krzyzewski said her husband also has vigilantly cut back on salt in his diet, exercised daily and turned off game tapes at a reasonable hour to get a regular amount of sleep in order to physically handle the two jobs.

"He has said 'no' more often but, moreso than safeguarding the family time, our biggest priority is protecting him," she said.

Bumps along the way

Krzyzewski said reprioritizing his time allowed him to guide the Duke program and the U.S. team more successfully.

This year's Duke team is among the best in the country and is expected to make a run at the Final Four. The Blue Devils open NCAA Tournament play against Belmont at 7:10 tonight.

"I don't think it's taken attention or time away from anything we're doing here" at Duke, the coach said.

Since October 2005, when Krzyzewski officially accepted the job, he has worked to keep his Duke duties separate from those of the U.S. coach. Still, the knock on Krzyzewski had been that coaching the U.S. team took time away from Duke.

When he was a year into the dual duties, his 2006 Duke team, expected to challenge for a title, lost in the NCAA Tournament's round of 16. In August 2006, the U.S. team won a bronze medal, not gold, at the world championships in Japan.

Then last season, a young Duke team went 22-11, surprising by Duke standards.

In the midst of it all, false accusations were made against three Duke lacrosse players, generating worldwide headlines.

Krzyzewski, the most public face Duke has, was criticized for not being more engaged. He says he was asked to work behind the scenes and did, but he also acknowledges he was tending to national team business around the country as the crisis unfolded.

"When the lacrosse situation first began, I wasn't here in Durham," he said. "I was with USA Basketball and just getting started, trying to learn the NBA and international games. I had tunnel vision into that."

As the Olympics draw closer, Krzyzewski has said that both programs are on his mind plenty and that it has become impossible to always separate them mentally.

"All the U.S. time is Duke time, too, because I'm getting better -- hopefully I am -- because I'm teaching and learning," Krzyzewski said in early February. "Like right now, I think of USA Basketball every day, not to the extent I do about Duke basketball. That would be irresponsible. But I watch what [national team members] are doing."

Learning and bonding

In many ways, the U.S. job has helped improve the Blue Devils program, Krzyzewski says.

While winning 27 games this season, Duke implemented elements of national team assistant Mike D'Antoni's up-tempo Phoenix Suns offense and national team assistant Jim Boeheim's stringent Syracuse zone defense.

Krzyzewski's Duke assistants -- Johnny Dawkins, Steve Wojciechowski and Chris Collins -- also are U.S. staff members, so it's easy to stay on the same page, no matter the topic.

International competition hasn't conflicted with recruiting.

When the U.S. team won a gold medal at the 2007 FIBA Americas qualifying tournament -- it was the first U.S. gold in international play since 2000 -- the event coincided with a summer period in which NCAA coaches aren't allowed to coach their athletes.

Also, the U.S. trained in July 2006 and July 2007 in Las Vegas, which also hosts several major high school basketball tournaments. The Duke coaches would have been in Vegas anyway to evaluate recruits and were to do some of that while in town.

Krzyzewski has been OK with the sacrifices because he received unsolicited commitments from his assistants that they would not leave to coach other schools.

"To me, it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing," Collins said. "He asked us to be involved, and it didn't take more than a second to say yes. I love being at Duke. I love being with the national team. I'm in no hurry. ...

"But, also, to be part of the national team, my father [Doug Collins] played in the [1972] Olympics and got robbed of a gold medal. So this is special for my whole family."

Dream nearly fulfilled

Krzyzewski's schedule will get tighter in April. With the Beijing Olympics four months away, his focus will shift away from Duke.

Krzyzewski's weekly USA Basketball conversations with Colangelo will increase to every other day, Colangelo said.

The U.S. team has a mini-camp scheduled for June 27-30, after which the Olympic team members and alternates will be announced. Krzyzewski said that timing may hurt Duke's summer camps, because he won't be around as much.

July will be busy with training camps in Las Vegas, travel to Macau, then to Shanghai, China, and exhibition games in all three locations before the national team even gets to Beijing on Aug. 7.

There is a bigger tradeoff. No one on the Duke staff will be able to evaluate players in late July because of U.S. team duties. Collins said the staff recruits quality players who should understand.

Like the coaches, recruits who are right for Duke will see that Krzyzewski is doing something he never thought he'd get to do.

Krzyzewski thought he'd be in line for an Olympic job while serving six previous stints as a U.S. coach for various teams.

But ever since NBA players became eligible for the Olympics in 1992, only NBA coaches had led U.S. Olympic teams, and Krzyzewski figured he'd never get a shot. Instead, he eagerly took a job as an assistant with the 1992 U.S. team, known as the "Dream Team."

"It wasn't like a lingering, my-life-is-empty-if-I-don't-do-it type of thing," Krzyzewski said. "I really never thought about it.

"Really, I thought 1992 was my experience, and that was incredible ... [T]his has been incredible in another way, trying to put this whole thing together."