Duke Banner 2: Pursue Don't Defend The 1992 National Champs Back-2-Back

In this episode of Iconic Seasons, we explore the 1991-92 Duke Blue Devils and their journey to become back-to-back national champions. After winning their first title, Duke transitioned from the beloved underdog to the "Goliath" of college basketball, facing intense scrutiny as "the most hated program in college basketball history".

In this episode, we cover:

The Psychological Shift: How Coach K used the philosophy of "pursuing" rather than "defending" a championship to keep his team hungry.

Overcoming Adversity: The story of Bobby Hurley’s broken foot and Grant Hill’s temporary transition to point guard.

The Greatest Game Ever Played: A deep dive into the East Regional Final against Kentucky, featuring "The Stomp," "The Pass," and Laettner's perfect 10-for-10 performance.

The Mentor vs. The Student: The high-tension Final Four matchup against Bob Knight’s Indiana and the infamous "blow-by" handshake.

Dethroning the Fab Five: How a veteran Duke squad dismantled Michigan’s highly-touted freshman class in the championship game.

Featured Source: For more on the perspective of the Kentucky player involved in "The Stomp," listen to this interview with Aminu Timberlake: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1269236/episodes/9365468

Transcript

 2.1 seconds. That's all that's left the spectrum in Philadelphia. Shaking Kentucky leads 1 0 3 to 1 0 2 in overtime of the East Regional final Sean Woods, one of Kentucky's unforgettable, just banked in a floater over Christian ER's outstretched hand. The Kentucky bench erupts. CBS's Play by play man. Vern Lundquist is composing it on Air Owe to Rick Pitino. Duke calls a timeout and in the huddle with a back-to-back dream slipping away. Coach K says five words. We're gonna win the damn game. The ball hits nothing but the bottom of the net. Duke 1 0 4, Kentucky 1 0 3, Christian Lightner, 10 for 10 from the field, 10 for 10 from the line. A perfect game to keep a perfect dream alive. Welcome back to Iconic Seasons, the podcast where we tell stories of college basketball teams and moments that changed everything. I'm your host, Aaron Meyer, and today we're picking up right where we left off. Last episode, we told you the story of Banner one, how Duke went from a 30 point humiliation to cutting down the nets in Indianapolis. Oh, yeah. There was that little upset of Duke in the tournament. In between, there's just something about Duke losing. But also something about them winning. And this is the story of what came next after that first banner, the story of a team that went from that beloved underdog beating UNLV to the most hated program in college basketball history. A team that lost its point guard to a broken foot, survived the greatest game ever played, and somehow won it all again back to back. This is banner two, the 19 91, 92 Duke Blue Devils. It starts with a question that nobody had an answer for. The day after winning the National Championship in Indianapolis, duke returned to Cameron Indoor Stadium. The place was packed. Students still bleary-eyed from celebration and Coach K. Looking out over the overjoyed crowd said something that everyone in the building understood. Where should we put it? As he held up the National Championship trophy, Cameron was already filled with banners. Eight final fours, nine A CC tournament. Titles a number one ranking in 1986, but not a single one of those banners said National Championship. Now one would, banner won, went up and it changes everything, not just for the program, but for how the world saw Duke basketball. I see. Before 1991, duke was a little team that almost could the program that made final fours, but couldn't win the big one. The media at that time loved them well, maybe still do. Their players were smart, funny, sometimes self-deprecating. When Jay Billis was asked at the 1986 Final Four, if you'd like to play in the NBA, he said I'd give my right arm to play in the NBA, but I don't think there's a lot of call for one arm basketball players in that league. People ate that up. But there's one thing about America, we love an underdog. We root for the team that's trying to break through and the moment they actually break through the moment, they're the front runner. That's when things change. Think about all, all throughout history, whether it's Giannis, people flip on 'em, Luca, everyone eventually, if when Weby wins, . World Championship or any team that wins a world championship, they be, they go from underdog to blue blood to hated Oklahoma City. Thunder may be on the precipice of that, especially if they win it again this year For Duke, the change was dramatic. Suddenly the same characteristics that people. Were talking about as charming, the articulate players, the Cameron Crazies, coach K, they turned into targets. The label that would follow Duke to this day had already started to form in 1986. One nationally known writer looked at Duke's press conference