WEST POINT, N.Y. — Long before Mike Krzyzewski stared upward at the banner newly recognizing his accomplishments at West Point, the place where it really all began for him, a commemoration of a different kind took place in the back of a restaurant just outside the grounds, in little Highland Falls.

Of all the pomp and circumstance and ceremony of Duke’s visit to Army on Veterans Day in honor of both schools’ former basketball coach, this event was what Krzyzewski had been most anticipating: a quiet lunch with four of his former Army players.

He and his wife Mickie turned a corner into the back room, and there they were, standing, waiting for him. Matt Brown, his first recruit after taking the job at Army as a 28-year-old in 1975. Bob Brown, a retired four-star general. Pat Harris, who would later succeed Krzyzewski as Army coach, and Marty Coyne, who would become Harris’ assistant coach.

“Amazing,” was all Krzyzewski could say, wearing a black Army pullover, as he moved toward them.

Together, they scored 4,442 points in their Army careers, some of those after Krzyzewski had left for Duke. They all still call him “Coach,” all these years later. Yet as they sat around the table, on this day, the gap between coach and players seemed to close, just as the years melted away.

“These stories, they’re deep,” Krzyzewski told The News & Observer on Tuesday. “They’re emotional. Not that you’re crying, you’re laughing. And you’re so damn proud that that’s had a bearing on them, and the men they’ve become.”

Krzyzewski was back among the people who helped launch his career. There’s so much about this visit that feels like a full-circle moment, giving his time at Army the proper due and respect amid a life and career that led him so far away and to heights no one then could have envisioned, but always fated to return here like this, the intersection of the two schools he forever linked with his name.

“They don’t get a game like this, so it’s not just me being here, but Duke,” Krzyzewski said. “The whole thing. And I love that, that it showcases both schools. And on Veterans Day, are you kidding me? All that, I don’t know how the hell it came about. But I’m very thankful for that, and appreciative. As always, if you’re part of Duke and West Point, whatever you are is elevated.”

Setting the standard

Krzyzewski has been back at West Point often — he even took Duke there to play in 1997, just as Jon Scheyer did Tuesday — but never as the true center of attention, not with so many people here solely because of him. Fifty years after he succeeded Bob Knight, his own coach, at Army, the academy wanted to more formally acknowledge the role it played in making him the all-time winningest college basketball coach.

And not merely the 73 of his 1,202 wins he compiled there, but everything else that went with it. If his time as a cadet helped make him the person he is today, his time as a coach there helped make him the coach he was for the better part of four decades.

“I love West Point and West Point has been the foundation for me,” Krzyzewski said. “But also my five years as a head coach, I became a head coach here. I didn’t know, I didn’t put it down in writing or anything like that, just did it by feel or whatever. I had good players and we were successful, and that set the standard for me.”

Duke spent two days visiting the academy, practicing at Christl Arena on Monday while Krzyzewski had an impromptu meet-and-greet with the Army women’s team and spoke to a class of 50 cadets and the current Army basketball team before he rejoined Duke’s team for a tour of the West Point campus, led by its academic dean, a Brigadier General.

At one point, Krzyzewski and Bob Brown were both speaking to cadets, a basketball coach and a four-star general. Who carries more weight with 19-year-old future officers these days?

“Coach K,” Brown said. “That’s not even a question.”

In the evening, among those cadets, who he called “future veterans” on Veterans Day, he stood at center court and looked up as Army unfurled a new banner, hanging alone to the left of Army’s new video display board.

Mike Krzyzewski (‘69)

Head coach 1975-80

NCAA Division I

Most career victories

“Tonight is so very special,” Krzyzewski told the crowd. “You’re not going to see 10 better guys on the court all year in college basketball than the 10 guys that will be on the court for the 40 minutes you will watch. These young men represent the two best institutions in our country.”

A life relived

Tuesday, there was also a VIP reception at the superintendent’s house before the game and ceremony, but there’s been a this-is-your-life feel to these 48 hours that stretches far beyond the official itinerary.

While he was speaking to the current Army team, two of his former players from the Army prep school surprised him. At the restaurant where he ate with his former players — Westy’s, a few hundred yards from the south gate of the academy, owned by a family with deep ties to West Point — Krzyzewski was greeted by a former teammate, Mike Noonan, who was a year ahead of him, one of many former classmates who returned to see him honored Tuesday.

Army’s current athletic director, Tom Theodorokis, also stopped by to thank Krzyzewski for wearing Army gear. “Well, I’m going to change, though,” Krzyzewski joked. Tom Thibodeau, his former Olympic assistant, sat behind the Duke bench.

Amid all of that, the time with the former players held a special place in his heart. They sat around a table covered with plates of food and pitchers of beer, slipping back into old rhythms, remembering forgotten stories, reliving a past they considered themselves lucky to share.

“This just went right back to 50 years ago,” Coyne said. “It just felt like there hasn’t been any time. We were very comfortable there, just exactly where it used to be. It’s amazing when that happens. I wasn’t sure how it was going to go, just because of the time, circumstances, all of that, and then all of a sudden, you forget about everything and it’s just us talking. It’s unique for us too. Besides the fact that he was our coach, we also were all cadets and graduates. So we all have a common experience.”

It was particularly interesting, on Veterans Day, to hear them acknowledge that none of them would have had that common experience, none of them would have ended up in the military, if not for Krzyzewski recruiting them to play for Army. He opened that door for them, and serving in the Army changed their lives just as it changed his.

“I had a scholarship to the University of Michigan for basketball, and he came to my house and talked me into visiting West Point, and it struck me as something phenomenal, the service to others,” Brown said. “It’s not that we wouldn’t have, but none of us would have had the privilege of serving our country without coach. I was thanking him for that.”

‘It started here’

It’s possible that nothing else that happened Tuesday would have happened without them and their peers. There was no acknowledgement of Krzyzewski’s time at Army in the arena, one built years after he was gone to replace the old fieldhouse with a dirt floor underneath the basketball court — built during World War II as a “tank training facility” to get the funding — where he played and coached.

When this visit came on the books as part of a three-year home-and-home-and home between Duke and Army, a group of former players went to the athletic department and said, it’s time. Krzyzewski was already a member of the Army athletics hall of fame and had been honored as a distinguished Army graduate, but mostly for what he did after leaving West Point, not what he did as a basketball coach and player.

There are banners honoring coaches after Krzyzewski who won coach-of-the-year awards in the MAAC and Patriot League — including Harris, in 2002 — and the honored numbers of three players, including Krzyzewski’s star Gary Winton, but no mention of Krzyzewski anywhere in the arena until Tuesday.

“Overdue is the right word,” Coyne said. “But you know, he’s probably our most famous graduate, and so when he comes here, you can see what happens. It’s the way he’s lived his life, not just as a coach, but off the court. Of course, all Academy graduates are proud of him. So it’s great to see this happen. Again, it speaks to him to involve us in it.”

He would not have done this without them — a game that wouldn’t have happened without him, a ceremony that acknowledged that — just as he couldn’t have done any of it without them.

“I know how it all started,” Krzyzewski said. “It started here. Being with my guys? Those are the same guys. I had good players at West Point. I can see how it happened.”

It started here. As a cadet. As a coach. It all came full circle on Tuesday, a much older man at the center of the arena, looking out at the young men and women at each end of the court wearing a uniform he once wore, and never really shed.

____

©2025 Raleigh News & Observer. Visit newsobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.