When Duke returns to the Final Four this weekend, Chris Collins will be there.
It took a lot longer than he expected, but he finally made it back.
Of course, this time Collins won't be attending the Final Four as a player. He made it to Charlotte in 1994 as a sophomore and certainly expected to return his last two seasons.
After all, '94 marked the seventh time in nine years Duke was playing on the final weekend of the season. Little did Collins know what was in store.
His first two seasons Duke was 52-14, the last two 31-31. Just a year removed from a four-point loss to Arkansas in the national championship game, Collins and the Blue Devils lost their coach to a back injury and suffered an almost unfathomable 13-18 season in 1995.
"It was a very frustrating time," said Collins, who is now an assistant coach under Tommy Amaker at Seton Hall. "It was a very hurtful time. Everybody was waiting to get back at Duke. Duke was almost the school looked upon that could do no wrong."
Suddenly the Blue Devils did plenty wrong. With a 2-14 conference record and uncertainty about the head coach's health, a team dubbed a dynasty just a few years earlier was in trouble.
"Coach was not there and he was always very good at deflecting the pressure," Collins said. "We lost a lot of close games, and the more close games we lost, the more the media enjoyed ripping into us."
The brutal year left many questions entering the following season. Even more mounted after the Blue Devils opened their '96 ACC schedule 0-4. Duke looked headed for a second straight losing season.
Enter Collins, who to some was a rather unlikely hero. He averaged 10 points his sophomore season, hitting 40 percent of his three-pointers, but slumped to 3.9 points and 29.8 percent from outside a year later.
A senior-year turnaround, however, saved his team. Starting with the N.C. State game, Duke's next contest after
"I think the one game more than any that I look to is the game at N.C. State," Collins said. "I happened to get a lucky bounce when my three-pointer hit the rim like four times. They shot a shot at the buzzer and got an unlucky bounce and we won the game."
Collins didn't stop there. With the Blue Devils struggling to make the NCAA tournament, the shooting guard averaged 22 points during a five-game winning streak to close out the regular season and push Duke into the NCAAs.
"We got back to the NCAA tournament with a lot of walk-ons," Collins said. "It wasn't necessarily the same Duke team. But it made me really proud to succeed on a Duke team like that."
To Krzyzewski, Collins did much more. He feels that without his senior leader, Duke would not have been able to withstand the injuries or struggles of 1995-96. Instead, that year could've been a lot like the one before, with another sub-.500 record.
The repercussions might have been even more severe, setting back the rebuilding process another couple of years.
"I thought we were going to have to go through a longer period of time," Krzyzewski said. "Chris Collins saved us that year."
Collins, to Krzyzewski, was a bridge between the brief collapse and this year's success, just as important to the program, in some respects, as the players on this year's roster who have finished the deal and returned Duke to prominence.
And Collins, who after college averaged 29 points per game during a season in Finland, realizes he played a part.
"I think it was very important," he said. "That's what makes me feel so good about this year's team. We did so much to get this team back on the winning track and to know you were a part of that is great.
"Duke is a special environment and it has special people there. I knew it was a matter of time before it was going to get back. It just hit a couple-of-years cycle where all of the players weren't there. It was tough to be a part of that.
"Having played my first two years with Grant Hill, Bobby Hurley, Cherokee Parks and those guys to where all of a sudden I was the man. Obviously I loved the role, but it wasn't something I ever thought imaginable so quickly."
Collins still maintains contact with Krzyzewski and is close friends with Shane Battier and Trajan Langdon.
Langdon was a teammate during Collins' final two seasons, though he had to sit out in 1995-96. Collins was in New Jersey this past weekend and spoke with Langdon after Duke finished off Temple.
"I let him know how happy I was for him, everything he had put out for five years," Collins said. "At the time when he decided to go to school, we had been to seven Final Fours in nine years, and then his freshman year we go 13-18. It was real special for me to be there this weekend and see him succeed. Myself, Wojo, Ricky Price and Trajan, those were the guys who really helped make the bridge."
Collins will once again return to the Final Four this weekend. He won't be a player, and his Seton Hall team was eliminated in this year's NIT, but it will almost be the same. He's not on this team, but helped play a part in getting it there.
He has seen the team rise again, and though he wasn't on the court last weekend, it took efforts like his a few years ago to pave the way for a potential third national championship.
"I think it starts with Coach," Collins said. "For a few years there with his back injury and with all of the success, it takes a lot out of you to succeed. I think he wore down. I think he was able to come back with a new energy and said, 'I want to get this thing back to the way things were in the early '90s.'
"It was a tough transition, but now to see it all turn out, it made me realize how I contributed."
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