and called them the Cosby Kids. Another insisted that referees had handed Duke their wins. Two phrases were born the day after Duke won the national championship that would dog them for decades. White America's team and the team that gets all the calls. Coach K has always pushed back on both. He said we had at least as many great black players as white players dating back to Johnny Doughheads and Tommy Aker. Am I gonna apologize because our players black and white, or smart and articulate and funny? No. As for the officials, do the calls go our way? On occasion, yes. Did we get calls going against us also? Yes, we won because we were better, not because of the referees. Now coming into the 19 91 92 season, duke was ranked number one in the country. All four of their best players, ner Hurley, grant Hill, and Thomas Hill were back. Brian Davis was returning as a super sub. The only starter that had graduated was Greg Kubeck and his minutes would go to sophomores. Antonio Lang and Marty Clark, coach K had also recruited two talented big men, Cherokee Parks and Eric Meek. Meanwhile, UNLV gone. The running Bels lost all their stars and landed on NCAA probation. The dynasty Duke had slayed was crumbling. That meant something important. There was no Goliath left. For Duke to play David against Duke was Goliath. Coach K understood this from day one. He told his team something that would define their entire approach. We're not defending a national championship, we're pursuing one that sounds like a coaching cliche, but it serves as this psychological framework. We need these shortcuts in our mind. Defending means protecting something. Pursuing means hunting. Coach K knew the moment his players started thinking about protecting what they had, they lose the edge that won it. Mike Bray, who is an assistant coach on that team, described the feeling perfectly. It was almost like traveling with a rock band. He said, we were the champions. We had all our stars back, and people either love Ner and Hurley, or they hated them. No one was neutral when we played. And that was especially true because the school that produced the most media covering Duke was located eight miles down the road in Chapel Hill. Coach K once said, no matter how much we win, we'll never be the most loved team in the area where we live and work, we're surrounded by people who want to see us lose. The Blue Devils won their first 17 game, 17 straight. Against a difficult schedule. Their only close call was against Michigan. In December, a team led by five freshmen who called themselves the Fab five, Chris Weber, Jalen Rose, Jowan Howard, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson. Duke had to go into overtime to beat them. 88 to 85. Remember that game, it'll matter later. Then came Chapel Hill late January, duke, 17 and oh. Ranked number one, five wins over ranked teams North Carolina 16 and three, ranked number nine. The deemed dome was electric. And the emotions of the Carolina fans were best summed up by Jim Hevner, a longtime sports network operator who said before the game. They're already making plans for how to keep the celebration on Franklin Street under control if Carolina wins tonight, that's how big beating Duke has become. North Carolina got its wins, 75 to 73. 10 lead changes. In the first half alone, students and fans celebrated up and down Franklin Street deep into the night. But the loss itself wasn't the story. The story was happening to Bobby Hurley early in the second half, Hurley went down hard and his foot felt the brunt of it. He kept playing hobbling, gutting it out, because back then there were no x-ray machines in the building. When they finally got the x-ray, a clean break, their point guard, the fearless engine that powered everything was out. And the hardest part of their schedule was right in front of them. Four of the next five games on the road at LSU where Shaquille O'Neal was waiting at Georgia Tech at NC State at Wake Forest. Now picture this, your Coach K, your point card has just broken his foot. You've got road games against Shaq and three A c. C teams. What do you do? I. For Coach K, there's an embarrassment of riches. Maybe again, this is why people got upset with them. What he did is a future looking move. He moves Grant Hill to the point guard. You might remember Grant Hill from last episode and his gravity defying. Wema esque reach beyond what would seem possible. He's a six foot eight small forward. The guy with the salt and pepper beard now that announces games and owns part of the Atlanta Hawks. Coach K made that bold decision to slide him to point guard. He moves Antonio Lang into the starting line and bet forward and kept rolling. Remarkably, duke lost only once during that stretch. Laettner Outplayed Shaq for a second straight year hill ran the point like he'd been doing it his whole life. They won easily at Georgia Tech and NC State. The only loss came at Wake Forest, and it would turn out to be one of the most important