Coach K and Duke Face Tom Izzo and Michigan State One More Time

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski has been on a farewell tour as he finishes his last season coaching the Blue Devils before he retires. With Duke in the NCAA tournament, Coach K will either go out as a winner (if Duke wins the championship) or will lose his final game. The Blue Devils’ Hall of Fame Coach met another team with a Hall of Fame coach when Duke played Tom Izzo’s Michigan State Spartans in a second round game on March 20th.

It looked like the end was near as Duke trailed by 70-65 with 5:10 left, but the Blue Devils stormed back for an 85-76 victory and advanced to the Sweet 16 for the 26th time under Krzyzewski. The win was also the 1200th of Coach K’s career in college basketball as a head coach, which began at Army in 1975 before he took over at Duke in 1980. He’s also gotten the best of Tom Izzo 13 out of 16 games.

https://youtu.be/1qXqggBg9hY

Duke, the number two seed in the West Region will play #3 Texas Tech March 24th in San Francisco.

We may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases made from Amazon.com links at no cost to our visitors. Learn more: Affiliate Disclosure.

Share

You may also like...

3 Responses

  1. Jacob Ska says:

    Mark, Thank you so much. I thought there were a lot of upsets but couldn’t keep track after a period of time. I expected my remote control to blow up from changing channels so frequently trying to catch, if nothing else, the last 5 minutes and/or “OT” of some games.

  2. Jacob Ska says:

    This was definitely a good game to watch. I admire Coach K and what he has achieved.

    Imo this has been the most unusual March Madness I can recall. St. Peter’s University, to borrow words from Charles Barkley), has taken out the entire state of Kentucky (#2 Kentucky & #7 Murray State).

    Mark, can you recall how many upsets there have been so far? I’ve lost count.

    • Mark says:

      I counted 16 upsets so far including two 9-8s which are almost toss ups. There have been three each in the West and East, four in the South, and six in the Midwest. Three #1 seeds are still in it. The West has its top four seeds still in. There is one #15 (St. Peter’s), two #11s (Michigan and Iowa State), and one 10 seed (Miami) still in there.