Courting success: Three of the five exemplary 86ers, Mark Alarie (32), Jay Bilas (21), and Johnny Dawkins (24), during cliffhanger victory against Notre Dame in their senior year (also pictured, freshman Danny Ferry and sophomore Billy King) Photo: Les Todd

On December 5, 1981, the Duke men's basketball team lost at home to Appalachian State University, 75-70. The next morning the telephone rang at the Rolling Hills, California, home of Jay Bilas, a high-school senior, an excellent student, and one of the nation's top prep basketball players. His mother answered the phone. The voice on the other end asked whether she had ever heard of Appalachian State. She replied that she had not.

"Well," the voice said, "they're the school that beat Duke last night."

Where are They Now?

Duke was one of the universities Bilas was considering attending. The voice on the phone belonged to an assistant coach at another school recruiting Bilas. The message was clear: Bilas would be wasting his time at Duke.

Bilas would have the last laugh. He would go to Duke, and he would excel there, both on and off the court. By the time he was a college senior, he and an exceptional group of classmates would return the Blue Devils to the top of the college-basketball universe. More important, they would set the stage for Duke to become a perennial national powerhouse and for Mike Krzyzewski to emerge as one of the best-known and most accomplished coaches in the history of men's college basketball.

In those days, Duke wasn't the kind of university that ordinarily lost to midlevel Southern Conference teams. In fact, under head coach Bill Foster, they had played for the NCAA title in 1978 and made it to the Final Four in 1980. But in 1981-82, Duke was struggling. The new coach, Krzyzewski, was an unknown and unproven entity. Krzyzewski had come to Duke in the spring of 1980 to replace Foster, who resigned to go to the University of South Carolina. Duke's athletics director, Tom Butters, stunned the basketball world when he hired the thirty-three-year-old Krzyzewski, who had just completed his fifth season as head coach at the U.S. Military Academy. He was considered an up-and-comer in the coaching profession but he had little national recognition and no experience as a head coach in a high-profile league like the Atlantic Coast Conference. The day after he was hired, a headline in The Chronicle read, "Krzyzewski: This is Not a Typo." The Duke players were as much in the dark as everyone else. "I had never heard of him, never heard him mentioned," recalls Vince Taylor, then a rising junior. "I was stunned."

Krzyzewski inherited three future NBA players--Taylor, Gene Banks, and Kenny Dennard--who helped his first Duke team reach the National Invitation Tournament. But all three were upperclassmen, and he knew he had to replenish the cupboard from the high-school Class of 1981 if Duke was to stay competitive. Over the course of that recruiting season, a half-dozen of the nation's top prep players narrowed their choices to Duke and another university. None chose Duke. The depleted 1981-82 Blue Devils won only ten of twenty-seven games.

Krzyzewski couldn't afford another bad recruiting class. With his back to the wall, he hit the recruiting equivalent of a slam dunk in 1982. The first two players he signed were forwards Bill Jackman and Weldon Williams, from Nebraska and the Chicago suburbs, respectively. Next was Bilas, the six-foot-eight forward, who narrowed his choices to Duke, the University of Arizona, and Syracuse University. "I honestly didn't know where Duke was," recalls Bilas, now a basketball analyst for ESPN.

He came to Duke because of Krzyzewski. "He explained how he would build the program, how we would win. I trusted him. It's as simple as that. He was honest, straightforward, and never wavered. I wanted to play for him." Bilas committed to Duke in January. A few months later, Krzyzewski signed another highly-touted six-foot-eight forward, Mark Alarie, from Arizona.

The key recruit was much closer to home. Johnny Dawkins was a thin, mercurial guard from Washington, D.C. Blessed with speed, leaping ability, and shooting skills, Dawkins was coveted by every top college program in the country. "I grew up an ACC fan and always saw myself playing in the league," says Dawkins, now an associate head coach under Krzyzewski. "I remembered Duke's great teams from the late 1970s, so I knew the school could compete. The academic reputation was terrific, but, ultimately, it was the people who sold me, especially Coach K. He did such a great job of recruiting me as an individual, painting a vision for my future. He was fiery, competitive, and knew where he wanted to go and how to take us there."

Krzyzewski recalls that "Johnny was our first legitimate big-time recruit. He could take the tough shots, win the tough games that we had not been winning."

Krzyzewski completed his class with the largely unheralded David Henderson, a tough-as-nails perimeter player who had just led Warren County High School to the North Carolina 3-A state championship. The six freshmen joined eight upperclassmen, three of whom were left over from the Foster days.

The ACC was a rough neighborhood in 1982-83. Top players in those days did not routinely go early to the NBA. Ralph Sampson, a seven-foot-four senior from the University of Virginia, was making a run for his third consecutive national player-of-the-year award. Sophomore Michael Jordan and junior Sam Perkins anchored a powerful North Carolina team. Both Virginia and North Carolina would be ranked number one in the weekly national polls at different points during the season. A trio of seniors--Thurl Bailey, Sidney Lowe, and Dereck Whittenburg--would lead North Carolina State to the 1983 NCAA title.

The prudent course would have been for Krzyzewski to start his most experienced players, gradually working in the freshmen. Yet he gambled on youth over experience. The freshmen moved into the rotation from the beginning of practice, taking playing time from more experienced players, not all of whom took it well.

Krzyzewski's most controversial decision was his refusal to play zone defense; throughout his career, Krzyzewski has been a strong proponent of an aggressive man-to-man defense. Alarie characterizes it as being "thrown into the deep end of the pool." It was a necessary risk, Krzyzewski says. "We finally had a group of kids who were going to be good, but it was going to take some time. We had a plan and were going to stick with it. Defense was going to be our foundation. It would have been foolish to wait."

The learning curve was steep, and the freshmen struggled. The nadir may have been Duke's 109-66 loss to Virginia in the ACC Tournament, still the largest margin of defeat in Duke history. After the Virginia game, the Duke staff went out to get a bite to eat. Johnny Moore, a member of the sports-information staff, raised a glass and proposed a toast. "Here's to forgetting tonight." A defiant Krzyzewski interrupted, "No! Here's to never forgetting tonight." (Duke won its next sixteen games against Virginia.)