games of the entire season. Not because they lost, but because of how they lost. Wake Forest was led by a couple of my favorite college players growing up. Randolph Childress, and a precocious forward named Rodney Rogers. They took Duke to the Wire. The deacons led 70 to 68 and with two seconds left, duke had to go to the length of the floor. They had to play for this and was called Home Run. The concept was simple. Grant Hill had the best arm on the team, so he would inbound . Ner would come to the top of the Key Hill, would throw him the ball, catch, turn, shoot. Simple except Wake Forest coach Dave Odom put his six foot eight forward Tani Owens directly in front of Hill Layner remembered Grant threw an awful pass. Grant Hill would laugh about this years later and fire back well wouldn't have been awful if his slow ass had gotten to the ball. The ball sailed out of bounds and Wake Forest won 72 to 68. Duke dropped to 21 and two. And here's the thing that failed play. It would save the entire season two months later because after it didn't work at Wake Forest, duke practiced the home run over and over again. Layner put it plainly. If it had worked at Wake, we probably wouldn't have practiced it as much. Hurley came back two games later. Duke beat fourth ranked UCLA 75 to 65. On senior day, they abandoned the Carolina loss being the Tar Hills. 89 to 77. The victory clinched the a CC regular season title by three games. After that win, Latner leaned on the scores table like it was a couch and told the Cameron crowd. Now look, we still have nine games to play. It's important that we know that you guys are back here partying and having a good time after every game. To play nine more games, duke would have to make it to both the a CC tournament championship game and the NCAA championship game. Nobody on that team expected anything less. Remember, they're the hunted, not the defenders. The a CC tournament was a breeze. Duke Cruise passed Maryland and Georgia Tech and then met Carolina in the championship game for the fourth time in five years. A layner, three pointer at halftime gave Duke a 32 to 31 lead and was all downhill from there, the final score was 94 to 74. Payback is a beautiful thing. Duke entered the NCAA tournament as the number one seed in the East regional. You could feel every team trying to flip the script, wanting them to become the hunted. The defenders, every team in the bracket wanted to be the one that ended the dynasty before could become one. The first three games were pretty routine. If you can call anything in March routine, but a second round game against Iowa gave Duke a bit of a scare. The Hawkeyes pressed for 94 feet and during a stretch in the second half with Duke leading comfortably, the press suddenly started working. Duke had LED 48 to 24 at halftime, and suddenly the lead was down to eight. Coach K calls a timeout and lets his players Ner and Hurley especially yell and point fingers at each other for a moment. Then he turns to them and says, okay. Do you guys want to cut the shit out and play, or do you wanna go home? They decided to play Duke wins 75 to 62. The Sweet 16 brought Seton Hall, coached by PJ Carimo, an old friend of Coach K's from their days coaching at Army and Wagner. The Pirates fought hard. They had a guard Terry de Hare, who scored 21 points, even a freshman backup point guard named Danny Hurley. Hmm. Where does he coach again? That's Bobby's little brother who's at Yukon now. He played 18 minutes in this game. Duke finally pulled away, winning 81 to 69. And then came Kentucky, the East regional final, and nothing would be routine ever again. Rick Pitino had rebuilt Kentucky from the ashes of NCAA sanctions. The wild caps were a number two seed led by six foot eight. Jamal Mashburn, 21 points and eight rebounds, a game. They played an uptempo, they pressed, and they had four seniors known as the unforgettable players who had stayed through the bad times when nobody else wanted them. Patino was even asked why they stayed, and he literally said nobody else wanted them. That was classic Patino. The game was frenetic from the opening tip. Kentucky got exactly the pace they wanted. Mashburn was unstoppable, man. I loved Jamal Mashburn. He was the prototype. Of a big movement oriented wing player. They're so common now. But to see a guy that size dribble, shoot, pass, it seemed like a reinvention of Magic. Johnson, at the time, not quite as good, of course, but in college, you can imagine he'd finished that game with 28 points and 10 rebounds, but Layner also matched him. Shot for shot and finished with 31. Duke LED 50 to 45 at halftime. Easily. The closest first half they played since the Carolina game. In the second half, duke pushed the lead to 12. Early it looked like they might pull away, but Kentucky's press once again started wearing them out, especially Hurley. He finished with 12 points in tennis assist, but eight turnovers unheard of for him, and then came the moment that still haunts bar