Two sports icons had their final acts on their industry’s biggest stages Saturday night – Mike Krzyzewski, Coach K, in the Final Four, and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, at Wrestlemania.
Wrestling being wrestling, Austin, in his first match in 19 years, went out a winner, in a ragged-looking match with Kevin Owens in front of 77,000 fans at AT&T Stadium in Dallas.
Krzyzewski’s Duke team, in front of 70,000 fans at the Superdome in New Orleans, didn’t have the advantage of a sympathetic booker, and came up short in perhaps the best Final Four semifinal matchup of all time, losing to rival North Carolina, 81-77, in a game that came down to the final seconds.
Duke was beset by what held the uber-talented Blue Devils back all season long, a lack of consistent effort on the defensive end.
North Carolina shot 50 percent from the field in the second half, and hit seven of its 13 shots from three-point range in the final 20 minutes – most critically, hitting three straight triples to key an early second half 13-0 run that turned the game on its head.
This year’s Duke team ranked just 49th in adjusted defensive efficiency, per KenPom.com.
The season-long points-per-possession number: .959. But in Duke’s last nine games, dating back to the loss in Krzyzewski’s Cameron Indoor Stadium career finale to UNC on March 5, the PPP number ballooned to 1.125.
The basic script down the stretch this season was, track meet for the first 35 minutes, then clamp down on defense in the final minutes, like you see out of NBA teams in the regular season.
It worked in NCAA Tournament wins over Michigan State, Texas Tech and Arkansas, and we seemed to be on course for Act IV Saturday night in New Orleans.
The game was tied at 67 at the under-four media timeout.
Carolina would have seven possessions in the final 3:32, and would score on all seven.
It wasn’t vintage Duke Basketball, which Krzyzewski built in the 1980s and 1990s on defense.
But those Duke teams were also built around guys who stayed on campus for four years, and that hasn’t been the case for more than a decade, as Coach K traded on his legend to build around one-and-dones whose lack of experience could be a detriment in big games.
It’s telling that Krzyzewski won only one of his five national titles in the OAD era, in 2015 – the same number as ACC rivals Virginia and North Carolina did with rosters keyed by upperclassmen.
His final team may have been the deepest and most talented of his OAD teams, with six players from his seven-man rotation as projected 2022 NBA Draft picks, and the seventh guy, Jeremy Roach, a five-star prep recruit, perhaps the best of the bunch, though he had an off-night in the semifinal loss last night, with a quiet eight points and five assists, on 2-of-11 shooting.
Krzyzewski had expertly navigated this team through its deficiencies on the defensive end through the West Regional, but Saturday night, from a chair placed awkwardly in front of the scorer’s table, all he could do was watch as the Tar Heels sliced and diced his team down the stretch.
The game ended early in the 11 p.m. Eastern hour, allowing fans who were so inclined to switch their viewing attention to the main event of Night 1 of Wrestlemania 38 a couple of hundred miles to the southeast in New Orleans, where Austin was set to face Owens in his first match since 2003.
To Austin’s credit, it was more than the kick to the ribs and “Stone Cold” Stunner that most fans had expected. The match started in the ring, but quickly went to the floor and eventually into the crowd, and even up to the main stage, as the two traded punches, kicks, throws and suplexes.
Austin even took a nasty bump, from an Owens overhead suplex, on the arena floor, before delivering two suplexes to Owens on the ramp, all of which added bumps to the bump card that had been neatly tucked away nearly two decades ago after the doctors shut down “Stone Cold,” citing the lingering effects of a 1997 neck injury in a match with the late Owen Hart that threatened permanent paralysis.
As much as you might have cringed seeing him taking bumps knowing his history, it was even more cringe-inducing seeing Austin struggle with some of the basic stuff to putting together a wrestling match.
Early on, Owens attempted an Irish whip to send Austin into a ringside barrier, the apparent plan being for Austin to bounce off the barrier and launch a lariat onto Owens.
Austin’s knees, encased in thick braces, slowed his momentum both toward the ringside barrier, and then on the bounce back, his body obviously just not able to do what it did back when “Stone Cold” was in his heyday.
It was sad to see, honestly, as sad as it was to see Krzyzewski sitting on a chair in the final seconds of his final game.
Coach K’s team came up short giving him the Monday in April send-off that would have been storybook.
Austin, at least, got his bookend, and doused himself in roughly a case of celebratory Steveweisers as the credits rolled just short of midnight.
Story by Chris Graham
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