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The Duke Blue Devils beat the Pitt Panthers on January 19th in convincing fashion, and in doing so placed longtime head coach Mike Kryzewski on the precipice of his 1,oooth head coaching victory.
When asked about what the victory meant, coach K responded in his typical fashion, downplaying the personal significance, saying, “”It means we’re 16-2.”
Coach K continued, “That’s exactly what that means. And hopefully we can be 17-2 the next game we play, and that’s the way we approach everything. We’ll continue to approach it that way.”
The victory moved Coach K’s career head coaching record to 999 wins and 308 losses over a 40 year career.
Kryzewski will get his first chance to guide the Blue Devils to 17-2 and get his 1,000th victory in Madison Square Garden on Sunday as Duke is set to square off against St. John’s.
When Kryzewski gets his next victory, he will become the first ever head coach in Men’s division 1 basketball to reach that victory milestone.
Madison Square Garden already holds an important coaching milestone for Kryzewski, as that building hosted the game in which coach K surpassed the legendary coach Bob Knight in overall victories as a head coach.
In this game, the Blue Devils were largely led by their young back court which, as a collective, shot 46% from the field and hit 11 3-pointers while holding the Panthers to just 3 3-pointers themselves.
This victory also put coach K near yet another record, as the victory over Pitt gave him his 420th victory coaching within the ACC, putting him just 2 victories shy of longtime rival, and former coach of the University of North Carolina, Dean Smith.
Pitt did put up a fight in this game, and the loss put an end to their 2 game winning streak. “We had open shots, we had good looks,” coach Jamie Dixon said. “We got exactly what we wanted, and at times it seemed like we haven’t handled that well.”
