When the men's basketball team last left the Charlotte Coliseum following the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament three weeks ago, thoughts of a return trip for the Final Four must have seemed a long way off.
The Blue Devils, after winning the ACC regular season title, played poorly in their two games against Clemson and Virginia, the latter a 66-61 loss in which Duke shot a season-low field goal percentage.
Before Duke began NCAA Tournament play, head coach Mike Krzyzewski identified lack of emotion as a key to the Blue Devils' demise against Virginia. The coaching staff showed the players a videotape of some of the season's finest moments, when Duke was playing with unmatched fire and intensity.
The result: The Blue Devils are indeed returning to Charlotte. Duke plays Florida in a national semifinal Saturday at approximately 8:12 p.m. Arkansas and Arizona square off in the first game at 5:42 p.m.
Although Duke's first performance in Charlotte surely lit a fire, Krzyzewski was quick to point out that the Blue Devils were a capable team long before their current run in the NCAA Tournament.
"This didn't start because we lost in Charlotte," Krzyzewski said Monday. "What we had was lost in Charlotte. It was important to identify that we were really good and then figure out why we weren't emotional.
"We were tired mentally and physically and got into the bad habit of staying back in success instead of going on to the next success."
Right now the next success is a national championship. Interestingly enough, three of the four teams still in contention for the NCAA crown had similar experiences in their conference tournaments: They all lost following a regular season title. The fourth team, Arizona, won the Pac-10 regular season, but the league does not have a postseason tournament.
Arkansas and Florida won their respective divisions in the Southeastern Conference before both were knocked off by Kentucky in the SEC tournament.
Of the 16 teams to make it past the NCAA's first and second round games, only one conference tournament champion, Louisville (of the Metro Conference), was among them.
League tournament winners like North Carolina (ACC), Providence (Big East), Kentucky (SEC), Nebraska (Big Eight), Massachusetts (Atlantic 10) and Cincinnati (Great Midwest) were nowhere to be found in the Sweet 16.
Regular season winners that lost in their conference tournaments, however, were everywhere, as Duke, Connecticut (Big East), Missouri (Big Eight), Florida and Arkansas (SEC) and Marquette (Great Midwest) all advanced.
Coaches, of course, never like to lose. But the data suggest that teams that lose unexpectedly in their conference tournaments are motivated to do well in the NCAAs. Surprise league tournament winners, however, appear to lose some steam and often struggle to sustain their momentum.
"Our loss in the conference tournament helped us," then-Marquette coach Kevin O'Neill said last week at the Southeast Regionals in Knoxville, Tenn. "I was upset when we lost. We had won five in a row and everything was la-la land. We got a rude awakening [in a semifinal loss to Cincinnati].
"We got refocused. When we win we seem to cruise along."
This isn't the first year that Coach K has used an ACC tournament loss to help his team in the NCAAs. In 1991, Duke was blown away by UNC in the ACC title game before it went on to the national championship.
When the Blue Devils get to Charlotte this weekend, however, they know that there is no tomorrow to look forward to if they lose.
"This time it can't be a gateway to further improvement, unless it's for our trip to Australia in May," Krzyzewski said. "We'll talk about that this week in practice, that it has to be better than the week before the last time we went."
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