What may have been the sweetest victory in this year’s NCAA Tournament might be the toughest one for coach Mike Krzyzewski to stomach.

At 72 years old and with the age of one-and-done coming to a close, Coach K blew his shot at a sixth NCAA Championship with what may have been his most talented team.

Michigan State To Face Texas Tech In NCAA Final Four

In March Madness, your best asset against the favorites tends to be a good defense. Offenses can sputter out. Defenses rarely do because of the nature of the player a good one needs. No. 2 Michigan State embodied that. On Sunday, they held tight on defense and blocked Duke from advancing to the Final Four with a 68-67 win over the No. 1 overall seed.

Despite coming into the tournament with all eyes on them, Duke had one too many close calls before their elimination. Single-possession wins over UCF and Virginia Tech might have brought the team back to earth. Despite this, they remained the favorites. In the end, the season was a failure.

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However, Michigan State seems to have disappeared in the aftermath. Coach Tom Izzo wasn’t simply pushing a Cinderella squad another day closer to April. He built a better team. For 40 minutes, the Spartans seemed in control and led for 22 minutes. Most importantly, they led at the final buzzer.

While Duke was powered by one-and-done stars Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett and Cam Reddish, Michigan State fell back on Junior guard Cassius Winston. Despite a lack of press surrounding him, the guard contributed 20 points and dished out 10 assists. Of course, it was the Big Ten Player of the Year who they entrusted with securing the win in the final seconds. Kenny Goins also made sure to hit a clutch shot to lock up the win.

While Williamson and Barrett contributed a combined 45 points and 20 rebounds, they showed the naivety of freshmen. Turnovers, bad shots and missed passes all came back to haunt them. The Spartans were able to score 15 more points than Duke off of turnovers, a large part of it due to the freshman who hadn’t ever gone deep into the playoffs. Now Duke faces the possibility that their team collapses, as Williamson hinted after the game.

The Spartans will appear in their 10th Final Four next week when they face No. 3 seed Texas Tech in Minneapolis.

Duke has definitely slipped up this season. That doesn’t mean that they can’t find their way back. On Monday, the Blue Devils reached the top spot in the AP Top 25 for the third time this season.

AP Top 25 College Basketball Rankings

The 23-2 Duke squad received 58 out of the 64 first-place votes to move up one spot and jump over Tennessee. Tennessee had previously held the spot for four weeks but fell to fifth following a loss to Kansas on Saturday. The highest-ranked team to hold its spot this week was No. 8 North Carolina.

Now, 16 weeks into the season, Duke has spent close to half of it at the top spot. This will be their seventh week. The team shows no signs of slowing down. When its core four freshmen, Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett, Cam Reddish, and Tre Jones start, they’ve been unbeatable except for falling to Gonzaga on November 21 in the title game of the Maui Invitational Tournament.

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Coach Mike Krzyzewski has convinced his players to buy into roles and develop as more than just scorers. Though Williamson and Barrett lead the Atlantic Coast Conference with 22.7 and 22.4 points per game, Jones has the second highest assists per game with 5.4 and is a glue guy defender that holds the team together.

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Duke first spent two weeks at No. 1 in November but wouldn’t return to the top spot until Christmas Eve. They’d hold the title for four more weeks until a miracle overtime road win by an unranked Syracuse team knocked them down. Both Reddish and Jones missed all or most of that game.

After the news, Duke versus North Carolina ticket prices shot up. The average price for tickets is $46.70. Just to get in the door, you’d have to fork over at least $29.27. As the teams gear up for March Madness, expect to see Duke become even more of a must-see show. It’s only a few weeks before most, if not all of its core will leave for the NBA.

 Corey Maggette was accused of raping a woman 20 years ago at Duke University. The woman, Meredith Watson, said that school officials ignored the claim, according to The New York Times.

Corey Maggette Accused Of Rape

Nancy Erika Smith, Watson’s lawyer, said that Watson had been raped by a Duke basketball player during her sophomore year but at the time didn’t name the player in the statement. Smith also said that Watson had reported her rape to a dean  but that the dean had “discouraged her from pursuing the claim further.”

Maggette attended Duke for one year (1998-1999). During his time there, the Blue Devils reached the NCAA Championship game but ultimately lost to the University of Connecticut. Maggette, along with teammates Elton Brand and William Avery, became one of the first Duke players to leave before his eligibility was up. He was selected No. 13 in the 1999 NBA Draft and played in the NBA until 2013. The small forward became known off the court for his charity work around the league, winning the “NBA Player’s Best Camp Award” for his efforts. Since retiring, the Duke star has worked as an analyst for Fox Sports.

