Just around 7:30pm.
DUKE just beat UCF in what will absolutely be an instant classic.
One of those games they loop on the TV in the student store in The Bryan Center.
But something is different in this moment.
The DUKE team is all jubilantly celebrating at halfcourt. As they should be. Those guys are Sweet 16 bound!
But the camera pans to the center sidelines and there it is.
Huh...
Huh.
I am not sure I've seen Coach K this... I don't even know what the word is.
I've seen him be flabbergasted on the sidelines before. I've seen him have the look of "I can't believe we won that." I've seen him furious. Ecstatic. Emotional. Reflective. Pretty much all of it, he's shown to us over the last nearly 40 years.
This post-game handshake Sunday night though... what was it? Was it happy? Was it heartbreak? Was it disbelief on both ends of the spectrum? It doesn't really have a word. It was just all feeling.
I was not quite 5 years old when the Johnny Dawkins team took DUKE all the way to the title game. So I'd be lying if I said I remember it. But I do remember the decades that followed: hearing Coach K- and anyone else who truly knows DUKE- tell anyone and everyone what Johnny Dawkins means to what we all know DUKE to be today. He and his teammates were the reason for what I get to enjoy twice a week, November to (God willing) April. Johnny Dawkins and that class set this ride we are all on with Coach K and DUKE in motion.
Flash forward a little.
I remember feverishly tuning in to every single second of each JJ Redick game in the mid-2000s (I never miss any DUKE game but this was when I started altering my work schedule to accommodate), and I specifically remember how time stood still when he hit the shot that took him past Johnny Dawkins' scoring mark at DUKE. For me, that was the moment that it clicked for me: damn, 24 must've been good. JJ Redick was, and still is, basketball royalty to me. So to see him eclipse the first King of Scoring at DUKE... I knew then what I had heard on any given broadcast, in any given interview from K and Co. for all those years: Johnny Dawkins is THAT DUDE.
And then... flash forward just a little more.
I remember where I was standing- working a lunch shift at Duke's on 19th Street in NYC underneath the right side TV above the food line- when it came across the ESPN crawl that Johnny Dawkins had accepted a head coaching job and would be leaving DUKE.
That moment felt, well, a lot like it felt watching the moment he and Coach K shared Sunday night at halfcourt. Was it happy? Was it heartbreak? Was it disbelief on both ends of the spectrum? It didn't really have a word. It was just all feeling.
Even eclipsed of real words to put to it, I think Coach K said it best following the game we were all treated to Sunday night, and especially with regards to the UCF team and Coach Johnny Dawkins:
"I'm so proud that those kids played at the level of their Coach."
Thank you for the memories, Johnny Dawkins. The ones that started before I really could remember and the ones that continue well into my adulthood... even if I can't quite find the words to give them their proper due.
#DUKE #marchmadness #sweet16
#si6hts #VIews