arguments 30 years later. With nine minutes left, Layner drove to the basket, Timberlake, a six foot nine freshman, who averaged 1.1 points per game, fouled him hard, knocking him off balance. Timberlake fell to the floor, and Layner regaining his footing, put his right foot squarely into Timberlake's chest. If you guys want more on this story, we actually interviewed him in one of the past podcasts, and it was incredible to hear his telling of it. Kentucky fans, of course, call it the Stomp, but Duke fans called it a step. The referees called it a technical foul. Late nurse fourth, but critically, they did not eject him. Timberlake jumped right up, unheard laughing and clapping in Layton's face, as in I got you. Years later, Layner said he had pushed me to the floor and I made a note of it and made sure to be physical with him. Next thing I know, he went down in front of me. It was a dumb thing to do, but the emotion of the game sometimes gets the best of you. It was dumb and it was also ner the villain the world had wanted him to be and the competitors' teammates needed him to be. Somehow he embodied both even in the same moment. Kentucky rallied. The turnovers mounted and the game went into overtime tied at 93. Mashburn fouled out. Three minutes in the teams traded baskets. A lightner jumper put Duke up 1 0 2 to 1 0 1 with less than a minute left. Then Sean Woods, one of the unforgettable, drove to the right side of the lane and rose up from 12 feet and somehow got a shot over ER's Outstretch hand and banked it off the glass. And in 1 0 3 to 1 0 2. Kentucky 2.1 seconds left. CBS didn't go to commercial. Verne Lundquist was already composing the eulogy for Duke's repeat bid color commentator Len Elmore noted dryly that fits the shot went in, but it was a terrible shot. Duke called timeout. And this is where the story splits between what the camera saw and what happened inside the huddle. Coach K looked at his team. Some of them looked shellshocked, and he said, we're gonna win the damn game. Then he turned to Grant Hill. Can you make the pass? Hill? Said he could and turned to Layner. Can you make the shot? Layner just looked at him like the question itself. Insult. The play was home run. The same play that had failed at Wake Forest. The play. They'd practiced over and over because of that failure. There was one massive difference at Wake Forest. Dave Odom had put a defender on the in bounder. Rick Pitino, the man who wrote the book called Born to Coach, did not. Years later, grant Hill said I was surprised when no one came to guard me. I was wondering if they were gonna call time out to change the defense. Kentucky had no timeouts left. With no one guarding him. With both Kentucky defenders playing behind Ner instead of in front of him, he'll step back and threw a 75 foot strike. Lightner jumped, caught it cleanly, just inside the top of the key, and he had all the time in the world. Nothing but net 1 0 4 to 1 0 3. Ner spun around and ran towards Grant Hill. Thomas Hill burst into the tears in the left wing. Coach K slammed the towel, he'd been holding to the ground and went straight to Rick Pitino to embrace him. 10 for 10 from the field. Won three pointer, 10 for 10 from the line, 31 points. Anything short of perfection and Duke loses. But even in that moment of chaos in euphoria, coach K did something remarkable. he left the celebration and walked across the court to find the Kentucky radio broadcast crew. He knew that Kay Wood Ledford, the legendary voice, the Wildcats for 39 years had just called his final game. Ralph Hacker led Ford's longtime broadcasting partner, remembered being stunned. When he saw Coach K approaching, he pointed at his ears and hacker gave him the headset and Coach K. Seconds after the biggest shot in tournament history leaned in and said to, Ledford, Carwood, I just want to congratulate you on a great career. You stood for everything that's good about broadcasting, about college basketball. I know Kentucky fans are disappointed, but I hope they're proud of their team tonight. That was one of the greatest college basketball games ever played. Hacker later said, if I'd never met him before that night, I'd have loved him forever after what he did. That was as close to speechless as I'd ever seen him. To think to do that in that moment after the game was unbelievable. Redford's call the shot was the rarest thing in sports broadcasting, a homer announcer, giving the other team its due. Now, here's where most stories about the 1992 season would build to a triumphant crescendo. Duke flies to Minneapolis, wins the final four, cuts down the nets roll credits, but life isn't that clean and neither was this tournament run. And the other semi-final bracket, Michigan's Fab Five had knocked off Cincinnati. They'd be waiting in the championship game, brash, confident and predicting five straight national titles. But Duke had to get through Indiana first, and Indiana meant Bob Knight. Now if you've been listening to this