ANAHEIM, Calif. - Blue Devils head coach Mike Krzyzewski said after Thursday's Sweet Sixteen loss to Kansas he thought you could judge the success of a team by whether there was crying in the locker room at the end of the season - either crying because the players had won the national title or crying because they lost, leaving it all on the floor.
For Duke, the tears began to stream while the Blue Devils were still on the court.
And for seniors Andre Buckner, Dahntay Jones and Casey Sanders, who took off the blue and white for the final time, the moment was especially bittersweet.
"It was good," Sanders said. "Right now the only thing that sticks in my head was just how hard it was to take [the uniform] off. Once I got it off and in the shower, everything was fine, but it was hard getting it off."
All told, this year's seniors had quite a run in the Duke uniform. Their freshman, junior and senior years ended in Sweet 16 trips and their sophomore season was marked by the Blue Devils' third national championship.
In conference play, Duke won four titles - the class of 2003 has the distinction of never losing an ACC Tournament game - and overall, 121 games.
"My time with Duke has been very special," Jones said. "Going into the locker room [after the loss] was hard, but I've been living a dream since I came here and I thank [head coach Mike Krzyzewski] for giving [me] the chance."
Originally a six person crew comprised of Carlos Boozer, Buckner, Mike Dunleavy, Nick Horvath, Sanders and Jay Williams when they matriculated in the fall of 1999, only two of the originals will graduate in May.
Boozer and Williams jumped ahead in their work, and announced by their junior years that they would leave early for the NBA, cutting the class to four. Dunleavy joined them suddenly last spring, and Horvath took a medical redshirt after being injured last season.
The group added Jones in the fall of 2002, after he transferred from Rutgers; but because of NCAA regulations, he was not allowed to play until the following year.
However,
Looking back on the season in the post-game press conference, however, the Trenton, N.J., native agreed with junior teammate Chris Duhon, who said that this was a "very special year," watching the team form and then get better and that, "When I'm old and fat, I plan to tell my kids about it."
"I left it all out there," said Sanders, who added he would give his Duke career an "A-plus" if he had to put a grade on it. "Being through everything that I've been through - the up and the downs - you can't ask for a better group of guys and coaches to share that experience with.
"That's what I'm going to take away from this. Right, I won a national title and that's great, but the feelings of winning, the feelings of losing, the feelings of having to pick my teammates up and them having to pick me up, that's the thing you can't replace, and that's the thing I love most about it."
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