Brownlow: March Madness comes for us all, even Mike Krzyzewski

By Lauren Brownlow, WRALSportsFan columnist/reporter

History hung in the air as thick as the customary New Orleans humidity, ever-present and inevitable but rarely acknowledged.

The Superdome was uncomfortably full. Every seat was filled, to the point where it looked as if seats had been made up just to accommodate everyone who wanted to be there. You half expected to see people hanging from a banner in the rafters, posed uncomfortably near the top of the enormous building, just to say they were there.

It was hot, too. The energy in that building had to go somewhere. And the desperation, the tension, the sense of expectation that something great was either about to happen or was happening? It manifested in literal heat.

For nearly 28 out of 40 minutes, two of the biggest rivals in all of sport playing each other in the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever with a national championship berth on the line stayed within a score of each other. Every punch had a counterpunch. Every moment that felt like it would decide the game was followed by an even bigger one, until the time ran out and there were no more moments to be had. It was UNC's moment now.

At every stage of the NCAA Tournament, the stakes are higher. The atmosphere is crazier. More people are on hand to watch. By the time the Final Four begins, you know every person in the universe with functioning eyeballs and even a passing interest in sports is watching. And you REALLY know that when Mike Krzyzewski's career could end if he loses.

The NCAA Tournament itself? It doesn't care about any of that, though.

It's the cruelest postseason imaginable. Think about it: pro sports has 7-game series. Even the NFL Playoff is designed to protect top seeds as long as possible. But there's so much parity, so many different styles of play, so many mid-majors with under-recognized players that are more than capable of beating you.

North Carolina, though? North Carolina is none of those things. But the only thing crueler than a Tournament designed for the best team not to win is a rival that wants nothing more than to destroy you.

One reason Krzyzewski's career was so successful, though, is that it often did not matter how badly you wanted to beat his teams.

Krzyzewski's teams winning felt inevitable. Death, taxes, the Patriots fleecing your team in a trade, Duke basketball. And with him on the cusp of a last national title in his final season, it felt like it was inevitable.

But reality does not care. Reality was the only truly neutral presence in that building.

Basketball in a football stadium feels strange and far away, like you're watching toy miniatures move around instead of people. The crowd often has to sit far away from the court and angled in such a way that no one is on top of the action.

But everyone in that building was an intimate part of this game in a way that isn't usually true.

It's wild to imagine Kansas and Villanova taking second billing, but that's what happened. They were the opening act. And their fans stuck around, too.

For over two hours, nearly all 70,000-plus people in that building stood up. By the end of the game, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone still sitting.

Even if you didn't have a dog in the fight, so to speak, the game had so many adrenaline-pumping swings that sitting felt impossible. How could anyone sit with their heart pounding and their hands shaking?

Duke only found itself in this position in the Final Four because it learned to stop worrying about whether it would win or lose.

But the days leading up to this game made it clear that the worry had returned.

North Carolina and Duke never meet in the NCAA Tournament. Well, they have now. But almost never. On Friday, Duke's Mark Williams said that after they beat UNC by 20, he didn't think they'd be a Duke opponent in the Final Four.

But that wasn't because of how poorly UNC had played. It was just because it felt almost as if there were forces in play to make sure such a meeting never happened.

Those same forces that seemed to make Duke winning feel inevitable.

But those forces haven't always been there. In fact, when Krzyzewski began his career at Duke, North Carolina was the program with inevitability on its side. He couldn't figure out a way to vanquish the mighty Tar Heels.

He eventually did, of course. But he ended his 42-year career at Duke the same way he began it — unable to vanquish UNC.

UNC's current head coach was 9 when Krzyzewski was hired. He's 51 now. Duke has been inevitable all this time. But not this time. Hubert Davis, who was 9 when Krzyzewski was hired, helped make sure of that.

If the moment was too big for his players? Well, it's not often that you cut away from a player about to shoot free throws — Armando Bacot, in this case — to show Jamie Foxx in the crowd with his family.

Many of the same former Duke players that were on hand in Durham a few weeks ago for Krzyzewski's final home game were there again, hoping for a different outcome that they wouldn't get.

Duke fans came for the same reason. With eyes wide and maniacal and cheers going at full volume, they were ready. They were ready for a different ending, a happier one. They didn't want to miss the end of Krzyzewski's career. And either way the long weekend ended, they knew it would be his last. But they wanted it to be a happy one. They wanted it so badly it was palpable. Too badly, maybe.