podcast, you know that Knight is a thread running through the entire Duke story. Knight coached the army, a young Mike Czyzewski played for him when Czyzewski got out of the army. His first coaching job was his Knight's graduate assistant in at Indiana. It was Knight who helped him get the Army head coaching job at 29. In 1986, when Duke first made the Final Four Knight walked around Dallas wearing Go Duke button. But that was before Duke started winning championships and before Sports Illustrated ran a feature on Coach K during the final four week. The article was titled Blue Angel, and the thesis was simple. The student had surpassed the teacher, the. I can't imagine how angry that made night. I'm sure he was furious and he actually sends Coach K an angry letter that week telling him that he's ungrateful and just couldn't believe how he was treating Knight coach K understood the letter for what it was part genuine hurt and part, an attempt to distract him before the biggest game of the season. He didn't let it work. But what happened after the game was different. Indiana was one of Knight's best teams since the 1987 championship. Calor Cheney, Damon Bailey, Allen Henderson, Chris Reynolds. This squad had crushed UCLA by 25 in the regional final. They came in at 25 and six and they would not be intimidated. And for once in this game, Christian Laettner was human. The guy who couldn't miss in Philadelphia couldn't make a shot in Minneapolis, one for six in the first half, no rebounds until midway through the period. His first two free throws, the first misses after 20 straight makes. They rattled in and out. The numbers from Kentucky had finally caught up to him. Langner said years later, you certainly can't expect to keep shooting the way I had in the Kentucky game, especially against a really good defense like Indiana. They doubled me a lot, and that certainly affected me, but Bobby Hurley was there to keep Duke alive. He poured in 16 first half points, including four, three pointers every time it looked like Indiana might blow the game open. Hurley answered. Indiana LED 39 to 27 with two minutes left in the half a Hurley three and a couple of Grand Hill buckets. Cut it to 42 to 37 at the break. Then early in the second half, Knight got hit with a technical foul by referee Ted Valentine, OTV, Ted. Hurley made both free throws. Hill scored to the next possession. Duke led 44 to 43 and they never looked back. A 31 to six run stretching from the end of the first half into the second. Gave Duke a 58 to 45 lead. They cruised until the final minute. When Indiana Guard Todd Leary, a guy averaging 3.6 points per game, came off the bench and hit three, three pointers. In less than 60 seconds, duke managed to hold on 81 to 78, but the real story happened in the handshake line. The coaches filed past each other and Bob Knight made a point of not slowing down when he reached Coach K. This is sometimes known as a blow by handshake, a deliberate signal that you want nothing to do with the other person. Knight hugged Colonel Tom Rogers, Duke's Director of Basketball Operations, who had been Knight's military liaison at Army, just to make the point sharper. And then behind the curtain in the hallway that the NCAA had set up, so teams could walk between the locker rooms and the interview room uninterrupted. It got worse. Indiana players, Henderson and Cheney stopped to shake hands with Lachner and Hurley and wished them luck. Knight did the same with the players and then Coach K walked up hand extended nothing. Knight acted as if he hadn't seen him and walked right past. Mickey Zeki. Coach K's wife knew immediately something was wrong. She found a reporter in the hallway and grabbed his arm and said, you have to go see Mike in the coach's room. The staff sat in dead silence. They had just won a final a four game, but it felt like a funeral. Coach K told the story and then said what he needed to say. Shook it off. Turned his attention to Monday night because there was still one game left and the Fab five were waiting. This Michigan team I might have to get the socks out. I did a podcast episode years ago about socks, and I still have the pair of. Nike socks that they wore, and this team was absolutely electorate. They were the darling of this tournament. Five freshman starters, Weber Rose Howard, king Jackson. They were at this year's Final Four and still making headlines. They got their own alternate broadcast even. They had their baggy socks, their baggy shorts, and just a swagger that modernized college basketball. Chris Weber said before the game, our strength is that we don't respect anyone. Stark words. This was from, , the press conference before the game, and a bunch of documentaries, including a wonderful Fab Five documentary that you could find on ESPN Duke players. Of course, all heard, heard that Grant Hill said. We knew they were good and we certainly respected them. But we were too close to let someone beat us. But Duke was banged up. Grant Hill