Graduation day: from left, Bilas, Henderson, Dawkins, Alarie, and Williams Photo: Jim Wallace

Dawkins refused to let Duke lose, at one point banking in a basket while being pounded to the floor and converting the free throw for the three-point play. He scored twenty-eight points, and Duke won, 85-78. After the game, Dawkins quipped that some day he would come asking Mike Krzyzewski for a job. If the coach gave him a hard time, he said, he would mention this game.

Henderson notes that after this shaky opener, "Coach had our undivided attention." The refocused Devils exploded. "We decided to attack the other team instead of having the other team attack us," Krzyzewski said at the time. Old Dominion fell, 89-61, followed by DePaul, 74-67. Playing in New Jersey, Duke met Navy for the Eastern Regional title. Navy had All-America center and future NBA star David Robinson, but its backcourt was badly overmatched. Duke broke open the close contest with an 18-2 surge to end the first half, a run Dawkins punctuated with a spinning, gravity-defying dunk over the earthbound Navy big men. In the second half, the All-America guard again led the way, ending the game with twenty-eight points, while Bilas battled Robinson to a standstill on the boards. Duke won, 71-50.

The 1986 Final Four was held in Dallas. Top-ranked Duke opened against second-ranked Kansas, a big, physical team. The game was a tough, exhausting struggle in which each possession was precious. Duke led most of the way but never by very much. Kansas rallied for a 65-61 lead with just over four minutes left. Duke's defense went into high gear, holding Kansas to a single basket over the last four minutes and twenty-one seconds. Alarie tied the game at 65 with a dunk, drawing a fifth foul from Kansas star Danny Manning. Ferry scored on a rebound to give Duke a 69-67 lead. "It was a blood-on-the-floor kind of game," says Alarie. "We were exhausted, but somehow we had to suppress the fatigue and fight through it."

Duke wasn't too tired to make two last defensive stops. Ferry drew a charge on Kansas' Ron Kellogg, and then Kellogg missed a jumper. Duke rebounded, and Amaker ended the scoring at 71-67 with two free throws. As usual, Dawkins was the leading scorer, with twenty-four points, but Alarie's defense on Manning was equally important. Alarie held Manning to four points, thirteen below his season average.

The win was Duke's thirty-seventh of the season, setting an NCAA record that has been equaled but never surpassed. It put Duke into the title game against Louisville.

Louisville jumped to a 6-2 lead. Duke soon caught up and led for the next thirty-three minutes. For much of the game, it looked as if Duke had the Cardinals on the ropes. But several fast-break opportunities were squandered, as passes were fumbled or easy shots missed. Louisville dominated rebounding, but Duke's defense forced twenty-four turnovers.

Dawkins was unstoppable early, scoring thirteen of Duke's first twenty-five points. He had twenty-two points with fifteen minutes left when Louisville adjusted its defense to make it more difficult for Duke's star to get the ball. He made no field goals for the remainder of the game. This left good shots for Duke's other players, shots they had made all season. But fatigue was taking its toll. Duke was playing in its fortieth game of the season, and the Kansas game had left its share of bruises. "I was a shooter," Alarie says, "and shooters know: I kept taking shots that I knew were good, and they kept coming up short. It began to play on my mind."

It wasn't just the shooting, Henderson says. "I didn't have any explosion. I was a half-step late for loose balls I usually chased down, rebounds I usually grabbed." Henderson, Alarie, and Amaker made only twelve of thirty-six field attempts for the game.

Louisville caught up and took the lead at 64-63. The teams traded baskets until Louisville called timeout with forty-eight seconds left and a 68-67 lead. The Cardinals had only eleven seconds left on the shot clock. "We knew if we played good defense, we were going to have a chance to win it all on the last possession," says Dawkins. Duke played great defense. Louisville tried to get the ball inside but failed. With the shot clock about to expire, Louisville's Jeff Hall forced up a long shot. Dawkins barely missed blocking it, forcing Hall to shoot an airball. But Louisville center, Pervis Ellison, reacted quicker than Duke's big men and laid in the rebound for a three-point lead.

Duke was down by only three points. Time was running out. Henderson missed a drive, and Louisville made two free throws to go up by five. Duke still couldn't make a jump shot but fought back desperately on the glass, scoring on rebounds by Bilas and Ferry, sandwiched around a missed Louisville free throw. Ferry's basket cut the lead to one. There were only three seconds left. Duke was forced to foul, and Louisville's Milt Wagner made two free throws. The final score: 72-69.

"It never occurred to us that we would lose," Alarie says. "Never."

It was a heart-rending coda. All five of the seniors graduated just a few weeks later. Still, while a win over Louisville would have been the perfect ending to the story, the legacy of the Class of '86 goes deeper than one game. These men committed to Duke at a time when the program was at its lowest ebb, guaranteed nothing but an opportunity to turn it around. They bought into Mike Krzyzewski's vision of excellence and helped make it come true, going through what Bilas calls an "extraordinary journey" from the basement to the top of the mountain.

Duke won its first NCAA title five years later. Krzyzewski says he feels that "we would never have won in '91 without building on what the '86 team did. They defined the program. They became the example we've held up to every team since then, not just in how they played the game but in how they interacted with fans, how they handled class work. They laid the foundation."

Sumner '72 is a freelance writer and the curator of sport at the North Carolina Museum of History.
He writes a Duke sports history column for the Blue Devil Weekly and recently published his third book, Tales from the Duke Blue Devils Hardwood.