After the 1986 run to the championship game, people developed a lot of respect for Mike Krzyzewski’s program. However, in 1987, it wasn’t at all clear that he could maintain his program at a high level.
Coach K was replacing four starters and five seniors, in an era when you couldn’t just overhaul a team via the portal and NIL money. You had to build from the ground up.
Fortunately, he still had some major talent. Tommy Amaker was back at point, Danny Ferry was a rising sophomore star, and he also had Billy King, Kevin Strickland, and John Smith, who did a surprisingly good job in the post despite being just 6-7.
Behind Amaker and King, Duke was a superb defensive team, which was good, because it wasn’t great on offense.
Good? Yes. Great? No.
Texas A&M was a surprise winner of the SWC Tournament, and the teams met in the first round. Duke was the #5 seed, while the Aggies were #12.
Strickland led Duke to a 58-51 win, scoring 20. Amaker chipped in 11. Robert Brickey had 12 off the bench.
The Blue Devils would beat Xavier in the second round, before falling to Indiana in the Sweet 16.
As you probably know, Coach K played for former Indiana coach Bob Knight when he coached at West Point. John Laskowski, who is on the broadcast crew here, played for Knight at Indiana. In fact, he played for IU when Krzyzewski was on Knight’s staff, in 1975, which makes it very odd that he calls him Kerr-shefski early in this video. You’d think that after working with the man for a year, he would know how to say his name, but apparently not.
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