had been playing on a bad ankle for a month, injured when Cherokee Parks accidentally came down on it. In practice, brian Davis had hurt his ankle against Indiana and was questionable before the game, and Ner was still struggling from the floor. Michigan led 31 to 30 at halftime and Coach K remembered standing in the hallway listening to the wolverines, whoop and holler as they ran outta their locker room. Clearly convinced they were gonna win. Inside the Duke locker room, it was quiet for about 10 seconds, and then Bobby Hurley stood up, walked over to Christian Laettner and got right in his face. Multiple players have recounted Hurley saying, what the hell is wrong with you, Christian? You know, we need you if we're gonna win this game. Layner knew he needed a kick in the rear end, and he's often said that he'd never forget that Bobby Hurley stood over him, said, we need you to win this game. Whether it was the Hurley speech or his in own internal fortitude, the things that had been bothering or wrong with Layner disappeared when the second half started. Five minutes in, he cut behind Grant Hill and buried a three his first of the weekend and gave Duke a 36 to 35 lead. Michigan hung in for a few more minutes, but with Duke up 48 to 45. Layner drove it. Chris Weber hit a layup, made it 50 to 45, and it was basically over there. Duke scored on 12 of their last 13 possessions. They outscored Michigan 41 to 20 in the second half, 25 to six over the final seven minutes. The final score was an astonishing 71 to 51 a 20 point championship game blowout against the most hyped freshman class in history. Bobby Hurley, despite shooting three for 12, was voted the most outstanding player. Laettner shot four for five in the second half with zero turnovers and Grant Hill finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds. Thomas Hill was the unsung hero of both championship runs and had 16 and seven in this. And after the game, every Duke player put the same t-shirt on and hit red. You can talk the game, but can you play the game? If that's not a message to the Fab five, I don't know what is. Think about how good this team was. Bobby Hurley missed almost a month with a broken foot. Grant. Hill played hurt for the final month of the season and they ended up with two losses, both by two points in 36 games, and they won the national championship by 20, as Hurley put it. We were pretty good. Christian Laettner finished his Duke career with four consecutive Final Four appearances, two national titles. His 407 points and 23 NCAA tournament games are records that probably never gonna be reached. He played a perfect game to beat Kentucky, the shot that will be replayed until they stop playing the tournament. Bobby Hurley left Duke as one of the greatest point guards in college basketball history, fearless, emotional, the kind of player who would stand up in a championship game, locker room, and tell the best player in the country to get his act together because that's what the team needed. Grant Hill would become an NBA All star, but a Duke. He was the ultimate teammate. The guy who moved a point guard when Hurley went down, who threw the most famous inbound pass in history. He did whatever was asked of him without complaints. And Coach K. After the Kentucky game, someone asked him about winning back to back titles about what it meant and the possibility of a third, and he paused for a moment and said, I wonder where the third one might go. He was already imagining the wall on Cameron already picturing more banners. In the 32 years since Duke went back to back, only two other teams have managed that feat, Florida in 2006 and 2007 and Connecticut in 23 and 24. That's how hard it is. That's how rare it is. And that's how good the 91 92 Blue Devils were. The second banner in Cameron Indoor was hung right next to the first one, banner one and banner two. Side by side, the beginning of a dynasty that would reshape college basketball for decades. The 19 91, 92, duke Blue Devils teach us something different than the 91 team did. Banner one was about redemption turning humiliation into glory, but Banner two was about something harder. It's about staying on top when the world wants to pull you down, about being the villain and thriving in it, about losing your point guard and finding the way forward about playing the greatest college basketball game ever played, and then having to win two more games after it. It was about a coach who honored an opposing broadcaster seconds after the biggest win of his career, and who absorbed the devastating personal slight from his mentor in the same week, and he still coached his team to a national championship. And it was about a six foot 10 kid from upstate New York who played a perfect game when perfection was the only option. Thank you for joining us on iconic seasons. I'm Aaron Meyer. We'll be back soon with another story of a team that changed everything Until then, keep your eyes up and you dribble low. Keep your eyes up.