Last year, Mike Krzyzewski became the first Division I men's basketball head coach to win 1,000 games.
What will likely go down as his most significant accomplishment of 2016 involved fewer wins but extends to international waters.
The Duke head coach became the first national team head coach to win three Olympic gold medals when Team USA beat Serbia 96-66 Sunday afternoon. Krzyzewski finished his 11-year tenure as national team coach with an 88-1 record and a 76-game winning streak. The Americans have captured the last five major international tournaments—the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Olympics and the 2010 and 2014 FIBA World Cups.
With Sunday's win, Krzyzewski completed a 38-year run as an assistant and head coach with USA Basketball. Before the Olympics, USA Basketball Managing Director Jerry Colangelo said he wants the 69-year old to replace him after the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Krzyzewski was not the only Blue Devil to win gold in one of the final events of this year's Olympics.
Duke associate head coach Jeff Capel was part of the national team coach staff and part of his first Olympic team.
And former Blue Devil and current Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Kyrie Irving became the fourth U.S. player ever to win Olympic gold and an NBA championship in the same year. The 24-year old NBA All-Star joined LeBron James, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen as the only players to accomplish the feat. Irving had to battle foul trouble, finishing with four points on 1-of-6 shooting, but averaged 11.4 points, 4.9 assists and 2.5 rebounds per game in his first Olympics.
The trio of Sunday medals brought Duke's Rio total to five after fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad and Blue Devil women's soccer senior Rebecca Quinn won bronze medals earlier in the week.
Recaps of how Muhammad, Quinn, runner Shannon Rowbury, diver Abby Johnston and women's basketball player Lindsey Harding fared in Rio can be viewed here.
The other two Blue Devils who competed at the Olympics, women's golf junior Leona Maguire and 2014 national champion Laetitia Beck, finished Saturday. Maguire finished tied for 21st out of 60 players with a four-day total of 2-under-par, highlighted by a second-round 65, and Beck finished tied for 31st with a score of 2-over-par.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.