Duke was not as good at home as it normally is this year. The players maybe felt that energy, that desperation. Maybe they didn't. But the pressure was immense and almost unimaginable.

Duke fans were the majority. But as the game got close at the end, their nervousness grew. The cheers faded into discontented murmuring. They were ... quiet. Duke fans? Quiet? It happened.

UNC often navigates pressure, too. But this is the rare run for the Tar Heels where it isn't an issue. And they've gladly accepted the freedom being offered to them by the basketball gods and used to to the max, fueling them to be the team that has nothing to lose, a team that is usually the type to pull the upset on Carolina instead of vice versa.

But after beating Duke at Cameron and coming into the Final Four meeting as an 8-seed, UNC still had a substantial amount of house money.

And they pushed it all to the center of the table, grinned, waited for the flop and took everything Duke had. Duke could not afford to lose the money it had risked. Carolina? It was playing for fun.

Brian McLaughlin, aka the UNC fan with the Ramses hat, aka the 102 Jamz deejay out of Greensboro known as "B-Daht" who became the hype man for UNC home games this year, milled around on the packed concourse before the game started.

"I don't like your team, but I like your hat," a Duke fan told him.

"I don't like your team," B-Daht responded with a smile, "but I love your energy."

A certain former North Carolina head coach that has made this season into a sort of farewell of his own told him after the game to never take the hat off.

Williams has gotten to enjoy this journey simultaneously from a distance and up close. He knows everything about all of these players, the head coach. He's gone as a fan, but he's experienced a joy he hasn't known watching his players in a long time, free from the responsibility of winning that weighed him down at the end. It's no longer on him. He said he couldn't do it anymore, and he helped pick his successor. And his successor just sent Krzyzewski home forever.

If North Carolina fans wanted Krzyzewki's tears, though, it's the only disappointment they'd have on the night. They didn't get them.

After Krzyzewski left the locker room full of his still-crying players for the final time, he had to go to his last postgame press conference.

But he had a stop to make first.

North Carolina's locker room was right across the hall from Duke, impossible to avoid. "Tar Heels" written inside of a huge painted triangle would have been the first thing Krzyzewski saw.

And the second was North Carolina's players being interviewed against the opposite wall.

Armando Bacot was one.

He walked straight up to him, parting the assembled scrum of media in front of Bacot like the Red Sea.

He complimented the North Carolina junior, who was still walking with a limp after the game, and made sure he was all right. Bacot said that he was. He told him he was a great player, and then Krzyzewski patted Bacot on the chest.

It was his final postgame chest pat of an opposing player, something Krzyzewski often did to show respect and appreciation.

Krzyzewski then hopped on the NCAA's golf cart and rode to his final press conference. Maybe now, the assembled media seemed to think, he'd talk about what his career ending meant to him. Maybe he'd talk about his own feelings, his own emotions surrounding it being over.

Ever the military man, Krzyzewski is not one to show emotion easily. He can be clipped, although he used to be curt and sometimes even caustic. But he rarely loses his cool either way, at least not outside the confines of a game.

His voice was slightly scratchy from having to yell so his team could hear him above the noise, but Krzyzewski's voice cracked maybe once. He didn't cry, although he has before.

"I wanted my seasons to end where my team was either crying tears of joy or tears or sorrow because then you knew that they gave everything. I had a locker room filled with guys who were crying," Krzyzewski said. "It’s a beautiful sight. It’s not a sight that I would want. I’d want the other. But it’s a sight that I really respect and that makes me understand just how good this group was.

"I don’t want any of these guys to leave and say ‘I should have made that won free throw’. We win and we lose together, and we’ve won 32 games."

It felt like there should have been more to this moment. Krzyzewski should have cried, or pitched a fit, or something. Maybe even un-retired. SOMETHING had to happen to make this moment feel as important as it should.

But that's because Krzyzewski knows better than anyone that endings are not guaranteed, no matter how fated they feel.

"I’ve been blessed to be in the arena, and when you’re in the arena, you’re either going to come out feeling great or you’re going to feel agony," Krzyzewski said. "But you always will feel great about being in the arena. I’m sure that’s the thing that I’ll miss. I won’t be in the arena anymore.

"But damn, I was in the arena for a long time. And these kids made my last time in the arena an amazing one."