Maggette denied the accusations through a spokesman on Monday evening. “It has only been through media accounts and a statement from Meredith Watson’s lawyer that I first learned or heard of anything about these sexual assault allegations,” he said in a statement. “I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my life and I completely and categorically deny any such charge.”

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A spokeswoman for Fox Sports said, ” Fox Sports takes allegations of misconduct seriously, and we are looking into the matter. We have no further comment at this time.” Duke is currently investigating an allegation that a player raped a woman but declined to comment further.

“We are in the process of gathering information to determine what policies and procedures were in place during the time period in which these events are alleged to have occurred, and whether they were activated and followed,” said Michael Schoenfeld, a spokesman for Duke. “We are not able to provide further information or comment on any individual at this time.”

Watson has also accused Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin E. Fairfax of raping her while they were both students at Duke. R. Stanton Jones, a childhood friend of Watson and a lawyer, claims that Watson told him about both incidents in the summer of 2001. “Meredith told me she had been raped twice at Duke,” Jones said. “And she told me that one of the men who raped her was the Duke basketball player Corey Maggette. That was a name I knew because I’m a basketball fan.”

Longtime Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said he had “no knowledge” of the situation. No Duke player was kicked off of the team until early 2015, when a player was dismissed for struggles to meet “necessary obligations.” The school newspaper reported that the player had been accused of sexual assault by two students and that the athletic department had been aware of the situation for ten months before removing him from the team.

In what is probably the most shocking move from the Duke Blue Devils this season, the team and Coach Krzyzewski announced the dismissal of Junior guard Rasheed Sulaimon. Originally a starter his first two years, the addition of Tyrus Jones and Justise Winslow put Sulaimon into a secondary role, coming off the bench as an upperclassman.

In a statement released by Coach Krzyzewski, who just secured his 1,000th win before losing to Notre Dame on Tuesday, said, “Rasheed has been unable to consistently live up to the standards required to be a member of our program. After Rasheed repeatedly struggled to meet the necessary obligations, it became apparent that it was time to dismiss him from the program.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omAiOw58NpU

Sulaimon has seen his numbers decrease over the last three years: originally posting 11.6 PPG in his freshman season, it has gone down to 7.5 PPG coming off the bench — with his overall minutes going from 29.2 per game to 19.3 over the same time. But he has improved his defensive output since his decline in minutes.

This is the first player that Coach K has dismissed in his 35 years as a head basketball coach, which makes this quite shocking. According to CBS Sports, he was not previously been disciplined, at least publicly, for any transgressions and even remains in high standards academically. Many have been speculating that this has to do with his unhappiness from his reduced role in the Coach’s game plan. As ESPN pointed out, “Last season the coaching staff talked to Sulaimon about his body language… He had specifically been called out for pouting and not celebrating his teammates while he was on the bench.”

What makes this even more surprising is that Sulaimon was a top 60 recruit out of high school and was even deemed a potential high draft pick. There is no word whether he will attempt to transfer schools or declare for the NBA draft.

In what is an exclamation point on a long and illustrious career, Coach K, aka Coach Krzyzewski, secured his 999th win as a head coach, which is his 926th victory at Duke. The win came when the number six Blue Devils defeated the Pittsburgh Panthers 79-65: and as the above picture shows, after the game fans cheered on the Coach’s accomplishment by holding up signs with “999” on them.

For those who do not know, Coach Krzyzewski is the all-time leader in wins: the closest behind him is Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim with 961 wins. This ultimately means he will be the first coach in NCAA Men’s Basketball history to reach the coveted 1,000 win mark. And his first chance to do that is Sunday’s match up against the struggling 12-5 St. John’s, who has last four of their last five games to DePaul, Villanova, Butler and Seton Hall.

Duke, who is 2-2 in their last four, have a tough collection of games following St. John’s: they have the number eight Notre Dame twice with the number two UVA and the unsteady Georgia Tech in between. So if the 1,000 game does not come against St. John, who exactly knows where it will. But the 16-2 Duke is still playing at the top of their game, so I would expect this feat accomplished sooner rather than later.

And this stat will only further cement him as one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time: in 40 seasons he will have over 1,000 wins, four NCAA Championships, eleven final fours and an all time tournament record of 82-26. And this is not even taking in account his accomplishments while coaching the USA National Team.