March Rewind: Coach K Evens NCAA Record at 2-2 as '86 Duke Gets Opening Win

Blue Devils start run to Final Four with tight win over Mississippi Valley State

What's March without Duke Tournament basketball? With this year's ACC and NCAA Tournaments cancelled, we'll go back in time to look at the top Blue Devils postseason games from each date in March and early April. Special thanks to SportsReference.com for boxscores and the Duke Library for the newspaper archive.

When top-ranked Duke drew Mississippi Valley State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at the Greensboro Coliseum, it appeared to be a mismatch. The Duke student paper likened it to a fight between WWF star Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka and TV innkeeper Bob Newhart.

Blue Devils senior starters Jay Bilas and Mark Alarie admitted that it was difficult for Duke to get hyped for the Delta Devils.

“I think these games are almost as difficult to get up for as some big games,” said Bilas, who always seems willing to speak his mind. “It’s just like when we played Wake Forest. We knew we could play less than our best and still win. That’s a dangerous situation.”

Alarie agreed, saying, “The emotion we had in both the Virginia and Georgia Tech game (on the way to an ACC Tournament title) will be hard to match in a first round game.”

Sure enough, the 16-seed SWAC champions put a scare into Duke, leading 40-37 at half before Duke rallied to pull out an 85-78 win and advance to a second-round game against Old Dominion.

The undersized Delta Devils forced 23 turnovers, including six by Tommy Amaker, before Johnny Dawkins scored 10 straight points in the second half to help Duke pull away. Dawkins finished with 27 points on 11-of-17 shooting. Alarie added 19, Dave Henderson 12 and freshman Danny Ferry had a double-double with 13 points and 11 rebounds.

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski evened his career record in the NCAA Tournament at two wins and two losses.

“In critical points, we knew how to win,” he said. “That’s really been the story of our team, that we knew how to win. … Very simply, the story of the game is that they played harder than us. I don’t fault my tea for not wanting to win. We wanted to win. We just didn’t play very well.”